Skiing Essay -- Sports

Skiing Almost everyone around the world enjoys sports in one way or another. Sports range from basketball, a team sport, to speed skating, to skiing. Sports are usually defined by the characteristics of the activity; good sports must be made of multiple strong attributes. These elements must make the sport enjoyable to all involved at many levels, to provide basic leisure, to test one's abilities and to develop the individual's mental and physical boundaries. Skiing includes all of the right elements to produce a perfect sport; it provides challenge at multiple levels, involves differing levels of risk and provides variety in activities. Challenge plays an essential role in defining a sport; it provides the individual with the feeling of achievement in success. Skiing poses challenge even in its simplest foundations. Skiing on a poor quality hill, with icy snow and poor upkeep can sometimes create more challenge than a well-groomed slope. Skiing in the backcountry away from lifts and other people in freshly fallen snow provides an opportunity for the best of skiers to test t...

How Social Networks and Social Media Create and Support a Learning Organization Essay

A Learning Organization is a culture that nurtures learning. As such, processes encourage interaction. The entire infrastructure is one that prioritizes interaction that facilities learning. Creativity and problem solving techniques are inherent in learning organization and the appropriate skills and motivation are available for the learning organization to strive (Background Information, Module 3). When we consider social networks and social media, we can be left wondering if communication can truly be at the optimal level through social networks and social media. The reality is that technology and the communication that is embedded in it is growing exponentially. The concept of social learning has roots in a social constructivist approach, where learning is a self-directed, problem-based, and collaborative process (Bang and Dalsgaard, 2006). Through involvement in activities, learners must attempt to solve a problem according to their own process. Now, this may seem simple if learners were physically amongst each other to share the processes. However, the social networks and social media do allow for a very supporting learning environment. One thing that should be understood is that although there is a plethora of technological resources available, individuals must be able to tap into these resources in order to make use of social networks and social media to then, support a learning environment. Resources are information assets: media, people, places, or ideas. However, such resources are not learning materials until learners actively use them (Hannafin, Land, and Oliver 1999, p. 119). The internet, as a technological platform is a prime example of collaboration at its’ best. In his Techlearning blog of March 5, 2008, Steve Hargadon identified trends spurred on by the â€Å"two-way† nature of the Internet. These are trends that have significant impact on learning and education. According to Hargadon, there is a â€Å"new publishing revolution† arising from a shift in content creation for the Internet. At first, the Internet was a one-directional presentation medium where users received and read passively. Now the Internet is becoming an interactive platform, also known as Web 2. 0, based on contribution and collaboration. Blogs, wikis, file sharing, social networking, and other forms are revolutionizing how we create online content. In his blog entry, Hargadon discussed how he replies to questions that people ask about content overload. His response reflects how social networking and social learning flow into one another naturally, as social constructivism suggests they will. He said, â€Å"It is in the act of our becoming a creator that our relationship with content changes, and we become more engaged and more capable at the same time. † In other words, by participating we learn to become. Touro University boasts the Threaded Discussion Forum, which allows at ones’ fingertips the ability to communicate in the convenience of one’s’ own time and place, as well as the response of back and forth communication of their classmates and professors. Students can then â€Å"blog† or communicate through other platforms like Skype. â€Å"Virtually† the only missing ingredient in all of the communication forums technology has to offer is the personal face to face where we are physically there to communicate with one another. One can argue that such spatial communication really do not add anything unique to what can be facilitated virtually. Other companies are likewise making strides in this direction. Microsoft offers its Office-based sharing technology, SharePoint. IBM implemented the use of blogs (26,000 registered), wikis (100,000 users), social bookmarking (DogEar), and social networking tools in their organization. IBM even owns 50 islands on Second Life for use in orientations, classes, and meetings! Change is inevitable. We see that technology continues to evolve, along with how people connect and contribute to the creation of content within virtual communities. We either adapt, or fall behind. In his January, 2008 paper, David Wilkins explores the importance of supporting social networks in the workplace, or â€Å"Workplace Communities. † Wilkins reviews social learning on the job in terms of improving employee development, performance, and growth, as well as its effect on workplace innovation. Wilkins shows a number of ways in which workplace communities support employee development, performance, and growth. They provide a mechanism for apprenticeship models, connecting less-skilled workers with their more experienced colleagues through social networking technologies. Communities can add an â€Å"Ask an Expert† feature to their network, to make it possible to leverage the expertise of individuals or groups. This forum echoes the Touro experience as professors respond to our Threaded Discussions, never in an evaluative manner, but in a way in which a professional and friendly dialogue is encouraged. Communities foster ownership of learning, according to Wilkins. The social aspect of communities can facilitate the â€Å"meeting† of content consumers with content producers through social networking. This social aspect of content provides an avenue for additional social networking and mentoring opportunities, and further empowers the workforce by providing opportunities for them [the consumers] to contribute, resulting in significant increases in the volume of content. This has the dual benefit of helping with both retention and productivity, while also moving the organization toward a deeper, more ingrained use of learning and knowledge. † (Wilkins, p. 6) Communities allow for the generation of a range of content types that appeal to different learning styles, levels, and objectives. Online resources include blogs and wikis, audio, and video. They may also include traditional learning courses and materials, and typical Office documents. Through sharing information, the workplace community provides access to immediate, relevant, and appropriate content suited to the needs of the individual. An extension of traditional training and development modes, communities offer a fluid way to support employee performance development and efficiency. Success requires free flow of ideas, and support by stakeholders, for communication between networks. It takes time to establish these conditions, and a carefully thought-out plan is essential. Indeed, a learning organization can thrive with the utilization of social networks and social media. These are convenient for everyone and are conducted in ways that are perhaps even more powerful, productive, positive, and as simple than face to face platforms. Certainly, the convenience and quality I have received within the on-line learning organization is top-notch, and great enough for me to dismiss any idea of traditional places of learning. Without the technology, individuals will truly be left behind as the technological race pushes forward. Reference http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

Feasts The Archaeology and History of Celebrating Food

Feasting, loosely defined as the public consumption of an elaborate meal often accompanied by entertainment, is a feature of most ancient and modern societies. Hayden and Villeneuve recently defined feasting as any sharing of special food (in quality, preparation or quantity) by two or more people for a special (not everyday) event. Feasting is related to the control of food production  and often is seen as a medium for social interaction, serving as both a way to create prestige for the host  and to create commonality within a community through the sharing of food. Further, feasting takes planning, as Hastorf points out: resources need to be hoarded, preparation and clean up labor needs to be managed, special serving plates and utensils need to be created or borrowed. Goals served by feasting include paying debts, displaying opulence, gaining allies, frightening enemies, negotiating war and peace, celebrating rites of passage, communicating with the gods and honoring the dead. For archaeologists, feasting is the rare ritual activity that can be reliably identified in the archaeological record. Hayden (2009) has argued that feasting should be considered within the major context of domestication: that domestication of plants and animals reduces the risk inherent in hunting and gathering and allows surpluses to be created. He goes further to argue that the requirements of Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic feasting created the impetus for domestication: and indeed, the earliest feast identified to date is from the peri-agricultural Natufian period, and consists solely of wild animals. Earliest Accounts The earliest references to feasting in literature date to a Sumerian [3000-2350 BC] myth in which the god Enki offers the goddess Inanna some butter cakes and beer. A bronze vessel dated to the Shang dynasty [1700-1046 BC] in China illustrates worshipers offering their ancestors wine, soup, and fresh fruits. Homer [8th century BC] describes several feasts in the Iliad and the Odyssey, including the famous Poseidon feast at Pylos. About AD 921, the Arabian traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan reported a funeral feast including a boat burial at a Viking colony in what is today Russia. Archaeological evidence of feasting has been found throughout the world. The oldest possible evidence for feasting is at the Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit Cave, where evidence suggests a feast was conducted at an elderly womans burial about 12,000 years ago. A few recent studies include Neolithic Rudston Wold (2900–2400 BC); Mesopotamian Ur (2550 BC); Buena Vista, Peru (2200 BC); Minoan Petras, Crete (1900 BC); Puerto Escondido, Honduras (1150 BC); Cuauhtà ©moc, Mexico (800-900 BC); Swahili culture Chwaka, Tanzania (AD 700–1500); Mississippian Moundville, Alabama (1200-1450 AD); Hohokam Marana, Arizona (AD 1250); Inca Tiwanaku, Bolivia (AD 1400-1532); and Iron Age Hueda, Benin (AD 1650-1727). Anthropological Interpretations The meaning of feasting, in anthropological terms, has changed considerably over the past 150 years. The earliest descriptions of lavish feasting provoked colonial European administrations to comment disparagingly on the waste of resources, and traditional feasting such as the potlatch in British Columbia and cattle sacrifices in India were outright banned by the governments in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. Franz Boas, writing in the early 1920s, described feasting as a rational economic investment for high status individuals. By the 1940s, the dominant anthropological theories focused on feasting as expression of competition for resources, and a means to increase productivity. Writing in the 1950s, Raymond Firth argued that feasting promoted social unity, and Malinowski maintained that feasting increased the prestige or status of the feast-giver. By the early 1970s, Sahlins and Rappaport were arguing that feasting could be a means of redistributing resources from different specialized production areas. Feast Categories More recently, interpretations have become more nuanced. Three broad and intersecting categories of feasting are emerging from the literature, according to Hastorf: celebratory/communal; patron-client; and status/display feasts. Celebratory feasts are reunions between equals: these include wedding and harvest feasts, backyard barbeques and potluck suppers. The patron-client feast is when the giver and receiver are clearly identified, with the host expected to distribute his or her largesse of wealth. Status feasts are a political device to create or bolster  status differences  between host and attendees. Exclusivity and taste are emphasized: luxury dishes and exotic foods are served. Archaeological Interpretations While archaeologists often are grounded in anthropological theory, they also take a diachronic view: how did feasting arise and change over time? The upshot of a century and a half of studies have produced a plethora of notions, including tying feasting to the indtroduction of storage, agriculture, alcohol, luxury foods, pottery, and the public participation in the construction of monuments. Feasts are most readily identifiable archaeologically when they occur at burials, and the evidence is left in place, such as the royal burials at Ur, Hallstatts Iron Age  Heuenberg  burial or Qin Dynasty Chinas  terracotta army. Accepted evidence for feasting not associated specifically with funerary events includes the images of feasting behavior in iconographic murals or paintings. The contents of midden deposits, particularly the quantity and variety of animal bones or exotic foodstuffs, is accepted as indicators of mass consumption; and the presence of multiple  storage features  within a certain segment of a village is also considered indicative. Specific dishes, highly decorated, large serving platters or bowls, are sometimes taken as evidence of feasting. Architectural constructions--plazas, elevated platforms, longhouses--are often described as public spaces where feasting may have taken place. In those places, soil chemistry, isotopic analysis and residue analysis have been used to bolster support for past feasting. Sources Duncan NA, Pearsall DM, and Benfer J, Robert A. 2009. Gourd and squash artifacts yield starch grains of feasting foods from preceramic Peru. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(32):13202-13206. Fleisher J. 2010. Rituals of consumption and the politics of feasting on the eastern African coast, AD 700–1500. Journal of World Prehistory 23(4):195-217. Grimstead D, and Bayham F. 2010. Evolutionary ecology, elite feasting, and the Hohokam: A case study from a southern Arizona platform mound. American Antiquity 75(4):841-864. Haggis DC. 2007. Stylistic diversity and diacritical feasting at Protopalatial Petras: a preliminary analysis of the Lakkos deposit. American Journal of Archaeology 111(4):715-775. Hastorf CA. 2008. Food and feasting, social and political aspects. In: Pearsall DM, editor. Encyclopedia of Archaeology. London: Elsevier Inc. p 1386-1395. doi:10.1016/B978-012373962-9.00113-8 Hayden B. 2009. The proof is in the pudding: Feasting and the origins of domestication. Current Anthropology 50(5):597-601. Hayden B, and Villeneuve S. 2011. A century of feasting studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 40(1):433-449. Joyce RA, and Henderson JS. 2007. From feasting to cuisine: Implications of archaeological research in an early Honduran village. American Anthropologist 109(4):642–653. doi: 10.1525/aa.2007.109.4.642 Knight VJ Jr. 2004. Characterizing elite midden deposits at Moundville. American Antiquity 69(2):304-321. Knudson KJ, Gardella KR, and Yaeger J. 2012. Provisioning Inka feasts at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: the geographic origins of camelids in the Pumapunku complex. Journal of Archaeological Science 39(2):479-491. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.10.003 Kuijt I. 2009. What do we really know about food storage, surplus, and feasting in preagricultural communities? Current Anthropology 50(5):641-644. Munro ND, and Grosman L. 2010. Early evidence (ca. 12,000 B.P.) for feasting at a burial cave in Israel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(35):15362-15366. doi:10.1073/pnas.1001809107 Piperno DR. 2011. The Origins of Plant Cultivation and Domestication in the New World Tropics: Patterns, Process, and New Developments. Current Anthropology 52(S4):S453-S470. Rosenswig RM. 2007. Beyond identifying elites: Feasting as a means to understand early Middle Formative society on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26(1):1-27. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2006.02.002 Rowley-Conwy P, and Owen AC. 2011. Grooved ware feasting in Yorkshire: Late Neolithic animal consumption at Rudston Wold. Oxford Journal Of Archaeology 30(4):325-367. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0092.2011.00371.x