TCOBaG – kNow ThiNkIng AllOwEd

Here’s a little poke for those of you who are struggling with continuing to build, grow, invest in your small business. It’s written by a friend of mine, Jim Kukral (yes, of the birthday song fame). Here’s an excerpt, and a link to the rest:
*******
It’s rough out there right now, I know. You
’re losing your cool in this tough economic market. You’re trying to make ends meet, while at the same time, you’re trying to push ahead and be successful as an entrepreneur. You’re working your a#* off and it’s getting you by, but not getting you ahead …

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Okay, so I’m not always on time, but hey, this time (at least) it’s not (entirely) my fault!

Jim Kukral, a friend, and a good guy, sings Happy Birthday to anyone who asks, records it even in video, very nice thing to do, so I wanted to do that for him as he’s now approaching middle age kicking and screaming.

So, I set things up real quick, knock off a video, throw in a little something aimed just at him, drag it into my computer, open up YouTube and get hit with a “we’re doing maintenance” (at least I’m not a YouTube Junkie going nuts, but still…)

So, video is done, and is loading to my site now, but still can’t display it just yet.

It’s coming though, and may well be worth the wait, or not, hehheh.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Jim!

For now, maybe this link will work… edit, here’s the YouTube version.

This is on the deck right outside my home office. Yes, that’s my ‘good’ clothes for looking like the professional I am.

This was shot using my digital camera (Sony Cybershot). Just set it on my mini tripod, aimed it, and did it. There’s a slight glare from the sun off to my left, but hopefully the rest of the video is clear enough.

I’ll switch to a lighter/faster loading version asap, but for now YT is still doing maintenance and I don’t have the time to rework/edit this to make it smaller.

So some of you know, I have 2 boys, and they’re being raised in a trilingual household.

How’s that relevant?

Glad you asked

Since I work mostly from home while living in Japan, I am also mostly responsible for the English education of my boys. I am charged with teaching them all kinds of things outside of their regular Japanese public school curriculum.

I am a professional educator, so you’d think that wouldn’t be so hard, but I also am used to teaching university students (who, quite frankly, don’t differ much in their enthusiasm levels most of the times from my boys who are 8 and 6). It becomes paramount for me too that the ‘lessons’ be more than a classroom lecture.

NOTE: I also still teach English, mostly writing and advanced communications skills, to non-native English speakers.

Math is very similar in this way to learning English, or any language, first or second.

Without understanding ‘why’ the student is learning, or how it applies, or if it even really does, there’s no motivation to learn. (okay, to get a good grade, or avoid being in the doghouse – people still have those, right?)

Math, and language, are tools. Not ends.

Sitting around and learning (by learning I’m mispronouncing ‘parroting/memorizing for later regurgitation) rules and formulas is just not interesting, or engaging.

Using those things, math and English for example, as tools to do something else should be the ultimate goal.

If students can see and practice applying the things they are learning in an atmosphere or situation that doesn’t involve a test or score, they’re more likely to find it interesting and later retain the information.

The recently departed Randy Pausch termed this the ‘head fake’.

Good teaching should always incorporate the head fake.

• Use money for counting.
• use a variety of wooden blocks
• use license plate numbers on passing cars
• give them sets of numbers and ask them where the pattern is
• use the clock (great for introducing base number systems, counting by 5’s and 10’s and also introducing fractions

Use math to play games, to shop (pretend shopping is easier on the pocketbook ) or figure out how to build something fun.

Ask questions about how to get the information they need. Then just ‘do the math’ to get it. Maybe check that or test your answers as review, then get to the ‘doing’ part.

The same is true for language learning, or most learning for that matter. It’s always much more beneficial, interesting, and yes, fun, to be ‘doing’ than aaaarrrggghhh! studying something.

So, get to doing something now, ok?

Okay, so I had a few questions/comments come in about using the ‘report as spam’ button.

Look, I know it’s easy, and sometimes you get that little ‘ooo, that’ll teach them’ feeling, or you really just are lazy and/or think ‘this is crap, I asked for it, but this stinks’ feeling, but you really need to use a little caution here.

Here’s a reply I made about this:

No problem marking real spam as spam, and if you did not ever subscribe, do not hit the unsubscribe button as that will only confirm to the spammers an active email address and most likely not remove you from the list. But if you subscribed, find the unsubscribe link and use it. If that doesn’t remove you with 48 hours, report it.

However, you really need to be careful in two ways:
1. If you’re forwarding other email addy’s to Yahoo! or gmail and report it as spam, the service provider is marking ‘your’ email as the sender. Just delete those.
2. If you’re not sure, don’t recall, then just delete.

gmail also uses user actions to ‘learn’ what’s spam. It’s not really new technology.

Bottom line is simple.

If you subscribed, do the ethical thing and unsuscribe. Give the system a chance to work for you.

If you did not subscribe, and you’re really sure about that (look at the bottom of the email message where most good, ethical email marketers often include such information for things like possibly your IP address, a date, time, from when you subscribed), then report it.

Also, regularly check your spam and trash folders for legitimate emails and ‘de-mark’ them. This will help train most of the better email service providers algorithms to act appropriately in the future for you, and sometimes for others as well.

Yahoo! extends its idiot streak by blocking some 20,000+ subscribers of one of the oldest, and best run email newsletters on the net. Why? Because instead of hitting the unsubscribe button like any self-respecting web user would do, they hit the ‘this is spam’ button. This affects publishers and subscribers, so don’t think it’s not about you.

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