How to Write Content for the Middle of the Funnel

While the marketing funnel is a common framework in marketing, middle-of-the-funnel content doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Up at the top of the funnel, we’re busy trying to build awareness and collect new leads. While at the bottom of the funnel, we’re working hard to seal the deal. But what about everything in between? The middle of the funnel represents a valuable opportunity to nurture your relationship with leads and move them closer to a potential purchase. That said, writing effective content for mid-funnel buyers isn’t always straightforward. That’s because your content needs to be more in-depth than an introductory blog post without giving readers the hard sell about your product or service. Free Actionable Bonus: Get the complete guide Creating Content for All 4 Stages of The Buyer Journey Getting to Know the Middle of the Funnel Most marketers are familiar with a marketing funnel. At the top of the funnel, or the â€Å"awareness† stage of the journey, visitors find out about your products and services. As their interest in and awareness of your product grows, prospects move down the funnel towards making a conversion at the end. The middle of the funnel, often known as the â€Å"consideration† or â€Å"evaluation† stage of the buyer’s journey, is where people weigh their different options. During this stage, the goal for companies is to build relationships with leads and help them decide if your products or services are the best fit for their needs. Ideas for Middle of the Funnel Content So, how exactly do you create effective content for the middle of the funnel? Here are 5 types of content that cater to buyers in the consideration stage: 2. White papers: Some marketers see white papers as strictly top-of-the-funnel-content, but these in-depth papers can also work well in the middle of the funnel. Packed with information and details, white papers allow you to dive deep into your product’s features and explain how your product can solve specific problems. 3. Newsletters: You’re bound to have leads that don’t necessarily need you right now, but there’s a good chance they will in the future. Newsletters are a great long-term strategy for staying in touch with these prospects and keeping your business fresh in their minds for when they do start to evaluate possible options. 4. Ebooks: Like white papers, ebooks offer another opportunity to take a deep dive into your business’s area of expertise and guide prospects toward a specific solution. Customer-service software maker Zendesk excels at this type of content, creating in-depth educational pieces that cater to targeted audiences. For example, they offer a free ebook that covers the ins and outs of creating and managing virtual teams–a detailed look at a topic that probably wouldn’t be tackled in a top-of-the-funnel blog post. 5. Comparisons: Considering that the middle of the funnel is also known as the evaluation stage, it makes sense to help potential customers assess a few different options. Comparison content aims to do exactly that by showing 3 or 4 different companies side-by-side and making easy for readers to compare their costs and benefits. This is the perfect place to highlight your unique value proposition and position your solution as the one that best fits their needs. Don’t Forget the Middle Child While the majority of marketing focuses on the top and bottom of the funnel, having an effective middle of the funnel content strategy is a great way to keep your brand top-of-mind and move people closer to making a decision. The middle of the funnel is the link that speaks to the leads you captured at the top of the funnel and guides the most qualified ones closer to a purchase.

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Reward Systems and Performance Management Term Paper

Reward Systems and Performance Management - Term Paper Example The basic aim of reward system and performance management is to increase the overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. And to do so the organization should be ready to value its workers. In this paper all those methods will be focused which can be used to reward the employees to make them feel valuable so that they work for the organization with all their dedication and devotion (Grote, 1996). Performance Management & Reward System An effective reward system can be made by using a very simple method based on the following five steps, namely: (1) Specific, (2) Meaningful, (3) Achievable, (4) Reliable and (5) Timely. To be â€Å"specific† means that action and the rewards should be maintained perfectly in accordance with each other. The reward should be meaningful and should be beneficial for both, the employ and the organization. The targets given to the employees should be achievable and practical. The entire program should be reliable and should be operated in accordance with the rules and regulations. Last but not the least, the entire program should be managed properly and timely (Lebas, 1995). There are several methods to reward the employees based on their performances. Some of them I have discussed in this paper. Employee Empowerment The empowerment of people refers to giving authority to the employees in particular. There are two major points to be understood. First is you should know that how you could utilize your work force to get the maximum possible financial results. And the second is that you should know and search for different techniques to raise productivity, lower the costs and maximize the revenues (Dransfield, 2000). Productivity refers to the outcome and efficiency of a firm. It is actually the outcome of your work. Empowerment has a vital role to play in things related to productivity. The productivity that is being induced and provoked by stress can be regarded as a path to burning out. The development of a work envi ronment that is positive and friendly can surely help in decreasing and diffusing the stress that increases due to the demands and pressure of raising the performance. It is a universal truth that not all people are similar. They have their own diversity. Hence it is also true that their all have different working styles. It is therefore necessary that the needs and requirements of an employee should be understood, like what motivates them, so that they could give their best performance. Flexibility in working hours, a walk after lunch, may be little refreshment or sport can help employees get rid of the drowsiness and increase the metabolic rates. It is necessary to understand that employees are not school going children (Dransfield, 2000). Give Respect to the Employees It is noted that if an environment is such that it gives respect and enough space to its employees for working according to their own working styles, then the employees can easily give their best to the company. The support from the management is a must. If the sales team is given enough resources to raise the sales, then it is obvious that by the end of year your sales would have increased. Access to resources like, market data, conduction of workshops and seminars, etc all help in raising the performance graphs of your employees (Armstrong, 2002). People from every level in an organization should have good communication among them. It is no doubt true that if a person enjoys what he do then they surely give their best which

Human Nature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Human Nature - Essay Example On the other side, the USA marines want to attack the Japanese while on they are on the island and drive them into the sea (William 497). The USA marines and Japanese have similar plans, but the results are different, eventually the USA wins. This helps answer the question, because according to William Manchester, humans in the community are close and helpful together, it is difficult to know the enemies. Humans in nature have hatred, and they result to destruction. Further, human nature is, considering thoughts that go around the human mind, mostly being thoughts to cause destruction as studied and written by expert writers. Hoagland considers experiences involving suicide; he explains that men as compared to women are vulnerable to suicidal thoughts, as suicide helps men avoid life and the harshness that life offers. Arrogance and competition among men make them think of committing suicide; otherwise the same men are always holding their emotions back and taking pretence that suicidal thoughts are not running through their mind. Hence shows that humans in nature strive so hard to do destruction, and then when back to their being, strive harder to take them back and take pretence that they have no detrimental thoughts (Edward 507). From lessons of World War II, nations of the world still strive so hard to make weapons that are destructive to human beings, but their human nature tells them that it is the right thing to do. In accordance to Hoagland, as human beings get old, the more the pressure in life, thus opting to commit suicide, surprisingly with the same weapons they struggled so hard to make. Thus on bases of the two readings, human nature involves always striving to cause destruction to their own kind. Thus, forming a thesis on the human nature from the objective point, of which it is ending hope, is the filling of unifying

Gene Patenting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Gene Patenting - Essay Example Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) with 300 to 500 base gene fragments, represent about only 10 to 30% of the average cDNA. cDNA is a laboratory synthesized DNA that contains only exons in their fragment. These allow the genetic researchers to limit their research to only information containing gene fragments. Patenting of gene fragments has sparked controversy. This is because researchers feel that allowing many patents on gene fragments of same genome adds up to costs to the researcher who is interested in examining the whole genome. The researcher will not only have to pay to each patent holder in order to get an opportunity to study each gene fragment, the researcher will also have to pay the people he has hired to study different patented genes and determine which genes are applicable for his research. Variation in DNA sequences when a single nucleotide in the gene is altered is known as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs). For instance, SNP might alter a DNA sequence GATCAATA to GAACAATA. Along the human genome, SNPs occur after every 100 to 1000 bases. They can occur in both coding part of the gene as well as non-coding part of the gene. Normally, SNPs have no affect on function of cells, but researchers believe that some SNPs can make people more likely to contract a disease or affect their response to a drug. Difference in genomic sequences influences how humans respond to different diseases, environmental dangers like that of viruses, bacteria, chemicals and toxins and drug therapies. These variations make SNPs of great importance for making researches in field of biomedical and for developing different pharmaceutical products. Researchers believe that SNPs will help them identify the affects of different genes that contribute towards complicated diseases like diabetes, cancer and mental illness. In conventional ways of hunting genes, association between genes and diseases is difficult to make because an altered gene makes a very small contribution towards the disease. U.K Wellcome Trust philanthropy and ten big pharmaceutical companies in 1999, established a non-profit organization which would find about 300,000 common SNPs. The foundation then planned to patent all the SNPs found so that they could prevent others from patenting the same information. The information on SNPs found by th e consortium is freely available to researchers. Production of human embryos or cloning embryos for use in research is known as 'embryo cloning'. This process clones human embryos in laboratory so that stem cells can be harvested from them and used to study human diseases and development. Stem cells are of great potential to researchers because they can be used to generate any type of specialized cell in the body. Genetically modified organisms and cell lines are patentable material. Patents for cell lines from monkeys and other organisms have already been issued. Thus, based on previous court rulings, embryonic stem cells are patentable. Many controversies have developed regarding the patentability of human embryonic stem cells. The major controversy is that patents for human cell lines and cloning violate the principle of owning human beings. In the US, patents are granted according to a set technical criterion. Ethical issues have not yet influenced this process but it is yet to be seen how stem cell debate change this. Various research groups are patenting

Relevant leadership theories in relation to Steve Jobs

Relevant leadership theories in relation to Steve Jobs Introduction The topic of leadership has continued to be a subject of interest in the modern world both from practitioners as well as academics and the extensive research for decades has not exhausted the topic (Bennis W. , 2007). Leadership has an influence on all the facets of business. Organizations are often successful because of the set of relationships existing between the leaders and the followers. Through this essay efforts are made to apply relevant leadership theories in relation to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc, one of the most commended leaders of recent times. An attempt is made to evaluate Steve Jobs leadership style using the following theories Hersey-Blanchard Situational Theory (Hersey Blanchard, 1988), Transactional Leadership (Bass, 1985; Adair 1990), Transformational leadership (Goodwin, Woffard Whittington, 2001; Tichy Devanna, 1986; Yammarino Dublinsky, 1994, Bass, 1990)theory will be used. After reviewing the literature on leadership theories relevant to this case study, based on the frameworks it will be argued whether Steve Jobs can be considered as an effective leader. Literature Review Today leadership is the one of the most known management topic at the same time attempts to understand still represents a challenge. A single definition cannot encompass many aspects of leadership (Bennis Nanus, 1985:4; Pfeffer, 1977; Kenny Zaccaro, 1983; Lord, DeVader, Alliger, 1986; Kirkpatrick Locke, 1991). The various theories of leadership help to solve somewhat the ambiguity of the definition . One of the reason for popularity to the leadership topic is that leaders action or inaction can effect people, not only in the success of an enterprise, but also in social field i.e.a group, an organization or a larger entity or a nation. (Hollander, 1992) The review of literature shows the concept of leaders trait and characteristics in the earlier studies of leadership {Bass (1990); Curphy, and Hogan (1994);S. A. Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) ; Kenny and Zaccaro (1983); Zaccaro, Foti,et al., (1991) ; Ferentinos (1996); Howard and Bray (1988)} and later theories considering various contextual environment of leadership along with the followers (Hollander, 1992). The research on leadership has evolved from the great man theory to the trait theory to behaviourist theory to Situational theory to contingency theory to transactional theory and to transformational leadership (Bolden, Gosling, Marturano, Dennison, 2003) Hersey Blanchard situational theory (McKenna E. , 2000) This model adopt consideration to relationship and task behaviour . It extends these two dimensions of leadership to four styles i.e. tell, sell, participation, and delegation. Maturity consists of two parts-job maturity and psychological maturity. Job maturity relates to technical knowledge and task-relevant skills. Psychological maturity relates to feelings of self-confidence and ability, peoples willingness to take responsibility for directing their own behaviour. Emphasis is placed on matching a style of leadership to the maturity of subordinates, and this relationship is important in determination of leadership effectiveness (Hersey Blanchard 1982). Tell : A task oriented and directive style where highly immature subordinates would be told what to do. Sell: A relationship oriented style where Subordinates on the low side of maturity, would be persuaded that a particular course of action is the most appropriate. Subordinates on the high side of maturity will be treated with a certain amount of consideration and support would be allowed to Participate in decision making . Delegation: where subordinates, highly mature will be considered capable of exercising self-direction and self control, and a high degree of autonomy. Most important in Hersey and Blanchards theory is the focus on truly situational nature of leadership and their recognition of the need for behaviour flexibility on the part of the leader (Yukl, 1981). Barrrow (1977) and Yukl (1981) argue that though the model is prescriptive for measuring leader style, style range, and effectiveness it merits much less favourable evaluations. The concept of task-relevant maturity that has been conceptually ambiguous. According to a study by Graeff (1983), it has internal consistency problems, substantial conceptual contradiction, problems with the conceptual definition of relationship behaviour and inconsistent arguments regarding the appropriateness of participative decision making contribute. Transactional and Transformational Leadership Transactional leadership occurs when one person takes the initiative in making contact with others for the purpose of an exchange of something valued; that is, leaders approach followers with an eye toward exchanging (Burns, 1978) In transactional leadership, leaders gain control of their subordinates through praise, intimidation and coercion. The transactional leader specifies the standards for compliance, and may punish followers for being out of compliance with those standards (Bass Avolio, 1997). Transactional models of leadership emphasize the implicit social exchange, or transaction, that exists between leader and followers as a feature of effectiveness. This transactional approach emphasizes a more active role for followers, with the potential for two-way influence, rather than coerced compliance (Hollander, 1992) According to Bryant (2003) Consequence of transactional leadership workers are not motivated to give anything beyond what is clearly specified in their contract. Workers may also choose to utilize their excess brain capacity by consulting or starting their own business if they are not challenged and rewarded for extra effort in the firm. The transactional leadership theory is known for its in-ward looking and self-satisfying feel, known to be most appropriate for a culture with stable conditions. (McKenna E. , 2006). Burns (1978) idea of the leader as a transforming agent has been applied to organizational leadership by Bass (1985) and Bennis and Nanus (1985) especially as a source of exceptional performance. The essential point is that the leader strives to go beyond the bounds of the usual to bring about a change in followers thinking that will redirect their action(Fiedler House, 1988). The central concept in transformational leadership theory is change and the role of leadership in envisioning and implementing the transformation of organisational performance (Bolden, Gosling, Marturano, Dennison, 2003) Transformational leaders create an atmosphere conducive to knowledge creation, sharing and exploitation. In particular, by using charisma, encouraging intellectual development and by paying individual attention to workers, transformational leaders motivate their workers to create and share knowledge. Transformational leaders inspire workers on to higher levels of innovation and effectiveness.(Bryant, 2003) Transformational leadership has been shown to have a positive relationship with performance.(Lowe, Kroeck, Sivasubramaniam) Despite the support that transformation leadership theory received there are still weakness which is identified by Yulk (1999) that is the transformational behaviours are found to be missing in Bass (1996) which are identified as inspiring (infusing the work with meaning), developing (enhancing follower skills and self-confidence), and empowering (Providing significant voice and discretion to followers). Authors (Bass 1985, 1996 ; Pawar Eastman, 1997; Pettigrew, 1987) are of the view that the situational variables which are missed may increase the likelihood of transformational leadership or moderate its effect on followers. Transformational leadership theory can have several detrimental consequences for the organisations as identified by (Harrison 1987; Stephens, DIntino, and Victor (1995); Porter, L. W., Bigley, G. A. 1997) first is that followers transformed to high degree of emotional involvement which makes them burn out their long-standing stress secondly, was being biased toward the top management, customers at the cost of others of the employees thirdly, different leaders with competing visions can create role ambiguity and role conflict. Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) argue that transformational leadership is unethical, it may appeal to emotions rather than to reason and it lacks the checks and balances of democratic discourse and power distribution. Yulk (1999) argues that the theory deals primarily with the leader follower behaviour and has given less attention at the group and organisational level. Part three Background to Case Study Critical Analysis In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical user interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. Apples subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he has served as its CEO since 1997. Steve also co-founded and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time including Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on Disneys board of directors. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. With Steve Job , Apple commands a dedicated consumer base and is know for its premium brands like iPad, iPhone, iPod, iTunes etc . Apples success is known under Steve Jobs Leadersip. Although it is not easy to characterize Steve Jobs leadership style to any one particular theory, to evaluate his leadership style two theories of leadership will be used the Transactional and Transformational theory and secondly the Hershey Blanchards situational theory. Steve Jobs leadership style seems to be both transactional and transformational theory. According to Bass (1985) and Burn (1978) both these theories more complementary than being competitive. Steve Jobs as a Transformational Leader As per the above literature review, transformational leaders are charismatic, vision oriented, encouraging intellectual development of their followers, inspiring and motivating to higher levels of effectiveness. The aspects that strongly claim that Steve Jobs leadership shows signs of transformational leadership is his charismatic personality. According to Rakesh Khurana (2002) Steve Jobs, the New Age wunderkind of Apple revered for his sucess in introducing people to the personal computer that could gaurantee our freedom (Khurana, 2002). As Steve Wozniak , the co-founder with Jobs of the Apple , tersely noted : he can always couch things in the right words . Steve Job is described as heart and soul of Apple. (Patterson, 1985) What was visionary about Jobs approach -where he surely added value- was his evangelical zeal to show people the future potential of the product. With this vision as foresight has caused Jobs to be dubbed the priceless proselytizer.(Uttal, 1985) Cocks (1983) argues that Apples co-founder, Steve Wozniak, blodly stated that Jobs did not understand computers, and the actual design of the machine has been widely credited to Wozniak. But as Wozniak also said, it never crossed my mind to sell computers. It was Steve who said Lets hold them up in the air and sell a few. It was Jobs who insisted that the computer be light and trim, well designed in muted colors. Jobs likewise pushed his engineers to make machines that will not frighten away a skittish clientele. (Cocks, 1983) Butcher (1988) argues that Jobs a perfectionist, adn as the organsiation gre, many in Apple experienced this as intolerance and self-absorption. Steve Hawkins an employee said Jobs such a perfectionist that people can never please him , hes extermly ambitious , almost to the point of megalomania.(Butcher, 1988) Transformational leadership is about encouraging innovation, bringing about a change in the thinking of its followers and being visionary in implementing transformation in the organisation performance. Steve Jobs as a transformational leader is seen in his efforts to bring innovative digital technology to mass consumer so that they can open their wallet(Deutschman, 2001). Evidence of Steve Jobs vision in making innovation accessible was Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings (Young, 2005) In terms of motivation and inspiring employees to give their best of performance is a characteristic of transformational leadership . Evidence of Steve Jobs motivating and inspiring his employees is when Job when first spoke of any new idea to his employees not everyone thought it to be a successful product also at times the employees were not keen on working on such new ideas. But Jobs along with his employees was able to convert the innovative ideas into a technology which changed the way digital technology is used today . Whether it is the Macintosh computer or the newly launched ipad or iphone. It was Jobs leadership which motivated and inspired and Apple created the systems and structures that were able to convert knowledge into a valuable product. Job challenge engages his employees to reach nearly impossible goals(Bryant, 2003) (MCB UP Ltd, 2002). Job used inspiring speeches to keep his employees motivated and convey his innovative ideas to them(Harvey, 2001) Butcher (1989) agrues with an evidence by Steve Hawkins, employee of Apple puts it that most of the people werent good enough for him and would really be in a state of shock after encounters with Steve. Also Steve was very ambitious along with perfectionist and that caused a lot of trouble with moral. Young (2005) adds that apple employees were pushed to the best of their capability and performance and interactions with Steves were the ones which most of the employees feared. According to Peter Elkind (2008) Steve job has conflicting behaviours and he often had his subordinates to tears and in his angry temper he fires the employees. And yet the top management has worked with him for years and they give credit Jobs for the best job they ever did was only with him.(Elkind, 2008) Steve Job in an interview stated that he has really capable people and his job is to make the whole of his executive team good enough to be successors, so thats what hes trying to do, to push them he has aggressive visions (Morris, 2008). As an Evidence the discussion of Steve job with Morris (2008) sheds light to the criticism made by researchers Steidlmeier (1999); Yukl (1999) about the transformational leadership style in the literature review and steves transformational leadership style shows the unethical or unmoral dimensions of transformational leadership style. Also Steve jobs interactions are limited to the top management and he states that his job is to work with sort of the top 100 people, among the 20000 people at Apple. This shows his interactions are not closely related with the majority of his employees. (Morris, 2008) Steve Jobs as a Transactional Leader In addition to the above arguments about the leadership style of Steve Job. Bryant (2003) is of view that Job exhibited a combination of transformational and transactional leadership style and this helped him sucess in Apple. According to Bryant (2003) Job when visited the Xerox Parc and he took a vision of how future computers should operate. And he made his employees create the systems and structures in his company Apple where knowledge was converted into valuable products e.g. the Macintosh personal computer. The transformational leadership style was used in his vision to change the way personal computer will be operated in future and transactional leadership style was used when he incorporated his vision into reality by making his the products with the help of his employees. In an interview with Morris (2008) Steve talks about his role in the company is to recruit at the same time focus on its strategy and manage the whole business from different departments and people of the company and this is a characteristics of a transactional leadership style. Hersey Blanchard situational theory applied to Steve Jobs Steve Jobs leadership style is more reliant on his followers skills and capabilities. The Hersey Blanchard situational theory model emphasis on matching a style of leadership to the maturity of subordinates this relationship shows the determination of leadership effectiveness as mentioned in the literature review. The way job leads and his style relates to this theory . The delegating style M4-S4 is evident from Steve interview with Morris (2008) where he says that if he has hired good people and they have potential he would give them a business and left them run on their own and when a good idea comes, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it . The participating style M3-S3 of Hersey Blanchard situational theory is where Jobs talks about the way he takes a new idea to his employees is the environment of excellence and how his employes are self motivated , he does coach them at first and inspires them and then the employees surprise him time and again with the best of their performance (Gendron, 1989). In aanand2010-08-29T23:01:00 Did not get this para. Review it televsion interview (Cringely, 1996) Steve jobs telling style M1-S1 was evident Where he argues that he is committed to the vision and rather than for money and that he has been there always for the ultimate good of the company and there has been cases where they stopped their internal work and people did not like it and but he got a better deal for the company . this radical nature of dealing with things shows he used telling style of the Hershey Blanchard theory. Conclusion: personal reflection and recommendation In contrast to Steve Job, the managing director at my work place was a person who believed in group work at the same time allowed creative talent and ideas from each person. He involved employees in the decision making and took individual views on various projects of the company. The success of Apple following return of Steve Job is credited to the effective leadership Steve has used. The review of the literature and the theories applied to Steve Jobs and my personal experience has opened my mind to areas where Steve style of leadership can progress and can be further developed. According to Bass (1985) Leaders are central to the process of creating cultures, structures and systems that fosters knowledge creation, sharing and cultivation. Certain Industries have faster rates of technological, higher level of regulation and higher competition levels and these factors impact the leaders of the organisations (Bryant, 2003). Hence, a lesson learnt from leadership is that a leader can judge the situation and can adapt different style of leadership and this makes a leader more effective and efficient. In Steve jobs style of leadership a soft approach adopted with his employees will prove him to be more affective. Because his job involves handling people who are highly knowledgeable in the field of technology, being soft on his employees or benevolent leadership can help him get best of their performance and in return profit from his human resources and realise his vision.

Teaching Numeracy to Adults with Learning Disabilities Essay -- Teachi

Introduction As an employee of County Community College, I teach an Adult Basic Skills Numeracy class. I originally started the academic year with 18 learners, but by April 2015 I had approximately 6 learners per session. Most learners are female, of Afro-Caribbean or African origin and aged between 20 and 50 years. It has been suggested that many learners see numeracy as a male domain (Cemen, 1987; Gutbezahl, 1995; Levine, 1995; Miller et al, 1994) and I have noticed that I teach predominantly female learners who are particularly shy and have low self esteem. They are also full of self doubt and lack confidence in their mathematical ability and some do not see numeracy as a useful subject when compared to literacy. To some it is just a means to an end and not something to learn for the sake of self-improvement. Most learners are not in full time employment when they start the course, but as the course proceeds, approximately half of all learners will leave to take a job. The main motivation of learners is to achieve a numeracy qualification and couple this with a literacy qualification and use this as route for entry into the Access to Higher Education programs offered either by County Community College or neighboring colleges. Most of the learners can see the benefit of gaining qualifications as a way of improving their lifestyles by allowing them to have more employment options. The majority of learners have school age children and it has been noted that a lot of the learners want to make a good example for their children in regards to education and employment. I have chosen two learners to use for a case study of learning difficulties experienced by adult numeracy learners. The learning difficulties that are ... ...on to the special section. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130 (June): 163 http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_05.htm23/07/2007 Physical Relaxation Technique: Deep Breathing, PMR and the Relaxation Technique [accessed July 2007] http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/anxiety/23/07/2007 Coping with Math Anxiety [accessed July 2007] http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010630/fob4.asp23/07/2007 Math fears subtract from memory, learning [accessed July 2007] Trujillo, K. M., Tracing the Roots of Mathematics Anxiety through In-Depth Interviews with Preservice Elementary Teachers http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCR/is_2_33/ai_62839422 [accessed July 2007] Bibliography Cofield, F. et al. 2004. Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review. Learning and Skills Research Centre, London.

Research Paper About Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in several English-speaking countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And it was launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.As of July 2010  Facebook has more than 500 million active users. Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the  colloquial name for the book  given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to ge t to know each other better.Facebook allows anyone who declares them to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website. Facebook was founded by  Mark Zuckerberg  with his college roommates and fellow computer science students  Eduardo Saverin,  Dustin Moskovitz  and  Chris Hughes. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to  Harvard  students, but was expanded to other colleges in the  Boston  area, the  Ivy League, and  Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. A January 2009  Compete. om  study ranked Facebook as the most used  social network  by worldwide monthly active users, followed byMySpace. [9]  Entertainment Weekly  put it on its end-of-the-decade â€Å"best-of† list, saying, â€Å"How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug ou r friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook? â€Å"[10]  Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135. 1 million monthly unique U. S. visitors. [11] C. Significance of Facebook Sometimes it is taking a while to get an understanding of the importance of something that is as much in the hype as Facebook is currently in 2007.With its recent positioning as an application platform Facebook has in our view become a unique challenger to established players in the field of Personal Information Infrastructure like Microsoft and Google. We are going to explain this in a way that hopefully also those can get at least the concept behind it who had so far (maybe even after they done a quick inspection of Facebook and some other â€Å"social networks† themselves) a difficult time in understanding the significance of Facebook contribution to application platforms in general. Applications are the building blocks of everyone’s Personal Information Infrastructure.Every a pplication is one block and provides users with a specific, bundled set of features. Sometimes applications (â€Å"integrated applications†) as we know them are sharing important pieces of personally maintained information like Contacts, sometimes they do not. Facebook application; a user is running to access the Facebook Contacts of this user. More importantly: Whenever the user does something of significance inside any Facebook application the platform itself will inform automatically his Contacts about it; Example: Your friend Paul just uploaded a new photo to his album!Your personal Facebook experience is depending on the number and level of activity of your Facebook Contacts. If there is no one on Facebook you know then the value of Facebook will be little or zero for you; but the more of your Contacts are using Facebook applications actively the more value in terms of â€Å"Getting to know about what they do† You will get out of Facebook (classical case of the â €Å"Network Effect†: the more people using a network the higher is the value for the individual user).These messages that the platform is continuously distributing to the Contacts of a user are one of the core features of the application platform Facebook: With this basic mechanism Facebook is allowing that Facebook users by just using their Facebook applications are staying automatically in contact with their Facebook Contacts. One standard argument against the overall value of Facebook is that staying in such an online and direct way in touch is something that is interesting only for â€Å"the younger generation†. That is maybe true or not. But there is another aspect.If you are for example a senior developer and you are not interested in staying in contact with your Contacts automatically then maybe you are interested in the potential business opportunity: Facebook is not only encouraging developers to create their own applications that will run inside Facebook (on top of the platform). The Facebook platform has also build in a simple but effective mechanism to promote the usage of your newly created application: All Contacts of any new user of your Facebook application will get (in exactly the same way as already described) a notification that these users just started to use your application.This form of directly â€Å"build in application promotion/marketing† for your application can deliver high numbers of users to any application so fast that probably most application providers will be challenged to handle the demand (please see for details this excellent article from Marc Andreessen ). Example : I find it fascinating how important Facebook has become in todays society. Below are 2 examples of how ridiculous it is: A. A friend of mine, and his gf broke up. A month or so later I saw that his FB profile read â€Å"In a relationship† so I called him.He and his gf got back together and it was very important to her that he change his status to that. I thought it was trivial but it was a huuuge deal to her. B. Last night I get a call from a friend who has been having marital problems. he called to tell me he thinks his marraige is over. We go over the whole story and I tell him to wait and see if she calms down. He says he knows it's over because she de-friended him on facebook. Am I the only one who is so surprised at how important FB has become to people in their personal lives? D.Development of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. The site represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, and according to The Harvard Crimson, Facemash â€Å"used photos compiled from the online Facebook of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the ‘hotter' person†. To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard's computer network, and copied th e houses' private dormitory ID images.Harvard at that time did not have a student directory with photos and basic information, and Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online. That the initial site mirrored people's physical community with their real identities represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook. The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion.Ultimately, however, the charges were dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final, by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section. He opened the site up to his classmates, and people started sharing their notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident.On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched â€Å"The Facebook†, originally located at thefacebook. com. Just six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection. com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to the Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation. The three later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling.Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service. Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), D ustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened as well to all other Ivy League schools and Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States. Total active users  (in millions)|Date| Users| Days later| Monthly growth| August 26, 2008| 100| 1,665| 178. 38%| April 8, 2009| 200| 225| 13. 33%| September 15, 2009| 300| 150| 10%| February 5, 2010| 400| 143| 6. 99%| July 21, 2010| 500| 166| 4. 52%| —| 600| 143 (ongoing)| —| Facebook  incorporated  in the summer of 2004, and the entrepreneur  Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company's president. [  In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to  Palo Alto, California. It received its first investment later that month from  P ayPal  co-founder  Peter Thiel. The company dropped  from its name after purchasing the  domain name  facebook. om in 2005 for $200,000. Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step. At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including  Apple Inc. and  Microsoft. Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to every one of ages 13 and older with a valid  email address. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1. 6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.Microsoft's purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin,  Ireland. In September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time. [  In November 2010, based on Second Market Inc. , an exchange for share of privately held companies, Facebook value was $41 billion (surpassing EBay's slightly), and it became the third-largest US Web Company after Google and Amazon. Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.Facebook also became the top social network across eight individual markets in Asia—the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam, while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi. jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea, and Yahoo! ’s Wretch. cc in Taiwan. II. Potential Facebook Addiction A. Social Networking to your Old Friends The best thing about Facebook for those of us, who have been out of school for a long time, is the ability to find old friends.When you find old friends using Facebook you're given the chance to make amends, start over and be best friends again, not to mention find lost love. B. Business Facebook â€Å"Pages† (that’s with a capital â€Å"P†) were created to give businesses their own profile on Facebook. In fact, originally, the code that made up a Facebook â€Å"Page† appeared to be almost exactly the same as that which generated user profile pages. Pages give your business or brand an identity on Facebook. With a Page, those interested and following your brand can become â€Å"fans†, and when they do so, all their friends will see this.You can store photos, videos, information about your company, and custom applications on your Page. All activity on Pages gets posted back to your Mini Feed for all your friends to see. C. Communicating to other Nation Other nations are using this site in communicating. Nowadays, chatting or having social life with other nation is a great issue. Filipinos are one of the examples in maki ng friends with the other. Foreigners are now married with the other Filipina and that because of Facebook. And also, this might be the reason why we have this unity even though we’re not that same. III. Effects of Addiction to FacebookA. Financially We are force to spend our allowance because we are enjoying using Facebook. Like in our phone, just by reloading we can now connect with Facebook. Likewise, when we do not have our computer at home, we tend to visit internet shops. Some people do have their connections at home using the Globe Broadband and paying monthly. B. Health Problems The debate rages on about how these social networking sites affect our health. Many people have made new friends or even met special mates on these social networking sites. Some studies suggest that Facebook or Twitter could actually be harmful to our social health.Instead of meeting people in person, we are spending more time in front of our computer screens checking out the latest info. I re ally do not see how anyone really cares when John goes to the bathroom or eats dinner. Some famous celebrities use facebook too and use it constantly. C. Mentally Professionals worry that these cyber interactions are a detriment to participants in that they discourage traditional human interaction. It is far easier to log onto a website and chat with friends than it is to drive to their homes to see them in person, but physical human interaction is important to one's mental well-being.Also, maintaining contact solely through cyberspace can be damaging in that it is somewhat superficial and not as meaningful as face to face conversation. Lest you forget the nuances of a smile or the meaning behind an embrace, it is best to use Facebook sparingly in maintaining interpersonal relationships. IV. Signs of Facebook Addiction A. Neglecting your Studies Based on the experiences, students find their selves alone and making fun. Simply, they are enjoying Facebook. Instead of studying, they sp end more time in this site.Telling their parents that they have a research to do but the truth is they will just log in and they will share thoughts with their friends. Technology now is part of our life. Even a seven year old girl or boy does have their Facebook now. This is the proof that Facebook has greatly influenced the life of everyone. Students cannot focus in their studies because they have the reason to enjoy surfing the internet. B. Facebook Games vs. Cultural Games Many active users are playing games in Facebook. C. Rebellion V. ConclusionVI. References http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Facebook

Gertrude essays

Gertrude essays Henry James, the author of The Europeans, portrays Gertrude Wentworth as an innocent woman who yearns to lash out and be rambunctious. When Gertrude is first introduced, most of the characteristics are physical. Gertrude is about twenty-two in age, bareheaded, tall, pale, thin, and awkward. It is clear that Gertrude is not the prettiest person to look at, and that her eyes were dark, dull, and restless. Gertrude is also placed in a garden, which represents innocence and fertileness. The dark and dull eyes of Gertrude, express that her personality is similar. Gertrude has a wild imagination and strives to have the life that only fairy-tale characters can live. Gertrude skips church to read a rather risqu book, but yet, she comes off as a woman who is quite innocent. Gertrude is reliable and trustworthy to everyone; however, she is not true to herself or her family until Felix arrives. Gertrudes personality is not represented accurately because she is held back from a life of excitement. Mr. Brand is one person in particular that forces Gertrude to be a dull, emotionless woman. Gertrude wants to escape from a life that is controlled by others and tells Mr. Brand, I am trying for once to be natural! I have been pretending all my life; I have been dishonest; it is you that have made me so! Gertrude is like Pandoras Box waiting to be opened. Inside she would love to do amazing things like travel and fall in love the way a fairy-tale romance is depicted. Gertrude is the damsel in distress and Felix is the prince charming. Felix enlivens Ge rtrude and she is able to become a more confident woman. Instead of boundaries around Gertrudes curiosities, she can now be independent due to her new found friend and companion. Gertrude puzzles her family simply because they do not share the same interests. As the novel progresses, Gertrudes intention and motive is to marry F...

Free Essays on Computer Security & The Law

Computer Security & the Law I. PREFACE Imagine that you are a computer manager for a big manufacturing company. In the middle of a production run, all the mainframes on a vital network grind to a stop. Production is delayed costing your company millions of dollars. During the investigating, you find that a virus was released into the network through an account. When you confront the owner of the account, he claims he neither wrote nor released the virus, but he admits that he has given his password to his friend who needs access to his data files. Is he liable for the loss suffered by your company? I believe the answers may very depending in which state the crime was committed and the judge who control the trial. Computer security is new, and the legal organization has yet to reach the agreement on these key issues. The future in computer security law has been delay by the reluctance on the part of lawyers and judges to struggle with the technical side of computer security issues (1). Involving technical computer security professional in the development of computer security law and public policy could mitigate this problem. This paper is meant to help bridge to gap between technical and legal computer security communities. II. TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE A. Objectives of Computer Security The main objective of computer security is to protect and guarantee the confidentiality, and integrity of automated information systems and the data they hold. Each of these terms has a particular meaning, which is grounded in basic technical ideas about the flow of information in automated information systems. B. Basic Concepts There is a top-level agreement regarding the meaning of most technical computer security concepts. This is partly because of government involvement in coordinating the definitions of basic terms (2). The meanings of the terms used in government regulations are generally made to be consta... Free Essays on Computer Security & The Law Free Essays on Computer Security & The Law Computer Security & the Law I. PREFACE Imagine that you are a computer manager for a big manufacturing company. In the middle of a production run, all the mainframes on a vital network grind to a stop. Production is delayed costing your company millions of dollars. During the investigating, you find that a virus was released into the network through an account. When you confront the owner of the account, he claims he neither wrote nor released the virus, but he admits that he has given his password to his friend who needs access to his data files. Is he liable for the loss suffered by your company? I believe the answers may very depending in which state the crime was committed and the judge who control the trial. Computer security is new, and the legal organization has yet to reach the agreement on these key issues. The future in computer security law has been delay by the reluctance on the part of lawyers and judges to struggle with the technical side of computer security issues (1). Involving technical computer security professional in the development of computer security law and public policy could mitigate this problem. This paper is meant to help bridge to gap between technical and legal computer security communities. II. TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE A. Objectives of Computer Security The main objective of computer security is to protect and guarantee the confidentiality, and integrity of automated information systems and the data they hold. Each of these terms has a particular meaning, which is grounded in basic technical ideas about the flow of information in automated information systems. B. Basic Concepts There is a top-level agreement regarding the meaning of most technical computer security concepts. This is partly because of government involvement in coordinating the definitions of basic terms (2). The meanings of the terms used in government regulations are generally made to be consta...

Trading Units and The Government at the UK Essay

Trading Units and The Government at the UK - Essay Example The development of UK trade unions after 1970 is marked by the ascendance to power of Margaret Thatcher, in 1979, and the subsequent period of Conservative rule in Britain referred to as Thatcherism. 1979 can be considered the culminating point of trade union influence and power in the UK. According to sources, by that time, more than half of all British employees belonged to unions, with more than 4/5 included in different mechanisms of collective bargaining1. Margaret Thatcher and her three consecutive Conservative governments from 1979 to 1990 introduced a series of measures to liberalize and decentralize the economy, measures that relied on the role of the market in creating business rules. The market required competitiveness, both in terms of efficiency and cost issues, so the role of the trade unions was fought off and marginalized in the 80s. The accession to power of the Labour Party, with Tony Blair as Prime Minister, in 1997, had rekindled some of the trade unions hopefuls, given the history of tight relations between the Party and the trade unions. However, many of the reforms that Margaret Thatcher had adopted during the 80s remained and the results saw the trade union movement in one of the weakest positions in its history: trade union density has halved and collective bargaining mechanisms are at the lowest levels in trade union history2. In many cases, individual industrial relations have developed. Collective disputes can take several forms, differentiation following the severity of the dispute in question. They can take any form, from "silent or indirect protest (absenteeism, lack of motivation, rejects) to open strikes"3. Obviously, the most radical of these measures refer to the collective stoppage of work in an organization. Nevertheless, this is always a head-on game and will turn out on the side of whoever of the two parties involved will be able to hold its position. The management will look out to force union members back to work with punitive measures, such as salary deductions for each period of time that is not spent on the job. On the other hand, it is to be discussed how long the management can support an organization that is not properly functioning due to the strike. It is probably best that this type of recommendation from the UK union will come only after negotiations have not proven useful and after other forms of tacit disputes have been tried beforehand. Following the definition of International Labour Organization Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention in 1949, collective bargaining is a "voluntary negotiation between employers or employers' organizations and workers' organizations, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by collective agreements"4. In terms of scope, we can refer to several important advantages that the collective bargaining mechanism brings about. First of all, it aims to level a differing position of two parties (management vs. work organization) through "dialogue and consensus"5 rather than a conflicting situation.

Militarism and Perpetual Peace Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 5

Militarism and Perpetual Peace - Research Paper Example Militarism implies the allergic missions or many revolutions. It has the important and early manifestations of the life of most social orders. Class considerations would be necessary. Armament plays an important role in social struggles. Poor socio-economic status does not prevent a nation from securing arms. Economic evolution runs parallel with the development of arms (Liebeknecht, 2007). The expenditure on the making of the arms is growing higher due to the sophistication of weapons used. When the production of arms is universal, the manufacture of the guns has been accordingly changed. History has shown the significance in the power of the Greeks, Romans where the hierarchy was completely military. The influence of the external political situation on militarism was especially evident in the German Wars of Liberation (Liebeknecht, 2007). Militarism has been recognized as a significant factor in policy making since the nineteenth century (Meszaros, 2007). The evolution of modern imperialism was becoming evident on a global scale. The British and the French were having vast empires at that period of time and the United States were beginning invasions in Latin America. The Philippines was also involved in a liberations process assisted by the Americans. The First and the Second World Wars were caused by the ambitious Bismarck and Hitler who were running after more than what they could handle. The calamities were caused by the selfish intentions of two individuals and the techniques of using militarism for political solutions. What could have been solved by the deep-seated thinking without resorting to militarism was mishandled by the militaristic Viewpoints (Meszaros, 2007). The scale of issues became wide and the discussion was based on the militaristic power rather than the actual issues. There were horrific wars in the 12th century and the pattern continued into the form of the World Wars.  Ã‚