There is so much mediocrity in the world, and mediocre things can, and are, popular. Why try harder?
Every author secretly thinks their books are uniquely special, but the vast majority of books don’t sell. I haven’t been blogging regularly for eight months, and I still get urgent emails from authors, wondering why their sales are slumping. They ask if it’s their covers, or if the market is crashing, or if they aren’t doing the right kind of marketing.
But none of them ever ask if they self-pubbed too soon, before the book was Grade A. Writers are a pretty insecure bunch, but I’ve never met one who blames their sales on their bad writing.
I gotta say, it’s seductive to think I could self-pub these three books instantly, make some money, not worry about the anticipated three star average (I encourage writers to not look at their reviews, and I usually don’t), and immediately move on to something I know will sell better.
But I won’t do that. I’ll put in the time and make these books better. Money is nice. Having more time is nice. However, the nicest thing of all is having pride in my work.
The view of US education as seen through teacher resignation letters Depressing look at the teaching profession. Formative is a free service for performing formative assessments in your classroom Another option for performing formative assessments in your classroom. Use the Unpaywall Chrome or Firefox extension to access research papers for free Access freely available research…
Overcome the evil twin of the learning curve. Source: A mathematical model of the “forgetting curve” proves learning is hard Reviewing information is not enough to remember, time has to pass to reinforce the memorization of the informaiton.
Glibness is a disease that’s particularly virulent in Silicon Valley, politics, entertainment and the executive suite. Someone has an insight (or gets lucky) and then amasses power. Surrounded by more than they’re willing to understand, they substitute the glib statement, the smirk, the cutting remark. They turn everything into a status-fueled professional wrestling match. Source:…
Now, thanks to education technology, scavenger hunts have been given a whole new makeover – here are 5 updated ideas for how to implement them in the 21st century classroom! Source: 5 Brilliant Ideas for #EdTech Scavenger Hunts Some great links to ideas on running a scavenger hunt, two of which doesn’t require the teacher…
Our smartphones make it harder for us to think whenever they’re near – even if they’re turned off, according to a new study published last week. “It’s not that participants were distracted because they were getting notifications on their phones,” said the lead author of the study, Adrian Ward, an assistant professor at the McCombs School of…
A challenge we faced while building SpriteBox Coding, a learn to code game for kids ages 5+, was that the educational component primarily centred around puzzles. However, as we learned with our previous title LightBot, for some kids, puzzles simply aren’t exciting on their own. There were often players who needed a reason for why…
