Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts

Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement Review

Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement
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Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement ReviewI've been looking for a book that answers the question "How do I go from my SWOT analysis (a chart that puts on one page strengths, weaknesses, external opportunities and threats) to a plan that really works?" Most of the books I've read recommend that a manager work up their analysis and then use it to write their plan. But I've noticed that going from analysis to an awesome game-winning plan is extremely hard to do, and is something I and my managers do with less success than I would like.
This book addresses my very specific but important question by describing what the right person needs to do to set the right conditions to have the right flash of insight, and how our usual planning techniques actually go against this natural process. Duggan makes a clear and non-technical argument and, for what it's worth, seems to match my experience.
The few shortcomings of the book, in my mind, are that it is difficult to clearly apply this approach to an organizational setting. His one example using the GE "What Works" matrix is a bit thin and without clear results, making me wonder why he could not find a better example with real results, and why GE ultimately discontinued the method. Secondly, this book does not help someone become more able to have flashes of insight. Setting the right conditions is great, but it is no guarantee of brilliance. Perhaps this would be a question for his next book.
Overall, I loved this book because it gave a solid framework for an important and longstanding question I've had, but I only gave 4 stars because of the shortcomings mentioned above.Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement Overview

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Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies Review

Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies
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Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies ReviewThis book is a stellar overview of the latest in psychedelic theory. Rick Strassman gives an excellent summary of the current research and ideas behind DMT. One thing I was disappointed that he did not address: Strassman notes that both psilocin and DMT are nearly identical molecules. What significance does this have? I would have liked to see his musings on that topic.
Having this book is like getting your hands on the hottest underground philosophy book. It dares to link science and religion directly - not some wishy washy pseudo-theory, but hard evidence linking science and religion via psychedelics. It really is amazing how unknown this is to the average person - even those with a deep interest in these subjects. Yet here it is, brazenly laid out, for anyone with an inquisitive mind to pick up and learn.
I highly recommend this book if you want a cutting edge, no holds barred discussion on what psychedelics might mean to humanity. There is no waving dismissal of psychedelic users as "druggies" or scoffing at the notion there might be more to these substances than just "getting high". The authors are quite up front as to what is scientifically proven, and what is personal speculation. Nevertheless, imagination is set loose to roam free in this book, and the insights and hypotheses inside are scrumptious food for thought. The art is also quite nice and colorful.
5/5, Highly recommended!Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies Overview

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This Book Will Change Your Life Review

This Book Will Change Your Life
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This Book Will Change Your Life ReviewI have devoted much time to the exercises in this book and so far my life has not changed (drats!) but I have accomplished making a complete fool out of myself (which, to be honest, is no real change).
So far I watched a movie starting with an "F" (Fern Gully), imagined everyone naked (which I do not recommend because it eventually becomes rather icky), ignored a day (more difficult then it sounds), glued a spatula to my arm (strangely no one noticed), managed to lure a fly into the box but missed, tried growing another toe (no luck, yet), went on a one minute hunger strike (more difficult then it sounds), applied for a knighthood (no response, yet), imagined myself as that old man of day 362 and realized that no I am not fulfilled plus I forgot to buy a copy of that weeks TV Guide, took the psychopath test (nope, not telling the results), discovered I am not symmetrical, attempted to invent a new color but only ended up with a mucky sort of beige, spent an entire day ticking off each minute (boring yet profound), and a few other things I cannot or will not mention.
Oh! I even combined two days worth of activities by memorizing Aubrey's face and dressing like a tourist. I searched the city for her, while stopping at tourist attractions which made me recognize the need to move to someplace more exciting, but never found her. I really want to know that secret she is supposedly harboring. I feel it necessary to warn you that I truly believe the whole "Aubrey" thing may be a trick.
Oh! A really eerie thing is that an actual photo of me is in this book. Yes, really! They must have "borrowed" it from a friend's website, that is the only way they could have gotten a hold of it. I tell you, it was quite startling to see myself on one of the pages - I didn`t know whether to be flattered or not. Anyway, it gave me a great opportunity to take advantage of the suggestion for day 256 - tearing up all photos that make you look ugly - and ripped out the page for day 130. I request you do the same and forget you ever saw that picture, please. I look much better in person - I Swear!!!
All in all, I suppose I must admit I've rather enjoyed most of the stuff I've tried. I am starting to feel a bit hysterical so I guess that is a sign it's working. But is that a "good" sign? hmmm....This Book Will Change Your Life Overview

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Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity Review

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
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Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity ReviewThis book contains some valuable universal truths presented in an interesting way. I would classify it at as a "Leadership Lite" book worthy of downloading to your Kindle or stashed in your briefcase to be read on an airplane.
I love "fun to read" leadership books versus the "utilitarian", "old fogy" "Harvard Business Review" style and this book is fun to read. I still read the utilitarian books...I just suffer through them. What makes this book good is the stories to illustrate points are the author's own.
Here are my top eight takeaways from Ignore Everybody.
1.The more original your idea is, the less good advice people will be able to give you.
2.Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.
3.Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.
4.The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.
5.Being good at anything is like figure skating - the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That is what the stupidly wrong people conveniently forget.
6.Your job is probably worth 50 percent of what it was in real terms ten years ago. And who knows? It may very well not exist in five to ten years...Stop worrying about technology. Start worrying about people who trust you.
7.Part of being a master is learning to sing in nobody else's voice but your own...Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. Its that simple.
8.The biggest mistake young people make is underestimating how competitive the world is out there.
I recommend this book with one reservation. The captions in the cartoons are racy to say the least and not suited for the corporate environment or youthful readers. If the racy cartoons were toned down or removed I would have immediately sent a copy of this book to all of my clients. If they were toned down or removed it wouldn't be Hugh MacLeod's style either. So my clients will have to buy this book themselves.
Dr. James T. Brown PMP PE CSP
Author, The Handbook of Program Management
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Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel Review

Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel
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Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel ReviewLuka's father is dying, and, without Luka's help he will soon be gone. But what can a 12-year-old boy do to save his father? As it turns out -- quite a lot.
Luka's story was created by Salman Rushdie for his own 12-year-old son, Luka. The novel is filled with contemporary references, clever puns, and wonderful language, so why would I rate it only three stars? Let me explain:
PROS:
This is my first experience reading Salman Rushdie, and it's quite a treat. Mr. Rushdie has wide-ranging classical knowledge which he brings to his narrative. His use of the English language is stunning. For the first 100 pages of this novel, I was charmed by his skills.
CONS:
For me, the problem with this novel is the story. In spite of the wonderful language, I was never able to connect with the story. In fact, after the first 100 pages, I found myself skimming rather than engrossing myself in the reading. Too bad, because Mr. Rushdie is a wonderful writer -- but a not-as-good story creator.
To illustrate: A dog named Bear, and a bear named Dog, were amusing when first introduced, but this name reversal quickly grew stale and, eventually, annoying. Although these two characters contributed to the story, it was not enough to rescue a tale that stretched on far too long.
So, would I buy this novel for my own 12-year-old son? No. I don't find the story strong enough to hold (what I remember of) his interest.
STARS:
For his writing, five stars.
For the story, two stars.
Average: 3.5 stars
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Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling Review

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
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Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling ReviewSomeone once told me that our twenties are about figuring out who we are, and our thirties are about figuring out what we should be doing with our lives. I'd say that's about right, in my own limited experience. A mid-career switch from a steady and well-paid job I was good at to a couple of iterations of a new vocation I'm not sure I'm good enough at--this has been the story of my life in my thirties, and I've sometimes gotten pretty lost in all of it. The Church's varied, and usually unsolicited, opinions on these matters often don't help at all.
"Culture Making" offers sharp insight into the issue of vocation, delivered methodically, yet beguilingly, via elegant and sometimes beautiful prose. Andy Crouch sets the scene and tells the story of culture, then rapidly sweeps the reader into this story, finishing with a heart-stopping, imagination-grabbing, challenge to go and make something of the world.
After defining the terms--culture is what we make of the world, creating new culture is the only way to change culture (although gestures of condemnation, critique, copying and consumption may certainly have validity)--Crouch filters the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation through the lens of culture, then addresses our role as co-creators and cultivators with God in this world and the next (it's filled with co-created cultural goods that pass what I call the `new Jerusalem test', and the idea takes my breath away). While all three sections of the book are tightly integrated, it is this third section, entitled "Calling", that really sings.
Crouch's broad definition of culture making--the introduction of any cultural good--is also liberating for those of us with a narrow view of vocation. Essentially--we can, and must, be creative in every area of our life, because we bear the image of our creator. This is must-read stuff, and not just for artists (although I think artists will really sink their teeth into this one). It's food for thought for any Christian wishing to make a meaningful contribution to their world. It certainly has contributed deeply to my own thinking about vocation.Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling Overview

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What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World Review

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World
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What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World ReviewReorient your brain and body to creativity and innovation!
This book will make you want to become an innovator so bad.I'm a 20-year-old Stanford sophomore who learned what Tina wished she had known when she was 20.As a freshman, I took her class "Creativity & Innovation," mainly offered for graduate students. When, on the first day, Tina said "Creativity can be learned," I was skeptical. I simply thought her class would be no different from typical college classes with competitive individuals, problem sets, and grade curves.The class was given the first assignment to come up with the best and the worst business ideas. My teammates and I were enthusiastic about developing fantastic ideas and scribbled total nonsense for the bad ideas when the time was running out.I was baffled, however, when Tina ripped up all sheets of paper with the good ideas and gave us the bad idea submitted by another team. The idea was "selling used hypodermic needles." We laughed out loud at how terrible it was until three seconds later when we all turned silent and questioned, "Wait, is this really the worst idea?" We ended up coming up with a really clever plan that involved selling used needles to doctors who need small tissue and blood samples for their experiments. We even felt as if we could start selling used needles right away! Besides learning that it is always worthwhile to question our assumptions, my classmates and I were no longer competitors but awesome business partners!Tina taught us that there are no bad ideas and how to redefine problems in different ways. In following assignments we got to redesign the cover for a large national magazine (and they even used our idea!); I got to try on a 3-carat diamond ring in a private salon at Tiffany's as part of a study on consumer experiences; and we set up the entire frozen yogurt shop into the classroom as part a class project on innovative companies. Unlike other books of the sort, Tina's book avoids ambiguous principles embellished with fancy words but rather suggests ready-to-go strategies that you can implement in your daily life right away. Furthermore, she gives you good examples, that stimulate you and give you the nerve for action. You will end up being an active "doer" after reading this book. (For instance, I employed her methods to reinvent my messy closet!)I'm truly happy that now the whole world can share her insights on creativity and innovation. Her book is a "crash" course, yet a very thorough, inspirational guide on how to change yourself and the world! I hope you all share the special excitement that I had while learning from her. Although I love the title, as you read this book you will see that it is never too late and there's no time to hesitate to become innovative.What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World Overview

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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession Review

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession ReviewThere are questions that are too big for science; are there gods, for instance, or what is love? And maybe we will never fully find out scientifically why music does what it does and why we care about it so. But for many reasons, music ought to be a profitable subject for scientific enquiry. It is, as Pythagoras knew, an activity strongly rooted in mathematics, and the physics of music is fairly well understood. It is as universal as language; all human cultures have some sort of music, indicating it does something indispensable. And we are increasingly able to figure out, with our sophisticated brain imaging gadgets, what brains do when they hear or think about music. The neuroscience of music is the area of expertise of Daniel J. Levitin, and he writes of it in _This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession_ (Dutton), a fascinating account of current music psychology. Levitin has produced a book wonderfully accessible to lay readers, since although he is an academic (he runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University), before he became a scientist, he had been a performing musician, sound engineer, and record producer, working with names like Steely Dan and Blue Oyster Cult. He does pull examples from Bach and Beethoven, but he is obviously more comfortable citing universally-known tunes like "Happy Birthday to You", "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", or "Stairway to Heaven". (Readers whose tastes range in previous epochs will possibly be surprised at the sophistication modern popular musicians have displayed.) Levitin has a good sense of humor and is a genial explainer.
He starts out with a forty page first chapter "What is Music?", which is as good a short explanation of key concepts as tone, scale, fifths, and timbre as anyone could want, and is a fine foundation for all that comes after, a collection of scientific lore and tidbits from all over. For instance, even if you are not a musician, you have a huge store of tunes in your memory. You may not have perfect pitch, the ability to know that an A flat is an A flat as soon as you hear it, but Levitin's own research has provided surprising evidence that your sense of pitch, even if you are not a musician, is really quite good. Subjects who were asked to sing a song from memory got the absolute pitch just right, or very close; they did the same with the song's tempo. There are differences in the brains of musicians and nonmusicians. The corpus callosum, the mass of fibers that connects the right brain hemisphere to the left, is larger in musicians, and is especially larger in those that started music training early. The overall lesson here, though, is that we are all musical, even if we are not musicians, and so non-expert musical brains are really very similar to expert ones. There are descriptions here of surprising research that makes clear how truly ready our brains are to incorporate musical experience. Fetuses in the last three months of gestation, for instance, can hear music within the womb, along with other outside and inside noises. Experiments have shown that if you repeatedly play a song into the womb, and then make sure the child does not hear it again after birth until it is one year old, and then play the music again, the infant will prefer hearing the womb-music rather than completely novel music. This was true whether the experimental music was Vivaldi or the Backstreet Boys.
Levitin certainly has connections; he tells of discussions with Francis Crick about themes in this book, as well as with Joni Mitchell. The final chapter, "The Music Instinct", is a response to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who spoke at a 1997 convention of researchers in music perception and cognition. Pinker took the dismissive stance that music was "auditory cheesecake", tickling the parts of the brain that were really for the important functions of language and (unlike language) useless as a force in human evolution. It is not surprising that Levitin and his fellow researchers disagree. Darwin himself felt that musical tones were used in conveying emotion and that those who were able to expend energy in singing or playing were demonstrating biological and sexual fitness. Musical success does make for high numbers of opportunities for spreading one's genes (just ask Mick Jagger). Interest in music peaks in adolescence, indicating a role in sexual selection. Music has been around longer than agriculture, and there is no evidence that language actually preceded music in our species. It may have promoted the cognitive development that was harnessed for speech. Only in the past few hundred years did music become a spectator activity, but in the eons when it could have shaped our social evolution, it was a group activity that may have promoted group togetherness and synchrony. It is an engaging final argument that serves to emphasize the importance of all that the book has presented before, a demonstration that looking at an important human activity in a scientific way only increases our wonder and delight in the activity itself.This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession Overview

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The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems Review

The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems
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The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems ReviewAnyone who has read the 7 Habits will know this is not just a reiteration of Habit 6. This book really hits the heart of Win-Win and shows so profoundly what a real win-win is all about and how you can come up with a solution that is greater than you could have ever imagined. It is not simple to achieve synergy, but this book shows such great examples of how it has been reached.
This is a must read for everyone! World leaders, politicians, business leaders, companies of all sizes, universities, colleges, schools, hospitals, county, city, state and federal agencies, husbands, wives, teenagers all can gain valuable insight from this remarkable book.The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems Overview

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Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality Review

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality
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Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality ReviewWhen I started reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, I had grand hopes. I wanted this book to single-handedly pick my ideas off the dusty shelf in my brain and turn them into million-dollar businesses (or something like that). Maybe that is a little extreme, but I was instantly drawn to this book because I have a hard time making my ideas happen. I suppose I was looking for inspiration and a hidden secret on how to turn any old idea into something of functioning brilliance.
Of course, no book can accomplish that. But Making Ideas Happen is probably going to change my life. Here's the thing. This book is not filled with flowery prose or motivational stories meant to get you off your butt. Instead, this is a college course in taking your idea somewhere. Belsky mines the experiences of a lot of visionary people who all have one thing in common, they were able to make their ideas happen.
If you are still in love with the idea of your idea, you are going to want to get over that pretty quickly. The idea is not the thing, Belsky argues, the execution is the thing. Ideas flow freely, while doing something about them takes a lot of hard work and focus. Making Ideas Happens spends most of its time talking about the nuts and bolts on exactly how you can bring your idea to reality. Warning, it is not easy. Things will stand in your way. Heck, you will get in your own way. You will need great passion and determination. If you can muster those things, then the tips in this book will serve you well. If you just want to be creative all day, well Belsky has advice for that to, get a partner who is a doer.
Scott Belsky argues that you need three things to make any idea happen. He says, "you just need to modify your organizational habits, engage a broader community, and develop your leadership capability."
Getting Organized
If you ever want to move your ideas forward, you need to figure out how to organize them and then how to manage the process of working on them. Belsky spends a lot of time talking about how to manage tasks better. His suggested system involves three main categories, Action Steps, References, and Backburners. One of the problems with ideas is that they hit you at the most inconvenient times. You need a place to store new ideas while you move ahead on current ones.
Belsky suggests that you take a project-based approach to making ideas happen. Each major idea should be a project. Each project should have action steps (the things you currently need to do to move the idea forward), references (the information that feeds the idea but is not necessarily action oriented), and backburners (things for future consideration). Belsky and his team at Behance have actually developed a task management system that incorporates these ideas. It is called the Action Method, and I am currently using it with great success. Look for a review on it soon.
Being organized is the first step toward execution. Creative people have a tendency to flit about from one thing to the next. When a new idea strikes, we leave off on an old one. With a project based approach and a way to organize and create action steps around an idea, you can stay focused and stay creative at the same time.
Collaboration
The next major piece of making ideas happen is collaboration. Belsky argues that all good ideas need a team to move them to completion. I am sure you can find examples where this was not true, but Belsky has great examples of when this was true. Teams make more progress than individuals.
In the book, Belsky spends a lot of time explaining the importance of collaboration. One of the surprising benefits he brings up is skepticism. Having someone on hand to thoroughly vet your idea, to poke it to see if it holds water, is actually a very good thing. One of the best things you can do to make ideas happen, it seems, is to kill the bad ideas quickly.
Of course, there is a lot more that collaboration can get you. When you can get more people than just you excited about your idea, you can take it places. Layer that on top of your ability to organize your idea into a linear project, and you will soon be moving quickly toward final execution on your idea.
Another thing that Belsky brings up is the dynamic of the dreamer and the doer. If you are the dreamer, it may be in your best interest to find a doer to partner with so you can take your idea to market. A dreamer is creative and challenges the status quo. A doer may not see the big picture as well, but they sure can see all the little details needed to get the job done. Gary Vaynerchuk shares similar advice, and this is something that I personally (as a dreamer) have been pondering for a while. Dreamers are sometimes afraid of doers, because they think that they will have to compromise their dream. However, without a doer, sometimes their dream will never see the light of day.
Be the Leader
Finally, to bring your ideas to fruition, you need to step up to the plate and lead. You lead yourself first, by getting organized. Then you create excitement around your idea and build a team. To keep that team motivated and moving your idea forward, you must learn how to work with them, to make them feel important to the process. In the last part of the book, Belsky gives a lot of advice (again, taken from people who have had great success) on how to lead.
There is one big twist in Belsky's advice on leadership. For the most part, this section of the book could be in any leadership or management manual. But Belsky always ties it back to the idea. The idea is the engine that makes everything else possible. So when you lead, you are not doing it as a fancy-pants CEO. You are doing it as the person with the idea, and you are instilling passion every step of the way. Earlier, I pointed out that execution is the thing, not ideas. This is true, but in the end, good execution needs a great idea.
This book is for you:
If you have a great idea (or ideas) but can't get it off the ground
If you are already working on your ideas and want to execute better
If you need to learn a better way to manage tasks and organize projects (read the first part of the book)
If you want to create a dynamic team that buys in to your idea 110%
If you want to enable your team to get more done and achieve more creative resultsMaking Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality Overview

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Wreck This Journal Review

Wreck This Journal
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Wreck This Journal ReviewWhen this journal arrived, my heart sank when I saw there was a tiny tear on the bottom of the spine. My first reaction was to contact Amazon and have them ship me a brand new copy. Then I came to my senses; the whole purpose of the journal *was* to wreck it, and in light of what I was going to do to it, a tiny tear would be the least of its worries.
You see, I made a promise to myself: Follow the instructions and wreck the journal, no matter what my better judgment told me.
It took a few days to get started. In fact, I spent those first few days grieving over what I had to do to the journal (yes, I started by reading through some of the instructions). When it comes to my books and journals, I'm a perfectionist and *damaging* any of them makes me uneasy. Even the sight of someone else damaging a book makes me uneasy.
But, when I finally let loose and did one of the tasks in the book, suddenly it didn't seem so bad. (Plus, it helped that I started with such an innocuous task -- sticking a sticker from bought fruit on a page.) Before long, I was flinging the book at the walls, ripping pages, drawing with glue, showering with it, and a bunch of other interesting (yet highly suspect) activities.
At the end of the day, my family members may think I'm a little nuts for buying a journal I would eventually destroy, however, it's incredibly fun, liberating, and therapeutic. Enough so that I enlisted the aid of a Starbucks barista for my recent experiment (and I think he liked it too).
Truth be told, it exceeded my expectations. Usually, I'm not a guided-journal girl, but Kerri somehow transformed what could be a boring task into something amazing. Kudos to her for it.
(Between you and me, I'm strongly contemplating getting one just for my journal collection. It's *that* good.)Wreck This Journal Overview

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RSS for Educators: Blogs, Newsfeeds, Podcasts, and Wikis in the Classroom Review

RSS for Educators: Blogs, Newsfeeds, Podcasts, and Wikis in the Classroom
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RSS for Educators: Blogs, Newsfeeds, Podcasts, and Wikis in the Classroom ReviewWhatever happened to Web 1.0? Readers of John Hendron's (2008) book, RSS for Educators, will quickly realize the speed at which web technology has evolved. From its humble Web 1.0 beginnings of one-way, read-only applications on the information highway, we now have two-way, read-write RSS (Really Simple Syndication) apps and tools in a new revolutionary freeway of innovations of computer commuters networked by information using blogs, podcasts, newsfeeds, and wikis. This can be about everything, be from anywhere, happen everywhere, and on all kinds of devices (Wesch, 2008)
For someone who has an older one-way computer background, John Hendron's book is an eye-opener not only for techies, but also especially for educators who must merge into the new-era of Web 2.0 information travels. The new features of this highway are succinctly defined with helpful diagrams picturing Client/Server/Local User paradigms to help us understand where we are located in this interactive information highway called the Internet. For someone who had little background on Web 2.0, this book was very readable with new technologies clearly explained. Much of the author's discussion of blogs, wikis, etc. seamlessly interact with his classroom experience as a teacher and liaison to district administrators and parents, in bringing them together to experience and benefit from the slew of technologies available to help them communicate and better education.
The strength of the book is in its balance of presenting Web 2.0 technologies in a readable but also very technical fashion. Teachers can quickly make progress by using the recommended websites to start blog accounts, wikis, etc. A brief range of the most popular and powerful technologies are presented for the consumer to choose from depending on his/her situation. Whether it is blogs, wikis, podcasts, VoIP, or newsfeeds, the author usually surveys the most effective tools, always giving attention to both platforms, whether it is PC or Macintosh. His only weakness is his unhidden bias for Macs. However, the detail of his interaction with the technology is fair. His treatment of these is up-to-date and current.
In relation to Wikis, John gives helpful examples of using wikis for department meetings, notes, minutes, and even curriculum development. Here is where the "Ah Haa" moments echo where he provides specific uses of wikis from his own educational experience. The technology of Web 2.0 is not confined to the classroom, but transcended by things like videoconferencing, and also usable in teacher business as well as district business. The two-way roads of technology are expanding to the many facets of education.
When it comes to blogging, the author adequately surveys the popular blog resources available to begin web 2.0 applications. Again, both PC and Macintosh platforms are represented. The section does seem overly technical for educators, but as an educator with computer background, I found it very helpful. What I appreciate about Hendron's treatment is the balance of adequate technical help with the creativity of the Web 2.0 applications. Especially eye-opening were the classroom lesson plans using blogging technology to accomplish educational objectives. What administrator would not drop his/her jaw to see this kind of technology used in the classroom to engage and bring much needed collaboration to the classroom using technology? The lessons were replete with collaborative ideas using engaging technology. The only criticism is that the lesson plans did not include a single math lesson. This reviewer is a secondary math teacher.
In the final analysis, the esoteric technical title of the book is actually a rich and readable ride into the revolutionary Web 2.0 technology of not the future, but the present. It's explained clearly across both platforms and surveyed across the most popular tools. This is an excellent primer on information travel for Web 2.0.
RSS for Educators: Blogs, Newsfeeds, Podcasts, and Wikis in the Classroom Overview

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