Schools are missing the boat on technology

I've been thinking about this for awhile now. I was takjubg to a friend who is a teacher (also my barber) one day while I was getting my hair cut. The conversation revolved around how inefficient schools were nowadays. He talked about how his school didn't have any good ways for him to supplement his students' education. It was an interesting conversation because his premise was that money wasn't the problem, it was that the administration had pushed to get technology into schools (which was a good thing) but didn't know what to do with it once they got it (which was bad).

For instance, each class room now has at least two computers in them, but they are rarely used. The teachers that do use them complain that they don't have any educational software to use to teach the kids with. He said that he could only name a few programs that he uses and just two online educational sites that were worth his time. He didn't use those sites often because the content wasn't ever updated, so after a few uses the students found themselves using recycled questions.

Well, my mind has been doing cartwheels ever since we had this conversation. As a person who is heavily into all things tech, this seemed like a tragedy to me. The more I thought about it, the worst it seemed. If you just take the concept of how testing and homework are approached in most schools, you can see how easily this could be improved. If my memory serves me correctly, the teacher is responsible for coming up with the testing materials, weather this comes from a book or a collection of quizzes or whatever. She has to collect that information and from whatever sources she uses and create this test that she distributes to her class to take. The first problem with this is that the test that I get is the same as the person next to me. The simple thing to do is to lean over and copy off the person next to me. Home work isn't any better. The teacher gives out the homework at the end of the day. Most kids go home and don't think about that homework till the next school day when they are copying the answers from someone eles's paper.

But what if we were to utilize the technology sitting in the class room, thanks to our tax dollars. Teachers now have laptops, PDA's, workstations, Tablet PC's and all kinda other technology that would make your jaw drop if you walk into a class and looked around. How simple would it be for the school system to hire a consultant to collect a base of grade level, subject level questions that could be stored into a database and printed out as needed to students for homework and test in a random fashion? By random I'm talking about insuring that the test that I have is not the same as the guy's who is sitting next to me. If you have the students go to the computer center to take the test then the whole thing would be electronic, which means that the teacher wouldn't have to life a finger to either grade a test or track her student's progress.

Now going to the computer center for each test and quiz may be alot to ask for but what about setting up a web application that allows a student to take timed quizzes at home? If the times are set up correctly then it would be difficult for the student to cheat because he would'nt have time to flip through his book. The best thing about it is that the teacher doesn't have to spend half the class time grading papers.

The good thing about all of this is that the technology is already there. The schools just need someone in charge with the vision to make this happen. Otherwise, they need to sell all the useless equipment before it becomes outdated, because its just collecting dust.

Kama Sutra Worm (Who got attacked?)

Inquiring minds want to know....

They said that the Kama Sutra Worm was going to be one of the worst one's to hit us thus far. Did anyone fall victim to this worm? If so, how bad was it? Let us know.

Start 'em off early

My son is 6 (his birthday was yesterday), and really loves computers. As he gets older, I hope to take advantage of his technical curiosity to teach him a little bit about programming. In my humble opinion, I think that the skills learned from computer programming are second to none and are best learned as soon as possible. Skills such as problem solving, practical application of logical concepts, the discipline that comes with research and the sense of accomplishment that comes from finishing a project.

The problem is that may of the programming languages are simply too complicated for a child or young teen to "play" with. Well, it appears that help is on the way. There's a fairly new application development tool out called KPL (Kids Programming Language) that aims to educate young minds by capitalizing on their technological wonderment by offering a simplified IDE geared towards kids. Best of all... ITS FREE. Check them out at: http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/index.htm

2006 Leader Tips

By: Muath M. Daraghmeh

In a knowledge-intensive world of continuous innovation and change, I assert, every professional must be a real leader. There are no generally accepted, prescribed 'steps' to becoming a great leader. Rather, there are key leadership Tips that, in my opinion, all successful leaders demonstrate, and that you will need to follow:

1. Respect the organization and focus on building trust by talking honestly. There is nothing like people respect and being honest. Keep in mind that being honest frees us to be real. Not only do honest people have stronger, better relationships with others, but their honesty makes them better people and it makes our world a better place.

2. Make vision and values your priority. By paying attention to both of them, employees will understand what’s important in the business. You should assess people according to two criteria – their current performance and their values. These values - are vital to establishing an effective organization. Employees want to be part of an organization that has purpose, direction, and values, and offers useful work.

3. Learn to deal with ambiguity, to be able to change your model and to have an ability to be innovative, creative and adaptive to change. You can start by creating a change management team or lead position to select and adopt a methodology and improve the organization's understanding of the value of change management. Empower these individuals to educate managers and project team members on change management techniques.

4. You must connect with customers, partners, and front-line employees. If you really want to solve a problem, go to the front line people and give them your ear. New ideas are born here and should be nurtured to provide the business with continual sources of new approaches.

5. Understand everybody's strength and everybody's weakness. Your job as a leader is to know how to play to those strengths and lift the game of the others on the team.

6. Be technically proficient - As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your employees' tasks. This will help the employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives. In addition, good leader should show appreciation for good points made by others.

7. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions - Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. And when things go wrong, analyze the situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.

8. Sign up to big, bold goals. A bold goal provides a preliminarily measure of success for everyone in the company. Goals must be realistic, easily understood, achievable, and the result of team work. No one wants to be stuck in a dead-end company going nowhere...or a company headed in the wrong direction. They want to be involved with a winner! And your people are the ones who will get you to that goal. You cannot do it alone!

Good luck in your efforts!

Software Ideas

I admit that I'm doing this for selfish reasons. But you know what they say, "nothing ventured, nothing gained". Up to this point, my success has come from providing custom business solutions to a select few clients. I'm looking to move in the Micro-ISV realm and am in the process of developing an application to sell online. But I'm still operating in the B2B mode.

I wanted to know if anyone has a recurring problem that they wish could be solved by the development of an application? This could be a Spreadsheet, Automation tool, Full Application or whatever. I'm thinking of a prize that I could give to the idea I choose to use, but for now lets say that I will give a free copy of the application to the winner.

The Importance Of Forum Participation In Promoting An Internet Business

I thought this was an interesting article and wanted to share it with you.

By Joel Teo Published 11/28/2005

Trust

This principle is based on simple human nature. We work best with people we can trust and we promote and run internet business joint ventures with people we can trust. Some of the people that help others a lot also get help in return as people trust them so when they make a recommendation on that forum they get an affiliate sale as opposed to others simply because they are so helpful. The greater the degree of trust people have in you, the easier it is for you to make a sale online.

Another reason why people join forums is to carry out joint ventures. There are many successful business people in forums with huge marketing email lists which they contact from time to time and they are looking for good products to recommend to their members. If you have a product that you are selling and its good and if you have good relations with these large business owners, you could always get a mention in their large subscriber lists and you could make some serious money in such a deal. Thus Trust and friendships developed online can and do translate into internet business money.

Backlinks

Most forums allow people to add links to their signatures. The more links to your internet business website that you are looking at, the better for you in terms of visitors and search engine visits as well. Always use the anchor text that you are interested in when adding a link to your signature in any website forum. The more links with suitable anchor text pointing to your website, the better your search engine rankings will be period.

Another point about web forums is that there are people who love to spam the forums. What this mean is they put advertisements in places they should not be doing. This is usually against the terms of use of the forum and what happens is the person can be warned and then banned. Always contribute nicely to the thread and then if you think your product solves a problem, point to your signature nicely in your thread.

Publicity

The resultant publicity for any new service or product in large forums cannot be understated. Since there are so many large business owners in those forums, what happens is that once you have a new product that is good or popular and if you offer an affiliate program, you will be able to receive good publicity for any product that you are promoting in an internet business. This has a snowball effect because people on one forum are usually in several forums and sometimes a new product can be discussed in many forums at the same time. Imagine how much such a “publicity storm” could kick up on your internet business profits!

In conclusion, participating in internet business or internet marketing forums and helping others along is a good thing. You gain valuable backlinks from the search engines which boost your search engine rankings, valuable publicity and most importantly you gain trust which is very important in the internet marketing community. Spend time cultivating your contacts in internet marketing forums and see such online networking reap huge dividends later.

Consuting Tip #1 -- Deal in relationships not products

This was one of the first lessons that I learned but one that is vital for an IT consultant. As a custom software developer, one of the things you constantly wonder is how am I going to differentiate myself from the competition? There are a few things to consider here.

1. Companies use IT consultants to build applications that people within thier own IT department are either unwilling or unable to build.
2. Companies usually want these applications built as quickly as possible
3. As a independent developer you must insure that your applications are simple to use and error free.
4. You always want to be in a position to overdeliver on your promises.

Most of these issues are what I consider bare minimums. By that I mean that every company that you consider to be your competition will be aware of these minimums and will strive to put as much effort into building software as you do. So how do you stand out amongst the crowd?

My answer to this question is that you need to concentrate your efforts on building solid relationships with the clients that you work with. People are more apt to open up to people they like as opposed to someone who is simply hired to do a job. Alot of consultants are so worried about looking professional that they end up looking stuffy in the eyes of thier clients. It is my humble opinion that is not the position that you want to be in. Sure, you may create an outstanding product did you really seperate yourself from your competition?

Good developers are a dime a dozen. To separate yourself from the crowd, you need to let your clients get to know you. More importantly you need to let them know that you are interested in who they are. Find out about what they're likes and dislikes are. Do they have kids, how much time do they spend at work, what do they do in they're free time, what type movies do they like? As you casually share information between each other, you start to build a friendship that will be worth more than any marketing stragtegy that you could afford to buy.

What are the benifits from this, you may ask? Well, most of your clients won't go out of thier way to help you. If anything, some of them don't want you to be too successful for fear that you will raise your rates as your business grows. But your "friends" will tell you about trends within their industry, people you should speak with, oppurtunities for new projects and things that you can do on your current project to impress thier bosses. More than that, your "friends" will be more patient with you if the project is taking longer to complete than anticipated. They will value and ask for your opinion. And they will come to you for help before anyone else.

Convinced? Well here is a few tips to help you:

1. Find out what your client perfers to do when he's not working, if you know that he or she loves movies then perhaps you can send them complementary movie tickets as a thank you for they're business.
2. Get to know the things that they do repetitively at their jobs that they hate. Maybe you can automate this process for them.
3. Find out what makes them successful.
4. Ask them for advice occasionnally, many people like to be mentors and can be a great reasource.
5. Find out what they like about you and your company.
6. Make sure that they feel comfortable talking with you
7. Actively listen to what they say.
8. Learn how to casually move conversations from business to person.

This has been the most profitable thing I've done thus far. If anyone else has tried this approach, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Consulting Tips

Since I've started my IT consultancy company a few years ago, I've been approached by others who have been looking to do the same thing but didn't know where to start. Many of the same questions pop up, such as:

• How do you find customers?
• How do I keep the ones that I have?
• I know technology not marketing, what do I do?
• How much will it cost to get started?
• How much preparation should I do before I start?

For me, alot of this was learned by trial and error ... many errors :). In fact, I'm still learning. What I hope accomplish with these consulting tips is to give you and idea of what worked and didn't work for me. Many times new business owners find themselves operating in a vacumn in which most of the people around them either don't share or believe in thier vision or don't have any valuable information that give that will help your business grow and develop.

Hopefully, these tips will help you fill in the gaps!