Ann Arbor, MI

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LectureTools allows instructors and students to interact in new ways in and out of classrooms. Developer Perry Samson talks about its potential for learning and for the future of textbooks.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Perry Samson | Teaching | University of Michigan | Web 2.0

College instructors are increasingly using "student response systems" to encourage interactive learning in their classrooms. Most existing systems use "clickers," relatively limited standalone devices which students must purchase. Perry Samson, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Michigan, has developed a web-based technology, LectureTools, which allows students to use devices they already have: laptops, tablet PCs, even smartphones. LectureTools lets them interact in and out of a classroom in a wide variety of ways. For example, students can

• take notes and associate them with the instructors' slideware presentation,
• draw on the instructors' slides,
• ask questions of the instructor during the class,
• indicate their level of confidence with the material, and
• respond to a variety of questions. For example, students can answer questions using images; they can establish associations between concepts and ideas, and they can reorder texts, statements and arguments.
• Students can also review their notes and a lecture podcast or video after class.

In this video, Perry Samson talks about the present and the future of LectureTools and how it may save textbook publishing -- by providing an affordable and smart electronic textbook.

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Shifting gears is designed to help corporate professionals overcome three challenges they will face as employees in small businesses: (1) The need to play soup-to-nuts roles because there is not much staff depth; (2) The scarcity of resources inside most small businesses; (3) The ambivalent business environment faced by most small businesses.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Diana Wong | Getting Hired | Innovative Employment | Shifting Gears

Shifting Gears is a program for retooling corporate professionals' skilsets to better meet the needs of small and medium businesses. Diana Wong, Shifting Gears' creator and Professor at Eastern Michigan University, lays out the rationale and benefits of the program:

• Small, growing businesses need the skillsets corporate professionals have to offer, but cultural issues prevent matches being made.
• In this buyers' job market, it's up to corporate professionals to sell themselves if they want to transition into a small business.
• In order to do so, corporate professionals need to retool their skill sets in the following ways:
  • First, they need to get a firm grip on the skills they possess and the value those skils can bring.
  • Second, they need to understand that they are no longer just a role player on a larger team but often a one-person band.
  • Third, they need to adapt to the scarcity of financial and other resources often prevalent in small businesses.
  • Fourth, they need to be able to deal with the less well-defined business environment that most small businesses face.

In future installments, we'll cover how the Shifting Gears program helps corporate professionals meet the challenge of retooling their skills.

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Since age 16, Adrian Pittman, Founder of Module, has tasked himself with learning one new skill per year. We discuss the impact of that strategy on growing his company.

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Filed under: Adrian Pittman | Ann Arbor, MI | Innovative Employment | Module

Adrian Pittman, founder of Module, started working for himself at age 16. In this conversation, Adrian and I discuss the advice he would give to his sixteen year old self wishing to enter his field of endeavor today. He cited two:

• Expect the rules as you know them today to change.
• As a result, you need to constantly consider yourself a student.

When I asked him how he learned himself, the answer was quite revelatory:

• Each year after starting work, he set himself a goal of learning one new skill a year.
• He chose the skills based on demand from his clients, thereby ensuring he stayed in touch with the marketplace.
• As his business grew beyond a one-man show, he began to incorporate course work on managing people.

In conclusion, Adrian states that he was lucky to be put in a situation where he was forced to learn. But, the truth of the matter is that he himself made the decision to be in a situation where learning was essential. This strategy might be described as a blueprint for how to succeed in the knowledge-based economy.

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The social web is a real time stock market of prevailing trends and opinions. Adrian Pittman shares what he has learned while briefing executive suites on social media.

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Filed under: Adrian Pittman | Ann Arbor, MI | Module | Network Businesses

 Adrian Pittman and his company, Module, recently put on the Module09 conference to provide a business-oriented overview of Social Media. In this segment, Adrian provides a highly condensed summary of his findings on social media:

• Platforms like Twitter and Facebook are channels for social communication over the web. The social web occurs at the intersection of these channels and might be considered a sort of real time stock market of social communication.
• While Twitter and Facebook are the consensus picks for most popular social media platforms, people's allegiance to platforms is very fluid and changeable.
• Twitter now appears the best platform for engaging new audiences, mainly because it has dramatically reduced privacy restrictions.