ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT SIMULATIONS

It seems now possible to have a decent, formal, and hopefully meaningful dialogue between Israelis and Arabs on two separate computer simulations. The two simulations are entitled Arab-Israeli Conflict (AIC) and Conflix.

AIC forces the student sot imitate world leaders and to discuss, over an eight=-week period, the political situation. The characters are supposed to interact with one another, the events of the "game" are totally student-driven and include three separate groups: high school students in approximately a dozen schools worldwide, "facilitators, who may be teachers to provide guidance, and an AIC ",mentoring staff" made up of University of Michigan undergraduates who receive course credit for their monitoring.

Conflix has students assume real-life politicians' roles. In fact, each student is expected to "assume" three separate roles who communicate with one another via press releases, e-mail and real-time chats, and are again monitored by University of Michigan undergraduates as well as guided by more experienced high school students.

The purpose of both of these simulation programs is student learning. One may wonder whether "learning:" is the same as "understanding". Simulation, as good as it may be in at least opening a door for communicating, still is not the real thing- being there.

GAINSBOROUGH FILMS

For Americans, these films are now largely forgotten. Some

. . .
ven as there are attempts to provide some sort of "happy" or at least satisfactory ending, the only film in which this occurs is in "The Man in Grey" (although this ending is separated in time by a hundred years). "LE PERFUM DE WASHING UP" The term "semiotics", according to the article, is the common umbrella term to describe both the Saussurean as well as the Peircean approach, named for two early figures in establishing this approach, namely Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. Semiotics is one media research technique, content analysis is another. Content analysis, for example, would count the number of times a particular item occurs or recurs within the media text. A semiotic analysis would be the way things gain meaning or significance. Saussure's model states that the sign is divided into the signifier (the form it takes) and the signified- that is, the concept it represents. There is a system or a code involved in this system, the individual components cannot stand alone. The sign itself is divided into three more subtle signs- the iconic sign, one that resembles the signified, a symbolic sign, one depending on individual connotation, and the indexical sign, one having ass
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1606
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)