education-economics

Finally, teachers and administrators have a useful tool to recharge their classrooms/schools. We have become so test oriented that many times we forget that the process of learning comes from the doing. The statement comes to mind that we utter with new approaches," When do I have the time to get it all in?". That is where the problem lies! We are so pressured with these new demands that we loose sight of what is important, the process. This book will give us a clearer picture of how we can recharge our teaching and can provide the key so we can use the ideas to change the way we teach or approach the students' learning who are in our care.

I was getting ready to prepare a training program for 44 persons when I read this book. Immediately! after I used the guidelines to prepare my session. Preparation was fast and easy -and fun! I really couldn't believe that it was that easy to apply and it has been one of my best sessions to date. I refer to it when I need a refresher or a new perspective. I definately reccomend this book for trainers who need to keep their material fresh and interesting (esp. in-house trainers).

I am a subject matter expert who was occassionally requested to make training presentations. I began to realize that training was my calling. I was then hired to plan training programs. By chance, I ran across this book. After reading the book, I was so inspired I wanted to read it again to ensure that I didn't miss anything important. Here is what happened next. I needed to plan training for professionals in a country I had never visited -- truly a risky venture! Relying on the principles in this book, I designed a program that really involved the participants (the students). For example, in the afternoon of the first day of the workshop, students were meeting with each other in breakout sessions, identifying "promising practices" and "best practices" and making presentations to the whole group. The workshop lasted three days. My supervisors really liked the design of the program. The instructors/facilitators loved participating in the program. And, most importantly, the students/participants loved it so much that I am told to expect twice as many students/participants at the next session. As one instructor/facilitator put it, if the goal of the program was to both create joy and share knowledge, the goal was achieved. Without the information in this book (about how the brain works, about the importance of joy to successful training, about the importance of giving the students/participants the opportunity to create knowledge, etc., etc.), my program would not have been the success that it was. To the author -- Dave Meier (whom I have never met) -- I have these words: "Your book inspired me. It inspired me to design a great training program ... a training program even better than I could have imagined. Because of the importance of the training program, I will look back at the program as one of the great achievements in my life. And I owe it to you. Thank you."

I read the book and thought it was generally okay but not really great. It seems like a combination of the British 'ELT Guide' and Susan Griffith's 'Teaching English Abroad.' So it has a lot of information about visas and other legal issue and a lot of anecdotes. These might help new teachers to decide which countries to consider teaching in.
Where the guide falls down is in not giving enough specific advice on how to find and secure jobs. For practical advice on job searching and on things like how to choose a training course, I think Jeff Mohamed's 'Teaching English Overseas' wins hands down.
But the CELT guide is definitely worth looking at.

When I decided to quit my job and go travel the world, a friend suggested I buy this book. I did just that and after I got my EFL teaching certificate (with a school listed in this book) I landed a job in Taiwan using the contacts in the "CELT Guide". Many of my colleagues found their jobs using this book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to have the adventure of a lifetime -- and get paid for it!!

Okay, there are some good books on the market for people who want to travel the world and teach English as a second language. Susan Griffiths' book has some great anecdotes but it's for Brits. Jeff Mohamed's book has some good points but there's not enough contact information. Nope, my advice is to save your $$$ and buy this book. "CELT" is the most comprehensive title in this area. There's detailed information on teaching in more than 130 countries around the world and the lists of employers are endless. Even more, there's a great section on coming back to the States and finding a job here. This book is well worth the extra wait in ordering it.

I bought this book six weeks in advance of taking the GMAT. This book is great for getting you familiar with the test and showing common testing pitfalls. I felt like I needed the most help with the Verbal section and this book helped me to decipher what the GMAT question was really asking me instead of what I thought it was asking me. My unofficial results show an OUTSTANDING grade.

I just rated Kaplan's GMAT book but I feel I need to chime in regarding Arco...because that book was very helpful !

I'm not a native speaker of English and have never taken a standardized test before in my life; yet I scored a 770 (99 percentile) on the GMAT in my first try 3 days ago.

I started out with Arco's 24-hour course. Arco's book is great, and it has quite a bit more stuff on the math and verbal part than Kaplan has. I didn't get the CD rom though since I got an older edition, so I can't rate the software. But the book itself is excellent.

Arco has a lot of useful info on both the math and verbal sections. There are a lot of relevant problems in the book, and their style comes close to the real thing. The book is well written with lots of useful advice. There a very few mistakes and printing errors in the book.

After Arco I went on to tackle the official guide from ETS. Anyone who wants to prepare for the GMAT should work some of the problems in this book. I did them all, but I don't really think that's neccesary -- just do the final third in each section and you'll be fine.

Finally I read the Kaplan book. There was not much in the book that I didn't already know. In fact, Kaplan has much less material than Arco. However, when you start working with Kaplan's CD rom you realize how much info is packed on that disk. There's 18 quizzes with 9 math and 9 verbal and they're all great practice. They actually force you to work *faster* than you'll need for the real test. Also, there are very few errors in the Kaplan material, and their problems come very close to the real ones.

I took the four GMAT CATs on the CD rom and got 700, 780, 660 and 700. There's no question that Kaplan artificially lower your score so you're guaranteed to score higher on the real test, but that's cool as long as it doesn't discourages you. Just know that's the way it is.

I also took the PowerPrep tests, just for practice... but I had already done the problems in the ETS book ! However you definitely should work with PowerPrep to get a sense of the problems and the way they're presented.

Hope this helps. Good luck !!

I used this book as the capstone to a self-taught GMAT course. It provided adequate review of the quantitative and verbal concepts on the exam, challenging practice problems, and good answer explanations. The AWA section was also helpful.

In addition, I used Kaplan's CD and the GMAT PowerPrep software, both were also excellent.

I bought this book about a year ago when my son was a high school senior, and was briefly considering not going directly to college. The edition I have is copyright 2000, so perhaps the content is not the same as the item listed here. But when I looked into a number of the programs listed, I found that many actually required some college, or a specific field of study, or required participants be a certain age, or turned out to be unpaid volunteer programs rather than jobs or paid internships. I'd prefer to think that the 2000 edition is simply out of date (the research was probably done five years ago, or more). But I'm reluctant to recommend this book, at least for the purpose I sought it out -- finding opportunities for high school grads who don't want to go directly to college.

I first picked up this book when I was debating about whether or not to stay in college. Danielle Wood's witty, down-to-earth, and downright common sense is one of the things that helped me make up my mind.

In a society where college is seen as the ONLY way to go if you want to succeed, and it's becoming a very expensive way to go at that, more and more people are wondering if it's really all it's cracked up to be. This is a great book because it doesn't trash college in any way. It's just a sampling of what's out there if you decide NOT to go to college.

I referred back to this book when writing an article for my website titled "The Ecology of College," and it's as helpful now as it was then. When you're being pressured on all fronts to go to college, this book provides a fresh perspective by offering some healthy questioning and unbiased honesty.

If I could, I'd buy a copy for every high school senior I know. This is the kind of book that might make parents a little nervous, and readers a little anxious, but ultimately it'll help you make an informed decision, which beats ignorance any day.

The UnCollege Alternative is a great resource for those students who are in college and questioning whether or not they should be there. Ms. Wood makes an excellent point early on in the book: would you just walk into a store and point at something and say "ring it up", regardless of the cost? The author states that when students go on to college without really thinking it through as to whether or not college is for them - they are saying "ring it up" possibly for a $80,000 education.

What makes The UnCollege Alternative shine is the wide variety of potential career paths the author discusses, many of which can bring in significant incomes. She discusses all aspects of each career path: needed training, certification, potential income and job market, as well as providing a sort of "day in the life of" feel.

I think often students just go to college not knowing what they want to study, just going because that's what they are "supposed" to do. I recommend this book for ALL high school and current college students. Even if you decide that college is the right track for you, at least you are educated in what some alternatives are. It is important to know just what's out there before you potentially spend four years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars.

Another excellent book I recommend on a similar subject is "Taking Time Off" by Colin Hall and Ron Lieber.

I found this book boring and not all that practical. It reads like a university textbook rather than a helpful resource for e-learning designers and developers. The example screens are often busy and it is often difficult to perceive the point that is being made. I live by the 80/20 rule, and wish that this book focused on the 20% of the content that will give 80% of the benefit.

Although I agree with the reader from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada that the book reads like a university textbook, I have found it very useful for designing and justifying my designs of online instruction. When someone wants you to change your design, you can respond by saying, "According to Clark and Mayer, people who learn from integrated text and graphics performed 68% better." Stats like that help to justify budgets!

I have been developing and teaching online courses for several years and have an extensive library that I have collected over that time. I have found this book to be one of the four or five I return to on a regular basis.

As a person who serves as a reviewer for other faculty work, I lament that this book is not required reading. In addition to discussing how to correctly use technology it also spends significant time looking at how students learn and how we, as faculty, should adress students in an online environment.

The theme of this book is to fit every individual to a specific framework that the author claims proven. The result is robotic communicators. I personally believe that good communicators are those who brings out the best in themselves, creative and charismatic. This book advocates the other way around.

I also feel skeptical doubt the author's communication skills. The book is incredibly dry, too organized, too structured. Don't buy this buy unless it is required to pass your MBA exam.

This is a great book for people working in industry, or teaching business communication. Short. No b.s. Full of good hints, do's and don'ts, and references. News you can use. Buy it.

Munter's work clearly and concisely leads you through making your message effective. She gets to the heart of communicating: what form should it take, how to structure it, and how to execute it so that it has the best chance of achieving your purpose. In particular, I was helped immensely from her discussion about how to analyze your audience and choose the best strategy for relaying your message. She not only covers writing, but also presentations and speaking. To top it off, she includes advice about whitespace, word choice, effective sentence structures, outlining, and more. An all-around great book that every purposeful writer should own.

Many Thanks for sharing these insightful morsels of information.

It was refreshing to read a book that is so honest and so revealing about the current situation women find themselves in today in corporate america. The statistical breakdown of women in power was shocking.

The insights and strategies the book lays out have already begun to work for me in my career. Thank you...

This book is truly "well-written and engaging" and "big-picture focus(ed)" as described by Toddi Gutner in her article in Business Week. Her review of the book peaked my interest and I found What Every Successful Woman Knows every bit as insightful as she stated. However, I believe that the suggestions offered, rather than being time consuming, are a challenge that will help me focus and, in the end, free up my schedule.

I thought this book would be more in-depth as to what future employers looked for when hiring recent graduates. For example, what to major in, in order to improve their chances of landing a good job. Instead it was redundant in its advice. Anyways, it was not worth paying for a bunch of advice that did not pertain to what the title suggested, "...an employer's perspective"

Since your rating systems has a maximum of five stars, I decided to give this book one star for every 20 tips that I found were helpful to me. Out of the 100 tips, 20 tips were ones I already have down cold. That leaves 80 tips that I got something out of - either something I'd never thought about before, or something I'd thought of, but hadn't thought of in the way the author put it. Therefore, at one star for every 20 helpful tips, I give Straight Talk On College four stars!

This book has been great for me - it has helped me understand the "big picture" of the college experience as well as given me in-depth tips on how to study and take tests, manage my time, prepare for job interviews, etc. I would recommend this book to ANYONE who wants to get the most they can out of college.

The author brings a good overview and sense of sincere understanding to the elearning space. The book does any excellent job of arming the internal champion of elearning with the data required to show the executive team the importance, value and return on investment.

Marc Rosenberg is the Peter Senge of Knowledge Management. He builds on the key aspects that Senge acknowledges as key competitive aspects of organizations that need to learn, adapt, and stay solvent. He starts from identifying the difference between instruction vs information and the fact that so many times organizations get caught up in the "who" and the "how" instead of the "what" and the "why." For any trainer this book was interesting from the standpoint of how he defines different levels of knowledge. There are some key graphics and useful charts that help one grasp the complexity of e-learning. I started reading and thought it would be more about on-line learning, but he really took it much broader quickly. On-line learning is only a drop in the bucket of uses for the intranet. As much as we have out there he points out that there is much more to be saturated. Technology is a useful modality that can complement and enhance existing training. There was no threat to the training industry in his book. Training is still essential--but it needs to accomidate the information age and be much more timely, flexible, relevant. The one criticism I have is the fact that he doesn't address the fact that some people still need to have the classroom experience. There is the framework that you can increase aquisition of information, but if some of the psychological aspects of employee needs are not met--you get a drop in productivity, employee satisfaction and employee retention. There is still a lot to debate but he makes a compeling case regarding e-learning and knowledge management.

Author Marc Rosenberg provides one of the first books devoted to strategies for developing organization-wide, online learning. He goes beyond the obvious technological challenges of Web-based training to explain that technology and content are meaningless without a culture of learning. But creating this culture means confronting dramatic strategic, organizational and political issues. In this roadmap for building and sustaining a learning culture, Rosenberg offers an essential balance between the structure of e-learning (design and technology issues) and its implementation (acceptance and support issues). His book is an impassioned wake-up call to all executives who are concerned about the future of their organizations. To begin building your company’s culture of learning, ... arm yourself with this practical, yet philosophical, manual — a weapon for professionals on the front lines of the revolution in workspace learning.

This book applies by all circumstances and all field of our life to improve its quality. I would like to pay more attention to the following 5 points of view and learn how to control your bad luck.

1. In charge of host not guest. He says, "Do prepare the things they are never expecting at the meeting. This means surprised something always can enforce the relationship between you and them. Get ready? Go for it. 2. Know about your customer or client first before you let them purchase your produts. Keep listening and watching their body and oral language to understand what they want rather than emphasize your desire. That's the point. This may lead you high performance.

3. Avoid conflicting. Excellent negotiator can be able to endure until right time coming with perseverance to win finally.

4. More listen less speak. Open your ears and close your mouth toward others. It will lead to successful businessmen but difficult to do.

5. Remind the importance of time management Persuade your time or you will be conquered by it. Manage it minute by minute effectively. In this case, we don't need speed. We need depth.

His lesson is still available even though 13 years over from his writing time.

Mr. McCormack reminds us of the fundamentals and basic goals of business in order to succeed and prosper. The book is quite clear and informative. It's the kind of book that you want to share with everyone, but on the other hand keep it to yourself because what you learn from this book will make you appear like a genius. This is a book that everyone from students to business managers and owners should read. It's a quick and easy read with long-lasting practical benefits. It is a must read.

I read McCormack's first book right out of college and use his advice daily. He has a no-nonsense approach to business and understands business is about common sense and relationships. This is an important book that everyone from the recent college graduate to the CEO should read. It is a must read.