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Whining about bullying and how rotten the bullies were and the poor
students that they bullied used to be one of my regular activities. "We
have to do something to help these kids" both the bullies and their
victims," I would whine. But for years, I just talked to these kids and
sent them on their way. After I got sick and tired of being sick and tired
of talking about this - I did do something! I started a mentor program for
these students!
Behavior referrals, grades, social problems, and poor achievement were our
starting criteria for being in the program. Almost every staff member in
the building had 2-3 mentees -everyone from the administration, teachers,
and counselors to the educational assistants, cafeteria workers and
custodians. Over 150 students were in that mentor program which began in
1998.
Each mentor was given a mentor folder with a permission slip, a brochure
about the program, a profile sheet, and tips on being a mentor, a pencil
and a "Welcome Back to School" card. The profile sheet identified their
mentees, homeroom teacher, grade, birthday, and area of concern. Also
included in the packet was a birthday card and pencil for the mentor to
give their mentees.
Giving gifts was left of to the discretion of the mentor. Some mentees
came to expect gifts and the purpose of the mentor relationship was
diminished. The kids came to expect them and thought that they were
‘entitled' to getting things from the mentor. I had students asking
me to be in the mentor program because they wanted to get stuff.
We really learned that first year to reinforce that the mentor program was
about improving behavior and grades to be more successful in school - and
we had to keep telling the kids that too!
As all of you know, people who work in a school are super busy, and we
found that having even just 2 mentees was too much. It was difficult to
develop the relationship and effect change because the mentors were
stretched too thin. So in the years to come, and we are in our 7th year of
the mentor program, we have assigned everyone only 1 mentee.
Another area of concern was keeping track of the number of mentors in the
program. Over the years we have reduced this number - first we cut back to
only the professional staff having mentees. Staff who wanted to be mentors
and had the knack for working with these problematic students were asked
to be mentors. A few educational assistants were also asked also because
of their expertise in this area also.
Dramatic results were reported with a group of middle school girls. One of
the girls had to actually break away from the group of girls who were
bullying, so she could improve her reputation as a respectful and serious
student. This was a difficult process, and she had 2 mentors working with
her to help her make this difficult peer group change. The parent/guardian
was not supportive. By the end of the school year, she had completely
changed groups of friends, made the honor roll, and received a multitude
of awards for academic excellence at the quarterly awards assembly.
So, don't worry that you don't have all the pieces in place. You will
learn and improve your program each year. Just start helping these kids!
You will be inspired and the kids will be thrilled and getting their
education!
For more information on kick starting your mentor program, send
an email to
coach@bullyzapper.com
Paula McCoach has been in public education
for 23 years. She has
been a school counselor for the past 10 in an alternative school and an
elementary/middle school in Maryland. She has spearheaded mentor programs,
Character Education initiatives, & Bully awareness. For more information,
send an email to
coach@bullyzapper.com
About the author:
Paula McCoach has been in public education for 23 years. She has
been a school counselor for the past 10 in an alternative school
and an elementary/middle school in Maryland. She has spearheaded
mentor programs, Character Education initiatives, & Bully
awareness. For more information, send an email to
coach@bullyzapper.com
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Article:
As a teacher of students with learning disabilities, I found that one of the
most difficult things for many of my students was understanding and completing
homework assignments.
Here are 10 tips to help students be successful in completing their homework for
you:
1) Make sure your students and their parents understand the homework policy.
2)
Assign work that the students can do. If your student has a learning disability
in written language, chances are you won't get the 10-page written report you
assigned. Perhaps he could tape the information or present it in a different
way, such as through the use of pictures or a skit.
3) Make sure the student understands the assignment and has written it down
correctly. That may mean you'll have to spend a little extra time with the
student to show him examples of what you want and to answer any questions he
might have. Often, this involves an element of trust, especially as the child
gets older. He needs to be able to go to you and know that he will get help, not
rejection.
4) Don't overload the student with homework. Remember, it takes these students
longer to complete the assignment in the first place. So, it might be a good
idea to cut the number of multiplication problems you assign him in half. Or,
perhaps you would reduce the amount of reading you want him to do in his reading
book for the night.
5) Relate new learning and homework with real life. If the child understands how
she can use this information in her life, it means more to her and she will
learn it much more easily.
6) Have the student begin the homework in class so you can check to see if he is
doing it correctly before he goes home.
7) Remind the student of due dates periodically. They may have it written down,
but many students with learning disabilities have trouble with organization and
may not have it as a current assignment.
8) Allow students to work together on homework. This can help the child get
reinforcement of the information from his peers, and it can also help promote
social skills.
9) Establish a routine at the beginning of the year about homework assignments.
Be consistent and fair about reinforcing that routine.
10) Allow the student to tell you at the beginning of class time if he was not
able to complete his assignment. There are valid reasons for not completing an
assignment. Perhaps the student just needs more reinforcement in that skill.
Ensuring that the student can understand and complete assignments goes a long
way toward boosting his self-esteem. He feels good because 1) he was capable of
completing the assignment, as did the other kids, 2) he knows he has pleased the
teacher, 3) he has pleased himself, and 4) he has that much more information in
his brain. Increased self-esteem will encourage him to take risks with searching
for new answers and contributing to class discussion. And that will earn him
more respect from his peers, as well as from himself. He will be a happy,
successful student.
For more plain talk about learning disabilities, please visit us
at www.ldperspectives.com.
About the author:
Sandy Gauvin is a retired educator who has seen learning disabilities from many
perspectives - as the parent of a daughter with learning disabilities, as the
teacher of children with learning disabilities, and as an advocate for others
who have diagnosed and unrecognized learning disabilities. Sandy shares her
wisdom and her resources at
www.LDPerspectives.com.
In 1994 Tim Field was bullied out of his job as a Customer Services
Manager which resulted in a stress breakdown. Turning his experience to
good use he set up the UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line in 1996
and his web site Bully Online in 1997 since which time he has worked on
over 5000 cases worldwide. He now lectures widely as well as writing and
publishing books on bullying and psychiatric injury. He holds two honorary
doctorates for his work on identifying and dealing with bullying. He is
the Webmaster of Bully Online.
Question: What is workplace bullying?
Answer: Workplace bullying is persistent, unwelcome, intrusive behavior of
one or more individuals whose actions prevent others from fulfilling their
duties.
Question: How is it different to adopting disciplinarian measures,
maintaining strict supervision, or oversight?
Answer: The purpose of bullying is to hide the inadequacy of the bully and
has nothing to do with "management" or the achievement of tasks. Bullies
project their inadequacies onto others to distract and divert attention
away from the inadequacies. In most cases of workplace bullying reported
to the UK National Workplace Bullying Advice Line, the bully is a serial
bully who has a history of conflict with staff. The bullying that one sees
is often also the tip of an iceberg of wrongdoing which may include
misappropriation of budgets, harassment, discrimination, as well as
breaches of rules, regulations, professional codes of conduct and health
and safety practices.
Question: Should it be distinguished from harassment (including sexual
harassment), or stalking?
Answer: Bullying is, I believe, the underlying behavior and thus the
common denominator of harassment, discrimination, stalking and abuse. What
varies is the focus for expression of the behavior. For instance, a
harasser or discriminator focuses on race or gender or disability.
Bullies focus on competence and popularity which at present are not
covered by employment legislation.
Bullies seethe with resentment and anger and the conduits for release of
this inner anger are jealousy and envy which explains why bullies pick on
employees who are good at their job and popular with people. Being
emotionally immature, bullies crave attention and become resentful when
others get more attention for their competence and achievements than
themselves.
Question: What is the profile of the typical bully?
Answer: Over 90% of the cases reported to the UK National Workplace
Bullying Advice Line involve a serial bully who can be recognized by their
behavior profile which includes compulsive lying, a Jekyll and Hyde
nature, an unusually high verbal facility, charm and a considerable
capacity to deceive, an arrested level of emotional development, and a
compulsive need to control. The serial bully rarely commits a physical
assault or an arrest able offence, preferring instead to remain within the
realms of psychological violence and non-arrest able offences.
Question: What are bullying's typical outcomes?
Answer: In the majority of cases, the target of bullying is eliminated
through forced resignation, unfair dismissal, or early or ill- health
retirement whilst the bully is promoted. After a short interval of between
2-14 days, the bully selects another target and the cycle restarts.
Sometimes another target is selected before the current target is
eliminated.
Question: Can you provide us with some statistics? How often does bullying
occur? How many people are affected?
Answer: Surveys of bullying in the UK indicate that between 12-50% of the
workforce experience bullying. Statistics from the UK National Workplace
Bullying Advice Line reveal that around 20% of cases are from the
education sector, 12% are from healthcare, 10% are from social services,
and around 6% from the voluntary / charity / not-for-profit sector.
After that, calls come from all sectors both public and private, with
finance, media, police, postal workers and other government employees
featuring prominently. Enquiries from outside the UK (notably USA, Canada,
Australia and Ireland) show similar patterns with the caring professions
topping the list of bullied workers.
Question: Could you estimate the economic effects of workplace bullying -
costs to employers (firms), employees, law enforcement agencies, the
courts, the government, etc.?
Answer: Bullying is one of the major causes of stress, and the cost of
stress to UK plc is thought to be between £5-12 billion (US$7-17 billion).
When all the direct, indirect and consequential costs of bullying are
taken into account, the cost to UK plc (taxpayers and
shareholders) could be in excess of £30 billion (US$44 billion),
equivalent to around £1,000 hidden tax per working adult per year.
Employers do not account for the cost of bullying and its consequences,
therefore the figures never appear on balance sheets.
Employees have to work twice as hard to overcome the serial bully's
inefficiency and dysfunction which can spread through an organization like
a cancer.
Because of its subtle nature, bullying can be difficult to
recognize, but the consequences are easy to spot: excessive workloads,
lack of support, a climate of fear, and high levels of insecurity.
The effects on health include, amongst other things, chronic fatigue,
damage to the immune system, reactive depression, and suicide.
The indirect costs of bullying include higher-than average staff turnover
and sickness absence. Each of these incur consequential costs of staff
cover, administration, loss of production and reduced productivity which
are rarely recognized and even more rarely attributed to their cause.
Absenteeism alone costs UK plc over £10 billion a year and stress is now
officially the number one cause of sickness absence having taken over from
the common cold. However, surveys suggest that at least 20% of employers
still do not regard stress as a health and safety issue, instead
preferring to see it as skiving and malingering.
The Bristol Stress and Health at Work Study published by the HSE in June
2000 revealed that 1 in 5 UK workers (around 5.5m) reported feeling
extremely stressed at work. The main stress factors were having too much
work and not being supported by managers. In November 2001 a study by
Proudfoot Consulting revealed the cost of bad management, low employee
morale and poorly-trained staff to British business at 117 lost working
days a year. At 65%, bad management (often a euphemism for bullying)
accounted for the biggest slice of unproductive days with low morale
accounting for 17%. The study also suggested that in the UK 52% of all
working time is spent unproductively compared to the European average of
43%.
The results of a three-year survey of British workers by the Gallup
Organization published in October 2001 revealed that many employers are
not getting the best from their employees. The most common response to
questions such as "how engaged are your employees?"
and "how effective is your leadership and management style?" and "how well
are you capitalizing on the talents, skills and knowledge of your people?"
was an overwhelming "not very much". The survey also found that the longer
an employee stayed, the less engaged they became. The cost to UK plc of
lost work days due to lack of engagement was estimated to be between
£39-48 billion a year.
Question: What can be done to reduce workplace bullying? Are firms, the
government, law enforcement agencies, the courts - aware of the problem
and its magnitude? Are educational campaign effective? Did anti-bullying
laws prove effective?
Answer: Most bullying is hierarchical and can be traced to the top or near
the top. As bullying is often the visible tip of an iceberg of wrongdoing,
denial is the most common strategy employed by toxic managements. Only
Sweden has a law which specifically addresses bullying. Where no law
exists, bullies feel free to bully. Whilst the law is not a solution, the
presence of a law is an indication that society has made a judgment that
the behavior is no longer acceptable.
Awareness of bullying, and especially its seriousness, is still low
throughout society. Bullying is not just "something children do in the
playground", it's a lifetime behavior on the same level as domestic
violence, sexual harassment, and rape.
Bullying is a form of psychological and emotional rape because of its
intrusive and violational nature.
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)
Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com
) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After
the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United
Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of
mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of
Macedonia.
The first step to finding the right online university is to decide what degree
you want. Do you want an undergraduate or graduate degree? Are you
interested in a certificate program for work related study? If you are
returning to school for work, you may want to get feedback from your employer
for this decision. List your long and short term career goals to help you decide
which degree will help you reach your goals best. Once you have decided on
a major, you can start to research different schools.
Find out the requirements for admission into the program. Each university
has its own set of regulations. All schools will want to see your
transcripts from high school or college. Some will ask for test scores as
well. Make sure you can meet the minimum requirements for admission before
you apply. Gathering the necessary documentation before beginning the
application process will save time later.
Distance education programs have different on campus requirements. Some require
that you come to campus a few times each semester, while others allow you to
complete the entire program at home. Programs offered completely online
are more difficult to find, depending on the degree you are seeking. Make
sure you can commit to the schedule required by the university. A program that
requires you to travel to campus one or more times should be within driving
distance of your home.
Find out if the school you will be attending is regionally accredited.
Accreditation only matters when you need financial aid or plan to transfer the
credits you receive to another university. Some accept credits from
schools that are regionally accredited, but others do not. Check with the
college you plan on attending later to make sure the credits will transfer.
If you are getting your complete degree from the same school, accreditation may
not be important.
Another time accreditation may matter is if you are completing a degree that
will require a state license. Degrees in nursing, social work and
education require licensing. Check with your state to make sure they will
accept your degree for licensing. Some states won't accept degrees from
schools not recognized by the US Department of Education. Check with your
school, state or Department of education to find out if the college is
recognized.
If you have credits you want to transfer from another school, make sure the
online university you are considering will accept your credits. Have your
official transcripts sent to the school for an admissions counselor to review.
Ask about any restrictions the school has for transferring credits. Most
colleges won't accept more than fifty percent of the degree requirements in
transfer credits. Some have a limit on the time you can transfer credits,
usually ten years.
Ask if the university offers credit for job or life experience. If you
have extensive experience in the business world, some schools will give you some
college credits for this. You may be required to show documentation of your
experience or be given an exam. The requirements and number of credits offered
varies by school, so be sure to ask. These credits can shorten the amount
of time you need to spend in school and can help get your degree faster.
There are four different ways that audience members assimilate information.
They are: visual, auditory, auditory digital, and kinesthetic. While all
members of the audience will process information utilizing all four of these
approaches at different times, each audience member will individually will
individually tend to rely on one of these approaches more than the other three.
Visual: These people memorize and learn by seeing pictures and are less
distracted by noise than others. They often have difficulty remembering and are
bored by long, verbal presentations because their minds will wander. They are
interested in how your presentation looks. They like it when you use words like
"see, look, envision, imagine, and picture" in your presentation as these words
encourage them to make pictures in their minds.
Auditory: These people are easily distracted by any noises occurring during your
presentation. Typically these audience members learn by listening, Your vocal
tone and vocal quality will be very important with these people. Words that
work well with people in this category include "hear, listen, sound, resonate,
and harmonize."
Auditory Digital: These audience members spend a fair amount of time in their
heads talking to themselves. They memorize and learn by steps, procedures, and
sequences. They want to know that your presentation makes sense. Words that
are effective with these people include "sense, experience, understand, think,
motivate, and decide."
Kinesthetic: These audience embers often speak very slowly. They are much more
oriented towards their feelings than people in the other three categories. They
learn by actively doing something and getting the actual feeling of it. They
are interested in a presentation that "feels right" or gives them a "gut
feeling." Words that are
effective with these audience members include "feel, touch, grasp, concrete, get
hold of, and solid."
Approximately 40% of the population are primarily visual, approximately 40% are
primarily kinesthetic, and the remaining 20% are primarily auditory and auditory
digital in how they process information.
Sandra's ezine 'Monday Morning Mindfulness' Sandra Schrift
will help you grow and enlighten your soul with her bi-weekly ezine 'Monday
Morning Mindfulness.
Request a free subscription at
www.schrift.com and start
improving your speaking success!
Sandra Schrift 13 year speaker bureau owner and now career coach to emerging and
veteran public speakers who want to "grow" a profitable speaking business. I
also work with
business professionals and organizations who want to master their
presentations.
Get more speaking skills at our "Summer Sizzle" webpage:
http://www.schrift.com/summer_sizzle.htmJoin my free bi-weekly Monday Morning Mindfulness ezinehttp://www.schrift.com/monday.htm
"9 Tips To Improve Your Voice"
We take our voices for granted. A lot of tension forms
in our throats and larynx. These simple fun exercises
can help you.
6 Tips to a Better Voice
1. Feel your throat muscles and jaw when you are
speaking. Note the tenseness.
2. Open mouth wide. Yawn and say "Ho Hum." Close your
lips. As you do, drop your jaw and waggle it from
side to side.
3. Repeat the yawning and humming. Note how the
throat muscles loosen & Removes strain.
4. Open mouth wide, drop your jaw, exaggerate your
lip and jaw movements. Say the following words slowly:Prolong the sounds. Annunciate carefully. HANG, HARM,
LANE, MAIN, LONE, LOOM.
5. Lightly massage your throat muscles with your
fingers to check for tightness.
6. Drop your jaw and relax the throat. Prolong the
sounds. Open wide and use a monotone voice. Say: NAH,
HAY, NEE, NO, NOO.
Try this several times a day. You should see an
improvement. in your speaking voice.
1 - Tummy Bounce
Take a breath through the mouth for three seconds, and
immediately let it out as you say 10 "Ha's" in
succession, using one breath. Keep the back of your
throat open.
2 - Ka-Ga-Ha
Open mouth wide and open back of your throat.
Say "ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-" As many times as you can with one
breath.
Again Say; "Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga" - As many times as you
can with one breath.
Again With; "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha" - As many times as you
can with one breath.
Now With "ka-ga-ha", "ka-ga-ha", "ka-ga-ha",
"ka-ga-ha" - As many times as you can with one breath.
3 -Vitalic Breath
1-Inhale a few short quick breaths through the nose
2-Open mouth, expel quickly with one blast.
2 or 3 times only, or you will get dizzy.
Writer, Speaker, Kathy Thompson just finished her New
Special Report "Speak in Public Without Fear".
Discover how you can Improve your confidence and
communication skills. 4 Easy steps, 3 bonuses, and coaching.
There has been a growing trend, in academic circles and in my own life, to place
grammar and its larger rules upon an impeachable pedestal. A growing number of
people who seem to cling to the rules of grammar as if its only through the
memorization of these rules and strict adherence to them that proper
communication can be achieved. To these people I have but one word: Hogwash. The
application of grammatical rules is not the holy grail of the writing world. If
anything the exact opposite is true and it is nothing but silly to pretend
otherwise. There have been far too many different great works in far too many
different phases of these rules to believe that the standards we have now are
entirely correct and always will be. Joyce never used quotation marks, Melville
loved run-on sentences, and Kerouac barely even seems to be speaking English at
times. Should we assume that these authors and their works are no
longer worth reading because they do not adhere to the
strict grammatical rules in use today? Or, even worse,
should we retroactively edit their words, changing their
concept of what they wrote so that every quotation mark follows a comma and
semicolons are used correctly? Of course not. These works should no more be
touched than arms should be affixed to the Venice De Milo. They were created
when different rules applied, and this should be respected. But this does not
mean that those different rules are antiquated versions of the written word when
compared to what we have now and that today's standard is the correct one.
Today's standard is simply the phase we are slipping through at the moment, and
it is bound to change as well. The rules of grammar should be like the rules of
law, stable but never standing still. To create a system of rules for writing
and yoke the written word to these rules is going about things backwards.
Writing comes first and then the rules, not the other way around. Those rules
are in place to aid writing, not to stifle it, and they should bow out
gracefully once the world has moved on without them. They work for us, as I've
said, not the other way around. This notion of the rules stepping aside for the
writers is not a request, I should point out; it is an out and out threat.
Experimentation with literature and the unavoidable influence of the spoken word
on writing insures that the language will continue to shift and change, and if
these rules and the people who cling to them will not yield, then they must be
broken. The stricter the set of rules is, the smaller your reachable audience
becomes, either in time, or in space, or in both. Let's say that a unique
thought about life occurs to you in the abstract, and that you then put voice to
this thought. And let us say that you construct the most perfect sentence in
impeccable Queen's English to express this thought. You have now encapsulated it
for transmission to other people and you will be understood completely over
three continents. The only problem is you have alienated the rest of the world.
Nobody who speaks Chinese, or Greek, or Russian or Spanish will understand you.
Likewise, a century from now your words will seem somewhat quaint. Two hundred
years from now they'll be downright archaic. The use of language for
self-expression is an act that began back during our days of living in caves. It
was, and is, a much needed way of communicating thoughts and ideas to those
around us by creating an agreed upon methodology for this communication. But,
again, it is used to communicate with those around us, those with the same
agreed upon terms, and those terms are radically different as the world, and the
shared experiences of those in the world, begin to vary with space and time.
It's only natural. Language changes over space, and lingo changes over time. The
more you specify your rules for communicating, the smaller your audience becomes
and any attempt to actually lock those rules down into an unchanging law will
only result in the suffocation of communication, not the perfection of it. Or we
can go back and look towards my previous comparison of the rules of grammar to
the rules of law. They are not very different, after all. The law has a strict
set of definitions and rules for words so that minimal subjective interpretation
is allowed. People go to school for years to, in part, learn this strict
language, and that is my point entirely. The stricter the rules, the more
learning is required to apply them, and more expertise is then required to
interpret them, and thus, the audience becomes smaller as less and less people
have the acquired skill needed to communicate and that is not self-expression.
Self-expression needs to breath. And, in some strange way, self-expression needs
the ability to be misunderstood. We can also take this notion in the exact
opposite direction. If more rules produce a smaller audience, then fewer rules
must produce a larger audience. This, as it turns out, is exactly the case. As
anyone who has ever found a bathroom in a foreign land by acting out the motion
of pulling down their pants, as anyone who has been involved in a puppet show to
figure out what is on a dinner menu, as anyone who has found a hotel room by
tilting their head and pretending to sleep will tell you: there is an
international language, but it's not love or Esperanto, it's mime. The more
basic your method of communicating, the easier you will be understood. I am not,
of course, advocating some sort of grammatical free-for-all where we throw out
all of the rules at once and ignore the fact that I used "its" instead of "it's"
back in the first paragraph. These rules provide a much needed service because,
while it may be true that the more grunting you do the more you'll be
understood, it also happens to be true that the more basic your method of
communicating the less complex your thoughts can be. There is no way I could
mime the New York State Penal Code. All I'm saying is, we shouldn't take it too
far the other way. There is a reason the Tower of Babble fell over. That being
said, I suppose I should relent just a bit here about something I said earlier.
Maybe I shouldn't have threatened the rules of grammar exactly. As a writer I
need and depend upon those rules to get from abstract thoughts in my head to
paragraphs of 12-point font. So I take back that threat, but I leave a warning
in its place: Don't stand too firm, you believers in grammar, don't hold too
fast. This is all just a phase and the assaults on your rules taking place every
day are just language attempting to move forward. The next time you want to
complain about high-schoolers text messaging each other while spelling the word
"cool" as "kewl", take a deep breath and ask yourself, "Is this pure stupidity
and a sign of the crumbling of our civilization? Or is it something else?" (It's
something else. On a standard cell-phone keypad, the number 6 represents the
letter "o". To type "cool" with proper spelling during text-messaging on a cell
phone requires you to hit the number 2 three times for the "c", then to hit the
6 three times for the first "o", then (and here's the important part) to wait,
and wait, and wait until that letter reads in before hitting the 6 three times
again for the second "o", then on to the 5 three times for the "l". The word "kewl"
requires no such waiting; none of the sequential letters are represented by the
same number and all can be hit in succession with no pauses. Trust me. Try it.)
Language changes for a reason. Sometimes, as in the coining of a phrase like
"hogwash," a saying becomes so popular that it automatically enters the
mainstream lexicon. Sometimes, as with the mutation of a word or phrase into
different meanings, like "holy grail," it's because verbal exchanges have
brought the word into use with a wholly different connotation. And sometimes, as
with the word kewl, it's just easier. Rules of grammar are just fine, but please
don't try to make them into laws. They will not hold. You might as well go back
in time and try to tell Rembrandt that he can sculpt anything he wants, just so
long as he always uses Lego Building Set #6948B and his airplane always turns
out the same way. Or you might as well tell Van Gogh to go ahead and paint, just
so long as he paints by number. (Ironically, that's pretty much what happened to
Van Gogh, an inspired painter who did not follow the strict rules of Dutch oil
painting as they were at the time and thus only received scorn while he was
alive. Of course, if that's what the man saw when he looked at a haystack, I'm
willing to admit that there might have been some other issues at play. Plus
there's the whole ear thing.) And you might as well tell me to stop interrupting
my essay for parenthetical asides containing chatty writing. That's how I'm most
comfortable writing, and I'm not going to change it just to make you feel
comfortable. But I suppose I really do have to back off a bit and repeat: that's
a warning, not a threat. Grammar freaks, you had better learn how to bend
because language is most certainly going to change throughout time, and if you
will not yield for its passage it is going to leave you broken in its path.
Joseph Devon is the author of "The Letter" and currently divides his time
between his third novel, freelance writing and posting to his website. To
contact him or read more about him, please visit
josephdevon.com.
The Live TV Broadcasts are a nice way to
explore what's available for your students. You don't need anything except Real
Player and in some cases Windows Media. If you don't have them just scroll
to the end of the list to the topic downloads. This will take you to a
page on which you can get both media players.
This Remote also gives you access to
Newspapers from all over the US, Brittan, Europe and Canada. You can
also connect to stations in different languages which is a great tool in ESL or
Foreign Language classes. Students can listen to Spanish, French,
German, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch and countless
other programs.
Anyone can build a website, but not everyone has the time.
Now there’s a solution for small business owners who need a website, but can’t afford the price of a website designer, or the time to do it themselves.
If you can take ten minutes to explain what you want, you can get a website built with easy, do-it-yourself technology. It’s all done for you, and keeping it up-to-date will take just minutes of your time.
I'll go back about a year and a half when I began researching an online learning
system for two of my clients. What keywords to use - "online learning." Well no,
that brings up all sorts of colleges, universities, technical schools, software
certification schools with hundreds of listings of classes. Okay,how about
"writing courses online." No again, these words simply tell me where to go to
find about writing courses online.
The subject is really rather obscure. This might be because authoring systems
are generally for large companies who can afford to purchase customized software
specifically written for their company. Okay, let's try "online authoring
course." Good, a little closer, but now I'm coming up with software packages to
purchase. And they are not inexpensive. What I was looking for was a tool on
line where I could have my own account and do the
following:
1. Log in to my personal account
2. Create courses that have
a. Reading material
b. Self check quizzes
c. Final test
d. The ability to print
e. The ability to use PDF files with the course
f. Learners can start a class, leave class and come back to work on their
class with their own personal log in.
g. Do a final quiz
h. Have the quiz graded and if successful, receive a certificate of
successful completion
3. Track the results of Learners
4. Edit the course content on demand
5. Have several different courses within one account
6. Not have to worry about downloading software and publishing programs to my
web site and creating login screens
At a Pay as You Go price for a small start up online course business where I can
increase the service as I increase business.
When I didn't find this solution a year and a half ago, I created my courses as
E-books and sent them out to Learners who ordered them and wanted the ability to
do their classes from the convenience of their homes. Although easier than
printing and mailing booklets, it did cause new problems, like "I couldn't get
my course to download," I didn't receive the email," I can't find the Enrollment
Code," but at least they weren't telling me "the dog ate my course." However,
those Internet gremlins do show up occasionally.
At last I stumbled upon my perfect solution and a free 30 day trail! This is a
100% web based e-Learning toolset. I've created my first course. It really is
quite easy. You don't need programming skills - simply copy and paste your
material. If you
are a coach, consultant, tutor or teacher and have courses to share, you should
try this tool. It's easy to get started.
Visit www.ecoursemanagement.com
to learn more about the system and to learn about the basics of writing online
courses. Take a tour and then sign up for a free 30-day trial to try it out.
Customer service has been terrific. It's a "virtual"
blessing.
Kathy Sparks began building her successful
Virtual Assistant practice after being certified with AssistU in 1998. She has
partnered with clients nationwide in a multitude of professions
and is editor and contributor for "The Virtual Advantage," an online newsletter
for VAs and their clients. Web site: Your Virtual Resource at
www.yourvirtualresource.com "I
feel so good - it's like having a "busy bee" working behind the scenes to help
me. I'm loving it." ~ a client
