Everyday Responses
Which is the most appropriate response in
each of these circumstances? (There may
be more than one possibility):
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Monday, February 2, 2015
(Feb 10, 2015) Everyday Responses
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Conversation Questions Science and Technology (Feb 3rd, 2015)
Conversation Questions
Science and Technology
- What is technology?
- What is science?
- What is the difference between science and technology?
- What are some of the greatest technological achievements?
- What are the advantages of technology?
- What are the disadvantages of technology?
- In your opinion,what is the greatest technological invention? Why?
- What do you think are the three most important or interesting inventions since 1850?
- How about since 1950?
- Do you think pets should be cloned? Why or why not?
- Do you think people should be allowed to clone people or organs of people? Why?
- What do you think about GMO (genetically modified organisms) vegetables?
- Is it better to use natural food although it might not produce as much or should we use GMO crops?
- What do you think about GMO farm animals?
- Would you eat pork from a GMO cow?
- Are you willing to pay more for food that is really organic?
- How much more?
- What do you think robots should be used for?
- Do you think robots will cause unemployment (loss of jobs) in the future or make more work? Why?
- Do you think using cell phones too much is bad for our physical or mental health? Why?
- If you could copy your brain for future generations, would you?
- How do you think face to face communication differs from communication using computers?
- What social changes have cell phones made?
- What are good and bad points of using computers?
- Do you think to stop global warming that the amount of car driving should be limited or changed?
- What are some local ways you have seen to reduce waste and pollution or conserve energy?
- In your life time what changes have you seen in your environment for better or worse?
- Do you think modern technology reduces or increases stress? Why?
- Do you think money should be spent to explore space or is it better spent helping people on earth? Why?
- What is your opinion about children playing violent video games or computer programs?
- What do you think should be done to people who spread viruses, start hoaxes or create spam on the Internet?
- How often do you buy things on the Internet?
- Do you worry about identity theft or credit card number theft when buying things on the Internet or do you avoid buying things online because of this concern?
- Have you used a chat site?
- Have you ever used voice chat?
- What do you think about it?
- Have you used the Internet to learn English or read or talk in English?
- What are the pros and cons (good and bad points) about improving your English by Internet rather than with a teacher?
- Have you heard of the Large Hadron Collider?
- If so, what do you know about it?
- Do you have a smart phone?
- Can you access the internet on your telephone?
- If so, how often do you use it?
- How often do you check email?
- Are you a Mac or a PC user? What are some of the differences?
- What do you think open source software means?
- What do you know about software? What can software be used for?
- Are you a Facebook, Mixi or Myspace user?
- If not, are there websites that are similar to these in your country?
- Facebook often gets in trouble for not having very good privacy settings. Do you think that this really is a big problem?
- How much private information are you prepared to share about yourself on the internet?
- Do you feel comfortable with the idea of Artificial Intelligence (that robots can think)?
- What science fiction movies have you seen?
- Do you think that what you have seen in these movies is possible?
- What was your favorite science subject?
- Biology? Physics? Chemistry? Why?
- Do you remember any interesting, fun or dangerous lab experiments that you did at school?
- Do you think the stereotype of the 'mad scientist' is true?
- Does the potential that science has to change the world scare you?
- How will science change the world in the next 100 years?
- What changes would you like to see science make to the world?
- Do you think that one day science will find a way to make people live forever? If so, do you think that that would be a good or a bad thing?
- How have technological advances affected our life?
- Do you think technological advances are always good?
- Or can they sometimes be bad and harmful?
- How have technological advances affected communication/ how we receive news/ the medical field/ education?
- How have technological advances affected our life?
- Do you think technological advances are always good?
- Or can they sometimes be bad and harmful?
- How have technological advances affected communication/ how we receive news/ the medical field/ education?
- Do you think couples should be allowed to choose the sex or other characteristics of their baby like eye color? Why or why not?
Source: http://iteslj.org/questions/science.html
Discussion Article (Feb 3rd, 2015)
Article: Robots, not immigrants, could take half of German jobs
Robots, not immigrants, could take half of German jobs
As right-wing protesters march against immigration, industry looks to machines, hoping robots will add at least as many jobs as they take away.
BERLIN, Germany — Right-wing protesters marching against immigration and the so-called Islamization of Germany may soon face a new foe: the rise of the machines.
With low unemployment and a shrinking workforce, the economic engine of Europe continues to endeavor to reinvent itself as a nation of immigrants, even as the demise of the welfare state and fear of multiculturalism have brought tens of thousands of protesters to the streets.
But recent reports suggest that robots, not immigrants, may pose the greatest threat to German workers — though the European Union has placed a $4 billion bet that robots will create rather than eliminate jobs.
The new wave of automation will hit white-collar workers hardest, according to Jeremy Bowles, a researcher at the Brussels-based Bruegel Institute.
“What's fundamentally different is that [these advances] have the ability to affect a broader set of workers,” Bowles said, comparing the next generation of computerization to the first wave of robots that hit assembly line jobs in the 1980s.
The impact of these innovations will vary across Europe, Bowles argues. But in Germany, as in the US, robots may soon take as many as half the existing jobs, according to the Bruegel Institute's analysis of the labor market.
These white-collar robots will be more software than hardware, eliminating service industry jobs in the way ATMs and automated telephone systems have already done. But — as the hostile reaction from German unions to other disruptive business models (think Amazon and Uber) has shown — bytes can be more revolutionary than bolts.
Why, then, is the European Union investing $4 billion to speed the development of robotics?
Automation was the bogeyman of the 1980s, but the automobile industry's experience with it then proved that robots can not only increase productivity but also create jobs, says Uwe Haass, secretary general of the European Robotics Association (euRobotics AISBL).
“Robotics is seen as a pivotal technology, which is not only going into robotics per se but into so many other branches and technologies. It will create new jobs because [it will make] new businesses possible,” Haass said.
The introduction of robots to perform deepwater inspections of oil drilling facilities, for example, has created a profitable new business sector following disastrous oil spills in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
A new generation of robot tools that operate like a worker's assistant, rather than their replacement, can help ensure that Germany's small, family-owned manufacturing businesses can stave off low-cost competitors from Asia.
Some robots in industries like agriculture, such as a self-driven picking machine, take over jobs that would otherwise go to migrant workers. But others make possible the tasks eliminated by high labor costs. In “precision farming,” for example, a robot nurse tends to individual plants, injecting water, pesticide or fertilizer in the precise amounts required — rather than spraying the entire field.
“All this is mesmerizing,” Haass said. “When I talk with people in agricultural industries, they are flabbergasted by these ideas.”
The EU suggests that robotics will have the net impact of creating 240,000 jobs across Europe, while a study by the International Federation of Robotics found recently that the 1 million industrial robots currently in operation were directly responsible for the creation of 3 million jobs.
To take advantage of those new opportunities, workers will need new skills, says Haass — and that will create major new challenges.
“How can we steer education in schools and universities to improve the qualification of people? How can we improve qualification of industrial workers who have been doing repetitve jobs?” he said.
“That's the crucial point.”
Over the longer term, these new developments could also mitigate immigration by unskilled workers, says economic researcher Bowles, because machines will become cheaper than workers more quickly in rich countries than in poor ones. But the rise of the machines is likely to inspire a lot of white-collar hand wringing before that happens.
“Historically, technology has created as many jobs as it has destroyed,” Bowles said. “[But] this exact topic has created panics for decades and decades.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/150112/robots-not-immigrants-could-take-half-german-jobs
As right-wing protesters march against immigration, industry looks to machines, hoping robots will add at least as many jobs as they take away.
BERLIN, Germany — Right-wing protesters marching against immigration and the so-called Islamization of Germany may soon face a new foe: the rise of the machines.
With low unemployment and a shrinking workforce, the economic engine of Europe continues to endeavor to reinvent itself as a nation of immigrants, even as the demise of the welfare state and fear of multiculturalism have brought tens of thousands of protesters to the streets.
But recent reports suggest that robots, not immigrants, may pose the greatest threat to German workers — though the European Union has placed a $4 billion bet that robots will create rather than eliminate jobs.
The new wave of automation will hit white-collar workers hardest, according to Jeremy Bowles, a researcher at the Brussels-based Bruegel Institute.
“What's fundamentally different is that [these advances] have the ability to affect a broader set of workers,” Bowles said, comparing the next generation of computerization to the first wave of robots that hit assembly line jobs in the 1980s.
The impact of these innovations will vary across Europe, Bowles argues. But in Germany, as in the US, robots may soon take as many as half the existing jobs, according to the Bruegel Institute's analysis of the labor market.
These white-collar robots will be more software than hardware, eliminating service industry jobs in the way ATMs and automated telephone systems have already done. But — as the hostile reaction from German unions to other disruptive business models (think Amazon and Uber) has shown — bytes can be more revolutionary than bolts.
Why, then, is the European Union investing $4 billion to speed the development of robotics?
Automation was the bogeyman of the 1980s, but the automobile industry's experience with it then proved that robots can not only increase productivity but also create jobs, says Uwe Haass, secretary general of the European Robotics Association (euRobotics AISBL).
“Robotics is seen as a pivotal technology, which is not only going into robotics per se but into so many other branches and technologies. It will create new jobs because [it will make] new businesses possible,” Haass said.
The introduction of robots to perform deepwater inspections of oil drilling facilities, for example, has created a profitable new business sector following disastrous oil spills in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
A new generation of robot tools that operate like a worker's assistant, rather than their replacement, can help ensure that Germany's small, family-owned manufacturing businesses can stave off low-cost competitors from Asia.
Some robots in industries like agriculture, such as a self-driven picking machine, take over jobs that would otherwise go to migrant workers. But others make possible the tasks eliminated by high labor costs. In “precision farming,” for example, a robot nurse tends to individual plants, injecting water, pesticide or fertilizer in the precise amounts required — rather than spraying the entire field.
“All this is mesmerizing,” Haass said. “When I talk with people in agricultural industries, they are flabbergasted by these ideas.”
The EU suggests that robotics will have the net impact of creating 240,000 jobs across Europe, while a study by the International Federation of Robotics found recently that the 1 million industrial robots currently in operation were directly responsible for the creation of 3 million jobs.
To take advantage of those new opportunities, workers will need new skills, says Haass — and that will create major new challenges.
“How can we steer education in schools and universities to improve the qualification of people? How can we improve qualification of industrial workers who have been doing repetitve jobs?” he said.
“That's the crucial point.”
Over the longer term, these new developments could also mitigate immigration by unskilled workers, says economic researcher Bowles, because machines will become cheaper than workers more quickly in rich countries than in poor ones. But the rise of the machines is likely to inspire a lot of white-collar hand wringing before that happens.
“Historically, technology has created as many jobs as it has destroyed,” Bowles said. “[But] this exact topic has created panics for decades and decades.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/germany/150112/robots-not-immigrants-could-take-half-german-jobs
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