The Process Of Learning A Musical Instrument Education Essay

The Process Of Learning A Musical Instrument Education Essay The process of learning a musical instrument has changed a lot in the recent years, and it is all thanks to the Internet. Before websites with sufficient information on how to learn have first come to picture, young adepts of the guitar arts could only count on themselves. Finding and learning their favorite song was not just a few clicks away, and using such music software as Guitar Pro was not quite an option as it simply did not exist. The main challenge was to learn the found song using only their hearing and then transcribe it. This learning process involved good aural and transcribing skills and could only be developed by transcribing new songs. At that time books were invaluable source of knowledge. Things look way different now. There are thousands of websites with a variety of materials. But which way of learning would be more beneficial to the learner? This paper will try to examine how the various ways of learning have evolved in the past couple decades and how much influence on them has Internet, and the sources it provides, had. Here are a few examples just to illustrate advantages and disadvantages of the Internet in the learning process: there are a lot of helpful resources such as DVDs, music software, backing tracks, aural tests but on the other hand the vast accessibility poses the danger of treating the Internet as a primary source of knowledge whereas its content can sometimes be misleading because a lot of online tutors lack formal teaching qualifications. Finding information doesnt require any effort and limits the learner to thoughtless consumption of unnecessary data, additionally theres no place for research which is always crucial in the learning process. The Internet also lacks the aspect of an interaction with other musicians which is vital when it comes to developing ones musicality. There are a lot more arguments for and against the Internet as a teaching resource. In my dissertation I will test and analyze these two different learning processes in order to establish how they have evolved si nce the times when Internet teaching resources didnt exist on such a vast scale up until now. INTRODUCTION In this paper, I will discuss and assess how the guitar learning process has evolved over the past 30 years. I will present, analyse and compare two different approaches to learning guitar. For the purpose of this study, the first approach will be referred to as traditional and the second one will be known as modern, e-learning or online learning. It is crucial to understand the difference between the two. The traditional approach to learning guitar mainly dominated in the pre-Internet era of 70s and 80s, when teaching resources were very limited. However, in no way did the restricted availability of teaching materials affect students willingness to explore and learn the new instrument. It was just the specific approach towards knowledge attainment that was very different to the one that we know and are used to nowadays. Therefore my main focus will be on researching the pre-Internet times, which I refer to as the classic rock era, in order to examine and assess the guitar learning methods of that period. The modern approach to learning guitar has first come to the picture with the arrival of the Internet. The Internet revolutionised and reshaped the whole guitar learning model. Unlimited teaching resources (online lessons, videos, instructional DVDs, YouTube, digital sheet music) are just a few clicks away. Students are no longer required to leave their bedrooms to be able to attain musical knowledge. With the vast availability of technologically advanced software and equipment everyone can effortlessly learn an instrument. But is the previous sentence entirely true? Is it possible to learn an instrument and develop ones musicality without interacting with other musicians? Again, I will research the area of the e-learning process in order to determine and assess what effects, if any, it has on modern musicians and to be able to answer the above questions. To briefly summarise, there are two major problems my dissertation will address: The differences between the modern instrument learning process and the one of the classic rock era; By contrasting the two above processes I will decide which one is more beneficial to the learner; Some of the research questions this paper will examine and answer are: How important is it to learn an instrument and develop ones skills and musicality by interacting and playing with other musicians (the traditional approach)? Is the solitary way of attaining knowledge with the help of modern technology and the Internet more supportive in the learning process? Does the social aspect of group learning associated with the traditional approach play an important role in the guitar learning process? To answer these questions I will conduct a sociological analysis of this matter using available books on the importance of team work in the learning process and other necessary sources. This analysis will allow me to understand how the two contrary learning methods work under various social circumstances and will help me to determine which of the studied methods is more valuable to the music student. Furthermore I will conduct a range of adequately structured and in-depth interviews with current tutors who were either educated back in the 70s or in the modern Internet era. It will shed some light on the issues I am concerned with and will help to determine the usefulness of the two tested learning methods. Some exemplary questions I might ask are: Was the lack of teaching resources a discouraging or motivating factor in the guitar learning process?, What kind of research methods did you use to obtain the essential information required for the learning? Additionally I will write a short questionnaire for the current music students, which will be inclusive of simple but interesting questions that will attract the respondents attention. The aim of this survey will be to assess young learners views on the usefulness of the Internet as a teaching tool and to determine how the online learning translates into students ability to function in the real music world. In order to illustrate the aims and objectives of my dissertation, I will answer a few simple questions: Who will benefit from my investigation? My main aim is to determine, by analysing and comparing two well-known instrument learning approaches from two different time periods, how the beginning guitar players can get the most out of guitar lessons. In what sense will they benefit? Firstly I will combine the final dissertation outcomes together, then I will apply these findings to some problems and issues the new student faces while learning an instrument. As a conclusion, I will try to work out the best approach to learning guitar by evaluating the results of my research. In what sense will my contribution add to what is already known? To address the main dissertation question (which of the two learning methods is more beneficial?), I will conduct research that is primarily based on interviews and questionnaires. After collecting and analysing all necessary data, I will compare the significance of my findings against the already existing data and establish how my study can contribute to what is already known. What are the constraints or limitations of the study? The major limitation is the fact that it is nearly impossible to find academic books with sufficient information about guitar learning methods back in the classic rock era, therefore primary data will be collected from interviews with tutors of the 70s. The following paragraph will briefly describe the content of this dissertation: The first chapter will consist of a review of what is already known and of the main problems and issues. It will cover past research and studies from relevant books and magazines. It will also summarise what other researchers have written and published around the topic of my study. Critical judgment will be used here to present my opinions on relevant issues. The second chapter will describe and evaluate methods and techniques of research used for the purpose of this paper. As mentioned before, it will mainly consist of interviews and questionnaires. The reason for using such methods will also be justified in this section. In the third section, a comparative study of two contrary guitar learning processes along with the data obtained in the previous section will be presented. Arguments and counter-arguments will also be contrasted in this chapter. In the fourth section, dissertation findings will be interpreted. The difference between my findings and those of other people will also be presented. The last chapter will consist of a summary of main findings and conclusions. Bibliography will be included. CHAPTER 1 Traditional approach vs. modern approach Traditional approach The first chapter will consist of a review of what is already known and of the main problems and issues. It will cover past research and studies from relevant books and magazines. It will also summarise what other researchers have written and published around the topic of my study. Critical judgment will be used here to present my opinions on relevant issues. There are numerous publications available on the Internet that describe advantages and disadvantages of online and traditional learning, however, its not yet been proved which of the above-mentioned learning methods is more efficient. Although there arent enough findings that would determine superiority, equivalence or non-inferiority of one approach to another, one can argue that the modern approach is not a replacement for the traditional learning process. Undoubtedly, there are countless benefits associated with e-learning; however, there are a few aspects of it that seem to be problematic when put side by side with the traditional learning. What the modern guitar learning process certainly lacks is the ability to facilitate group interactions which are the crucial part of music education. It might be possible, with other branches of knowledge, to eliminate the interactive part of learning but when it comes to music, its highly unlikely for a music student to perform well when the collaborative factor is omitted. It is commonly known that students tend to attain knowledge most effectively when they are given the opportunity to interact with other students. Such interactions among students also help to develop strong group problem solving skills. For that reason, the importance of meeting students learning peers, exchanging ideas and sharing common musical experiences can never be underestimated. In an early stage of musical education, it is always advisable to provide young students with proper guidance from tutors. Carrying out the initial study through the face-to-face approach allows creating more controlled environment for children to be taught in. Of course, it should not be assumed that the more controlled environment and guidance are not achievable through the process of online learning, but the fact, that there is very little control, which a teacher wields on a student, might suggest the superiority of the traditional learning over e-learning. Teachers guidance is there to help students explore their limitations and objectives and also increase their motivation and provide opportunities for students to share their personal learning goals and objectives. While discussing the two tested learning methods, there is another important issue that needs to be taken into consideration. In order to fully engage in any form of Internet-based learning activity, a student must absolutely have a very high motivation. Its mainly due to the fact that the link between a student and a teacher is missing in this type of learning environment. This problem does not seem to occur with the traditional learning process, where a tutors main responsibility is to encourage and reinforce effective study habits of students. Another important aspect of the face-to-face mode, rarely achievable with other learning modes, is the students ability to recognise their strengths and limitations and understand their learning goals and objectives. A further problem, the learner faces while utilising the Internet for educational purposes, is the overwhelming amount of information and knowledge available online in an instant. Accessibility of all imaginable knowledge should predominantly be regarded as an improvement but there are also some evident disadvantages associated with it. For young music students, such vast amount of knowledge and data is simply unmanageable. Indisputably, learners taking first steps in music education need to have well-developed analytical, organisational and learning resources skills in order to be able to filter through and select the right resources for learning. Obviously, the child learning an instrument is not expected to possess such complex skills, so this is why the personal guidance from a tutor or learning peers cannot be substituted with the Internet. Modern approach It is without a doubt that the overall interest in online education has grown tremendously in recent years. However, the question that needs to be asked here is how effective online learning is compared to traditional learning. There are not many findings that could unambiguously answer this question but a very recent study, published in 2009, suggests that online learners perform slightly better than students in traditional face-to-face classrooms (Church 2009). This study was conducted by SRI International for the US Department of Education. It analysed research that compared online and conventional learning at institutions of higher education between 1996 and 2008 (Means 2009). The key finding of this study, as interpreted and presented by Jodi Church (2009) in an article entitled Is online education more effective than traditional learning?, shows that students doing partial or all course work online rank, on average, in the 59th percentile, meaning better than 59% of all those who were scored; whereas students in traditional classrooms ranked in the 50th percentile. While analysing these findings, it can be rightly assumed that traditional learning is not necessarily the best way of maintaining a learning process. For that reason, e-learning models are regarded as good educational models that constantly evolve and improve, offering music students better tools and opportunities to achieve their educational goals. But how can we define a good educational model? A good educational model must be able to provide the student with satisfactory learning environment, in which they are able to think by themselves, to be creative and original, to solve problems and to interact with their surroundings in a collaborative way. With its flexibility, accessibility and convenience; e-learning seems to be the perfect way to develop these objectives (Rashty 2001). Referring to past studies on online learning David Rashty (2001) points out that students have expressed higher satisfaction from the computer-mediated learning, and rated the learning as more effective than in the traditional framework. A further analysis of the modern approach reveals a number of characteristic features of this model, which are superior to traditional learning. These are listed below: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Active learning and its main advantages (Rashty 2001): It requires the learner to be intensely involved in the learning process, which is due to the use of a computer and a physical involvement in gathering and sending information; It requires the learner to be socially and cognitively involved in the learning process, as a direct result of the need to discuss with and respond to other online learners; It enhances and magnifies the attainment of knowledge and requires the learner to be able to organise and analyse the information; It is not time-restricted, so it allows the learner enough time for developing complex concepts and digesting the information; It allows the learner to control the learning process; It allows receiving and processing information at convenient times; It requires learners responsibility and initiative in advancing in the learning process and forwarding knowledge; à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Creative thinking as an important element of online learning (Rashty 2001): Online learning (OL) improves the learners ability to seek out gaps in information, to propose, examine and improve ideas and to discuss the results; OL enhances learners creativity by encouraging him/her to take risks and to commit to tasks; OL supports learners curiosity and openness to new ideas; OL enables the learner to freely express himself/herself in an environment that is free from many psychological inhabitations existing in the traditional classroom; OL enhances the learners creative thinking processes by utilising the Internets developing technology and its tools for the purpose of gaining and processing information; à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Creative thinking (Rashty 2001): There are various techniques, which have been put to use in learning through the Web which encourage the development of critical thinking. Critical thinking was intended to enable a choice of information, the ability to choose among several solutions, the ability to assess the force of a given argument, and the ability to reach decisions. The critical thinking grows stronger also following use of graphics and hypertext, which refine the hierarchy and logical structure of the concepts on the Web. The process required from the student when searching for information on the Web, which includes defining the query, carrying out the search operation, examining the results and sifting and pinpointing the question, also refines the students critical thinking. Any other operation by which the student identifies main points, searches for cause and effect, finds patterns and relationships between data, creates a timetable, examines costs versus products all these are also actions which refine the students critical thinking. eLearning also includes advantages which are not found in traditional learning, such as: time for digesting the information and responding, enhanced communication among the learners, both as regards quality and as regards urgency, knowledge being acquired and transferred among the learners themselves, the ability to conduct an open discussion, where each learner gets more of an equal standing than in a face-to-face discussion, access to information and to discussion ability, responses may be made around the clock with no restrictions, a higher motivation and involvement in the process on the part of the learners. The very use of technology for learning has been found to have a positive effect on the students commitment to the learning process. Also, use of technology creates a greater commitment on the students part to learning. The following table summarizes several opinions regarding the comparison between traditional learning and eLearning: Traditional Learning eLearning Classroom Discussions The teacher usually talks more than the student The student talks at least as much as or more than the teacher Learning Process The learning is conducted with the whole class participating; there is almost no group or individual study Most of the learning process takes place in groups or by the individual student. Subject Matter The teacher conducts the lesson according to the study program and the existing curriculum The student participates in determining the subject matter; the studying is based on various sources of information, including web data banks and net-experts located by the student. Emphases in the Learning Process The students learn what and not how; the students and the teachers are busy completing the required subject matter quota; the students are not involved in inquiry-based education and in solving problems, but rather in tasks set by the teacher. The students learn how and less what; the learning includes research study which combines searching for and collecting information from web data banks and authorities on the communications network; the learning is better connected to the real world, the subject matter is richer and includes material in different formats. Motivation The students motivation is low, and the subject matter is distant from them. The students motivation is high due to the involvement in matters that are closer to them and to the use of technology. Teachers Role The teacher is the authority The teacher directs the student to the information. Location of Learning The learning takes place within the classroom and the school The learning takes place with no fixed location Lesson Structure The teacher dictates the structure of the lesson and the division of time The structure of the lesson is affected by the group dynamics.

Frida Kahlo’s work A Few Small Nips

The following essay will deal with Frida Kahlo’s work A Few Small Nips.   The analysis of the piece of artwork will be the main focus of the essay including a brief biography of Kahlo’s which will be used in interpreting the purpose of the paining.   Other art critics will be used in this analysis so that a broad spectrum of opinion is introduced and debated in the paper in order to come to a conclusion about this piece.Kahlo’s work has been interpreted as bordering and often times delving into the grotesque; but typically there is a reason of politics or personal pain behind the works created by Kahlo.   In Mencer’s article The Trouble with Friday Kahlo this point is well elaborated,Among all the Kahlo tchotchkes now on sale at the NMWA gift shop, only her self-  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   portraits adorn the fridge magnets, not â€Å"My Birth,† or â€Å"A Few Small Nips,† a disturbing   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   image of a bleeding woman lying o n a bed with a man standing over her wielding a   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   stiletto. Kahlo's visage has become a symbol in its own right–a trend evident in the number of artists now creating tributes to her.Chicano artists in California have been   Ã‚  Ã‚   incorporating her image into their murals since the 1970s in celebrations of their heritage.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   But the practice has become so common that the Japanese performance artist and drag   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   queen Yasumasa Morimura recently did a show called â€Å"An Inner Dialogue with Frida   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Kahlo,† in which he painted himself as Kahlo self-portraits.This iconographic status of Kahlo was only more dully emphasized with the grotesque paintings she did after her miscarriage.   It was this point in her personal life which gave rise to much of what is recognizable Kahlo’s own style of art as is seen in A Few Small Nips in which a brutal scene is emphasized with d iagonal viewpoints.The truth behind Kahlo’s painting A Few Small Nips resides with the act of a man brutally stabbing his girlfriend and killing her.   In court the man professed he only gave her a few small nips.   Thus, above the painting itself is a banner, and in Kahlo’s own sentiment she often feels that she is murdered by life.   At this point in Kahlo’s life she was separated from Diego Rivera, and so those emotional feelings of abandonment, jealousy, guilt, and love all coincide to create not just a real life portrait of an event but the echoed feelings of Kahlo while being separated from Rivera (Smit).This real life portrayal used by means of expression for personal pain is typical of Kahlo’s work, as Muna writes,  In A Few Small Nips (1935), Kahlo paints a dead woman on a bed, naked but for one    shoe and stocking, her body slashed and bleeding, while a man, fully dressed, stands   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   calmly at her side. The painting was inspired by a real-life murder story – the defendant   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   told the judge that it was only a few small nips – but it also stands as wider commentary   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   on the gender inequalities within Mexican society, as well as echoing the hurt she herself   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   endured at the hands of her husband, Diego Rivera.The fact that Muna wrote the gender inequality in Kahlo’s work is important.   This crucial piece of evidence is what gives rise to the portrayal of Kahlo’s self portraits done in a dichotomized fashion, as well as the focus of the treatment of women.Frida’s own heritage and gender have a lot to do with her style of painting as has been seen in A Few Small Nips.   Kahlo’s father was a Hungarian Jew born in Germany and her mother was Spanish and Native American.   Thus, her nature of birth could also lead her dualistic approach to painting and her strong sense of preservation for women.   In A Few Small Nips Kahlo presents the viewer with a woman who has just been stabbed to death and yet the killer is standing feet away from her, and thus, even in death she is denied company.   This type of disturbance in the ritual of a passion crime tells the viewer that Kahlo is interpreting her own loneliness into the painting.Kahlo’s imagery and her ‘eclectic blend of ancient Aztec to modern Mexican, religious metaphor and fantasy, and penetratingly observed reality (Muna) is what draws the viewer into this painting.   The fact that the painting was based on a real event, and the feelings of the man and what he said in court as his defense, ‘just a few small nips’ allows Friday creative interpretation of that event to rival her own misplaced identity and hatred so much so that the viewer becomes a part of the story in that they are witnesses to the event.   Bearing witness seems to be the role placed on the a udience in order to keep the honesty of this woman’s death alive.   In fact the purpose of much of Kahlo’s art is for the viewer to bear witness to a travesty, inner demons, or brutal and graphic deaths.This concept of memory or of bearing witness is designed in Kahlo’s work A Few Small Nips as collective memory for a town or witnesses or even participants together but also as individual memory.   These different definitions of memory are the purpose of Kahlo’s painting.   While it uses a force to ensure that Kahlo’s own identity and separation from Rivera is expressed the event of the drunk man killing his girlfriend is still intact.   The joint purpose of these two sentiments is to ensure that the memory of the event does not relapse and thus prevent progression or the politics of the painting express Kahlo’s wish that the town, country and gender which this occurred does not forget such a transgression.Memory however can quickly b e wiped clean and thus it becomes important to mark tragedy with artwork as A Few Small Nips has done, so that there is a physical reconstruction of an event that is witnessed in the public eye that allows the elusive memory to remain sharp, â€Å"Inevitably every act of memory carries with it a dimension of betrayal† (Huyssen â€Å"Present Past Palimsets†; 4).   In the act of constructing war memorials and citizen monuments the procession of remembering is occurring.   In the act of construction is insurance that the past is not repeated.Historical memory is important because it allows the people who have survived a devastating travesty to recall the event in loving memory of the family members of people they lost, as Huyssen states â€Å"Historical memory today is not what it used to be. It used to mark the relation of a community or a nation to its past, but the boundary between past and present used to be stronger and more stable than it appears to be todayâ⠂¬  (Huyssen â€Å"Present Past Palimsets†; 1).   This however does not mar the memory of the event that initiated Kahlo’s work.   Although Huyssen writes that historical memory is fading into the past and events are not being recognized or remembered but instead are falling into demise over time and being forgotten this is what Kahlo’s work strongly against.The repetition of trauma is precisely why this painting is such an important piece of work in Kahlo’s collection.   She painted it intended that such an event would not transpire again,The focus on trauma is legitimate where nations or groups of people are trying to come to terms with a history of violence suffered or violence perpetrated.   But the transnational discourse of human rights may give us a better handle on such matters than the transfer of psychoanalysis into the world of politics and history.   For it is precisely the function of public memory discourses to allow individuals t o break out of traumatic repetitions.   Human rights activism, truth commissions, and juridical proceedings are better methods for dealing with historical trauma.   Another is the creation of objects, artworks, memorials, public spaces of commemoration†¦Huyssen â€Å"Present Past Palimsets†; 9  Urban space that is the Tate museum which houses Kahlo’s work should be utilized in commemoration for a traumatic event so that healing may begin in a national capacity.Both of these days serve as an embodiment of an event.   This in itself allows the past to be tangible. In both the memory of the event and in the survivors the day becomes a cultural history; it becomes real, fact as is done in A Few Small Nips.   The past has a tendency to become mythical, and memory has ways of faltering, but to make memory real these days add the cementing of the past events (Huyssen â€Å"Present Past Palimsets†; 15).   There can be no collective amnesia involved beca use the painting allows people on an international scale to become part of the remembrance.The horror in Kahlo’s painting is not only the brutality of the event, as blood is smattered in every direction of the space, but also in the facial expressions of the two bodies.   While the woman is lying on the bed, killed, naked, and in flaccid immobility, the man is fully dressed, with a small smirk on his face.   That smirk is the true horror of the piece.   The fact that the woman is completely nude while the man is fully dressed is also a point of interest.   This signifies that the woman trusted the man to get fully undressed while the man kept his secrets, his disguise as a killer, on.   That is the point of the contrast between the two figures; the man keeps his secret identity.This secret identity of duality as mentioned prior is a key focal point in Kahlo’s work but in A Few Small Nips she is attributing this dualism to the mal figure instead of the female (albeit, this is not a self portrait, at least not in the typical Kahlo fashion).   The point here is that Kahlo was enduring separation anxiety with Diego and so painted him as the killer giving him aplomb of secrets, and a smirk over the dead woman’s body.   If this painting is taken as a self-portrait then emotionally, Kahlo is telling her audience that she is dead, murdered in fact by this smirking man, her lover, Diego.Although such an interpretation may be considered to be extreme, it still does not become drastic following the line of paintings which Kahlo further immersed herself into later in life.   Although the painting is a brutal scene the fact that the banner with the works murdered by life written on them is carried by a dove says a little more about metaphor in the work.   The dove is typically the bird associated with peace and hope, a scene in this painting obviously says there is none in this room, if the interpretation is taken to represent the rea l event of the day.   However, if the painting is on an allegorical level a representation of Kahlo’s emotional state between her Diego’s separation, then the painting with a dove means that a resurrection is not completely unexpected.In this interpretation the notation of the blackbird on the opposite side of the banner from the dove also states another level of allegory.   If the dove is representational of Kahlo’s hope, and indeed it resides on the part of the painting harboring the woman’s dead body, then the blackbird which holds the banner on the man’s side of the painting could be representational of doom, or lack of hope and rebirth.   Also, the lighting which Kahlo placed in the painting is brighter around the woman’s dead body, and the shadows envelope the man which further suggests that if any hope is to be born from this brutal scene then its transgression is from the man and its livelihood rests with the woman’s fla ccid body.Thus, Kahlo accomplishes the dual side of human nature and her own feelings with these two birds: hope and travesty.   Although the intention of the painting was to represent the events of a brutal murder by a drunk boyfriend, in other allusions of the painting the viewer may find Kahlo’s own harboring of love and death with her relationship with Diego as well as the identity of a woman whom she felt a kindred spirit and in painting this work Frida perhaps wanted to make the nation, and finally the world aware of the brutality which was occurring in her home town.Thus, Kahlo’s painting may be considered a piece of feminist work which allows for the viewer to bear witness to a travesty.   The painting also serves as a national identity for the state of Mexico in showing the reality of the everyday in such a deplorable scene, but all too real.   The purpose however, for Kahlo in creating this work was not only for her own identity but for the identity of the murdered woman and to give her justice in allowing for the world to see how she did and by whom.Work CitedHuyssen, Andreas.   Present Pasts:   Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory.   Stanford  University Press, 2003.Lindauer, M.   Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo. Woman’s Art Journal.   Vol.   22, NO. 1.   (Spring-Summer, 2001).   pp.   53-54.Mancer, S.   The Trouble with Frida Kahlo.   The Washington Monthly.   2002.Muna, S.   Frida at the Tate Modern.   Socialism Today.   Issue 93.   Jul-Aug 2005.

How Technology Changed the world Essay

Over the last five years, technology has been rapidly changing and expanding in every field imaginable. Smart phones are now capable of acting as standalone computer devices that can take pictures, search the Internet, send emails and text messages and yes, they even make phone calls. While it might seem that the technology of today has reached its limits, it is still actually spreading its proverbial wings. Only twenty or so years ago, personal computers were becoming small enough and affordable enough for families to buy them for home use. Since then, the world of technology has shown no signs of slowing down and practically every device available today is somehow tied to computer technology. From the first day that technology was introduced to war, it has helped shape the latter. Flint-made daggers and spears, and leather or wickerwork shields, did quite as much to shape the tactics adopted by ancient societies as horses did during the middle ages and as tanks, aircraft, and vario us combat ships do today. All transportation depends on technology, whether it’s the wheel, the jet engine, or the computer chip. Transportation is not just technology it’s a system of technology, people, energy, money, and more—but advances in technology play a key role in shaping transportation systems, which in turn help to shape our lives, landscapes, and culture. Because transportation is so important to commerce, because literally and figuratively so much is riding on it, it has been the focus of an enormous amount of inventive activity. Corporations have invested billions of dollars in improved technology. Individuals have sought their fortunes in breakthroughs big and small. Technology has changed society tremendously. Things like iPods, Netbooks, BlackBerrys, Blue Tooth, and flash drives have definitely not been around for a long time. Our society today has many advantages thanks to technology. Law enforcement officers have a great advantage with things like  GPS and tracking devices and cell phone records. The general public also faces a lot of distraction because of some technology though. Car accidents used to be caused mostly by people falling asleep or drunk driving. Now the big concern is that people are playing with their gadgets, messing with music players, playing DVDs in the background for kids, and talking on their cell phones. That is a lot of potential distractions! Society is becoming a union of ‘we want it now’ people thanks to most technology offering super fast services. There isn’t enough stopping to smell the roses anymore. For the most part, however, technology does us more good than harm: It’s reconnected us with old college roommates, helped us learn a foreign language, and encouraged us to exercise. Follow us as we look back at how technology has changed our lives—for the better and for the worse—in terms of communication, computing, dining, entertainment, and travel. http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Technology-Affects-Us&id=7429569 http://www.ehow.com/info_7844707_impact-technology-warfare.html

Vermont Colleges SAT and ACT Scores for Admission