#canvascon Orlando is started. Instructure makes a great product.
We are on the cusp of a change in education: the move from printed to electronic textbooks. Today iris simply too difficult to locate electronic copies of the books being chosen by faculty. It isn’t worth the effort, given the slight saving in price. I speak from the perspective of a parent, buying textbooks for my son. I can’t find them all in electronic form. I don’t. Need anything too fancy: a static PDF version will do. Our goal is to put his textbooks on his iPad. In the fall semester I was able to buy two of the books as eTexts. This semester it is harder, since I didn’t have as much time to look: two of his classes didn’t list the adopted textbooks as of the first day of class.
A great deal of change is evident in the eTextbook field. The article in the Chronicle talks about an Internet2 project to purchase electronic textbooks in bulk and have the institution provide them directly to the students. Only one publisher is participating. In an event tomorrow, Apple is going to announce new software to make it easy to create eTextbooks. Apple’s goal is to make eTexts (on iPads) the standard mode of textbook delivery in K-12 and perhaps higher education. Every publisher provides eText versions of its texts. The large bookstores, particularly B&N and Follett, have their own eText systems. And there are a number of companies set up just to digitize, enhance, and distribute eTextbooks. So change is in the air. Depending on which of these changes succeed, the future will look different, but the future is likely to contain eTextbooks rather then printed ones.
At this year’s meeting of GE’s top executives, presentation material will be available only via iPads.
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“Some executives are scrambling to learn now to turn one on. It’s irresponsible not to use the tools of the day.” |
The Brody rule: You can’t make decisions based on initial assumptions or the amount of resources extended, but solely on what best meets the needs of the situation.
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| — | Be willing to change paths without being hung up by an earlier decision or the time and effort expended on the current path. The Adrien Brody Rule |
Change happens quickly; transitions happen gradually.
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| — | Our Information Technology department is in transition. At a recent meeting on vision, mission, goals and expectations, the issue of ambiguity came up. We don’t know what is going to happen if/when certain other things happen. What jobs will be redefined? Who will be reassigned? Will new positions be created? That won’t be decided until we get there. Lots of “Cross that bridge when we come to it.” does a transition that you are aware of feel like a change? Are transitions just lots of small changes? Think about moving to a new house versus settling into a house. Moving is change. But settling in consists of many changes like buying furniture one room or item at a time, getting new pictures for the walls. Painting. Changing the flooring. Redoing a room when a child moves out. Lots of small changes. Think about a person learning. That would seem to be a transition, gradually changing the learner. But we put the student in a situation where s/he has the opportunity to change. They change as they learn each letter’s sound. They change when they learn each times table. They change when they learn to express themselves in their writing. From a distance it looks like a gradual transition, but to them in feels like an incredible number of little changes, I think. |
One way to quickly reduce plagiarism is to ask students to relate material to their personal experience. They cannot copy that from the Internet. Similarly, asking students questions in class that don’t have a “correct” answer gets them thinking at higher orders and learning material at a higher level. Want to get ideas of how to do this? Check out the article below.
Stop asking questions if you know the answer
Reflexive Responses
Have you ever been asking for help and been interrupted part way through your question? Often the person interrupts you and gives you “the answer.” What triggers the answer that was given? I believe it is often a “reflexive response” to a word or phrase in you request. That word triggers a specific response, regardless of everything else in the request.
You may walk up to someone at a hotel and say, “I am here for the XYZ meeting…” and be interrupted with “You will need to go to the information desk to find out about that meeting.” In fact, you were about to ask, “I am here for the XYZ meeting and I just realized I have a flat tire on my car. Where can I use a telephone to call AAA?” The person heard “meeting” and reflexively responded with how to get information about meetings. You probably would have been better off starting with “Where can I use a telephone to call AAA?” But the problem really isn’t yours. The reflexive response is caused by someone not listening and responding to your needs but rather responding to one of your words or phrases.
The reflexive response can also occur at the end of the request, without any interruption. You go through a long statement about a product that doesn’t work. You are very upset. The customer service person lets you go until you stop, as is recommended. At the end of your statement you say, “Maybe I would have been better off going to XYZ and using price matching to buy this item.” The person responds, in what seems like it is coming from out of the blue, “If you have a printed ad for an item and your receipt, we will be happy to price match it and give you a refund.” The person has reflexively responded to “price matching” rather than understanding everything you were saying. The presence of that phrase short circuited the ability to understand the real problem.
RULE 1: When someone is asking for help, let them finish before saying anything.
RULE 2: Work to understand what they really are asking. Do not reflexively respond to one word or phrase.
We all provide service, whether it is someone walking up to us on the street or part of our job. Do you have any examples of reflexive responses that you have gotten? Do you have any samples of your reflexive responses?
