education-industry

Great Book!!! It was extremely readable, very insightful and practical. It is obvious the author has real world experience. By using examples and events in his own career, he brings to light the tactical aspects of demonstrating and selling software. An absolute must read for anyone in the business, especially those of us in Sales. I bought copies for everyone on my staff.

While there are other books and systems that teach how to present, Demo2Win gets down to the marrow of how to put on a consistent and well ordered software demo that gets the business!
Anyone who is honest with the person in the mirror will see some of their own "demo crimes" when reading this book. Account Executives who read it will come away with a whole new respect of the hurdles faced by the Pre Sales Consultant during a demo.
This book should be read by each new Pre Sales Consultant on their first day!

I found the way to do it much better. This book is really useful for my job: it helps me identify my own errors and to prepare my meetings with prospects much properly, not just "showing" but "solving". Read it !!

The Arlington VA reviewer has it right - This is a great book and it is really funny in places too! I loved the telephone chats that are written of.

I am sure any one who reads English will love this book...even if you never want to raise meat goats!

Gail Bowman is the sort of writer that most all authors could learn from. More important, Gail Bowman is obviously experienced in the craft she writes about and her love of the most cantankerous of farm critters shows through.

This is one of the few chatty how-to books that I have found did not waste even a page of type.

No matter the topic, it is apparent Ms Bowman has learned from experience and is unafraid to tell us her mistakes as well as her successes. But, she is not preachy and doesn't try to convince us there is only one way. She freely informs us of methods and techniques, and even other breeds, reported to her by other breeders.

I had long thought the best way to try and make a living with goats would be as a dairy, but, milking a hundred goats can be mighty tiring for a bare living. Thus, I was considering meat goats after downloading some introductory blurbs published by the Saskatchewan Ag folks.

I, however, remained skeptical of meat goats for profit. I was concerned I might be getting into a branch of agriculture for dreamers (the visionary sort, no disrespect meant) but, at age 50, I just don't feel the hankering to blaze any new trails. In other words, I want to let today's youth do the experimenting. I just want to earn money to sock away for my retirement.

Well, Ms Bowman has done a great job in showing me that meat goats are not the 21st Century equivalent of ostrich, emu, elk, deer and bison. They are a viable farm product that can produce a reasonable income without having to create a new market or without having to depend on other breeders for one's profit.

I nominate Raising Meat Goats For Profit as one of the Best How-To books for the 21st Century!

If I were still publishing farm magazines I would definitely be shouting the news to my readers. Raising Meat Goats For Profit is a masterpiece.

this is the first book you should buy if u own, boer or other meat goats, this one you cant put down, there is tons of knowledge in this book for anything you need to know while raising your goats, great job Gail Bowman!

Off The Maps: An Expedition Deep Into Empire And The Global Economy by psychologist, social activist, poet, and a pioneer in the field of ecopsychology Chellis Glendinning offers a unique look at globalization -- the modern-day alternative to the economic empires of European and Western history. Using maps as allegory, Off The Maps peers between the lines at the individual hopes and lives of workers and the working class at home and abroad as they struggle beneath the crushing spread of politically imperialistic, homogeneous mass-culture invasive, free-trade oriented, international corporation dominated, western-style consumerism. Off The Maps is a welcome and timely contribution which is very highly recommended for the non-specialist general reader with an interest in international politics and economics.

To the thorough reviews below I'll just add:

It's nice to see someone in my field working for rather than against the social forces that oppose the conformity and imperialism that show up nowadays as well-marketed, hyperconvenient, quick-fix "psychotherapy" (or is that psycho therapy?). Listening to the soul of the world, Chellis Glendinning hears in it an anguish echoing her own--and acts bravely and actively on behalf of both.

There's an annoying idea at my school (Pacifica) that all such activism = acting out, a kind of puerile and heroic impulsiveness--whereas working the imaginal, perhaps from within a well-lighted office on convenient days, should be enough. The example of the author's way of being indicates otherwise. We certainly need to monitor our activism, lest it become just another kind of colonizing arrogance so characteristic of our empire-driven civilization; at the same time, to say and do nothing except in private is not enlightened or soulful, it is cowardly.

Good work, Dr. Glendinning!

What impact has three hundred years of Western imperialism had on the way we treat each other -- and the Earth -- today?

How is today's global economy simply our latest expression of colonization?

How can our personal woundings become doorways to self-healing and form the basis of a commitment to sustainable planetary culture?

In her new book, Off the Map (An Expedition Deep Into Imperialism, the Global Economy, and Other Earthly Whereabouts, Pulitzer-nominated author and psychologist Dr. Chellis Glendinning explores these themes with a directness, clarity and emotional intensity that awakens the reader to profound insight about the nature of today's world.

In a lyrical braiding of three stories, she weaves the threads of her personal story of sexual abuse in a European-American (and Anglophile) family in the 1950s, the history of the last three hundred years of Western imperialism and a present-day horseback ride through the recently colonized Chicano world of northern New Mexico, where she currently resides.

Glendinning sees Off the Map as a continuation of her past work. "My focus is always the relationship between the personal and the political," she notes. "This book is an effort to make clear that everyone on the Earth is still experiencing the legacies of the classical age of empire, that corporate globalization is just the latest expression of Western imperialism and that, ultimately, it cannot work."

Throughout the book, we follow Glendinning's story of sexual abuse at the hands of her father, through her healing to the reclamation of her essential self and her reconnection to the power of land and nature. We also follow the story of the land-based Chicano peoples of northern New Mexico, a story that goes to the heart of the unspoken wound of imperial systems: the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.

Glendinning, a highly respected eco-psychologist, received a Pulitzer nomination for her book When Technology Wounds (William Morrow). Other earlier works include My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery From Western Civilization (Shambhala) and Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (William Morrow). Off the Map is a compelling look at the unexamined implications of our rapidly expanding global economy and, as such, should cause a great stir among economists, sociologists and all those concerned about the future of humanity -- and all of life -- on Earth.

During four decades of working in several American, Canadian, and European university systems, I witnessed the insidiously gradual corporatization of universities. Now, the historical record of the nightmarish transformation has been written down in "Campus, Inc." edited by psychology professor Geoffry D. White and political organizer and writer Flanery C. Hauk.

This book is a lively and thoroughly well referenced work. Those who believe in universities as centers of free inquiry that productively protect and defend democracy, will be revolted and horrified by the revelations in "Campus, Inc." The may even become activated.

"Campus, Inc.," is an intensely absorbing collection of essays by thirty nine authors. Among them are consumer advocate Ralph Nader, outspoken MIT university professor Noam Chomsky, and political activist Ronnie Dugger former editor of The Nation and founder of Alliance for Democracy. These are but three of dozens of similarly subversive figures who discuss the history and mechanisms of the hostile takeover of American universities by self-serving corporations.

Setting a grimly comic mood, Dugger's essay quotes a limerick recited by Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California who became top man at the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education:

"There was a young lady from Kent,
Who said that she knew what it meant
When men took her to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine,
She knew what it meant -- but she went."

Then Kerr added to this, "I am not so sure that the universities and their presidents always knew what it meant , but one thing is certain -- they went."

"Campus, Inc.," presents California professor Leonard Minsky's writings on America's conquered campuses that have become inhabited by, "Dead Souls," as the title of his essay characterizes today's students. Minsky cites U.S. Congressional passage in 1980 of the Bayh-Dole Act as initiating the removal of independent thinking on college campuses:

" ... displacement and subordination of the humanistic tradition and collegial society that are integral to the university . . . . Without significant public scrutiny [corporations] annexed billions of dollars in public investment in the universities, silenced corporate and military critics on campus by defunding their departments and programs, replaced students with a more docile group intent on securing corporate jobs and benefits, and altered the culture of higher education by focusing it on the needs of corporate sponsors for marketable products instead of basic research."

Todd A. Price's essay, "Wiring the World: Ameritech's Monopoly of the Virtual Classroom," presents the darkest view of corporatized education. He forecasts replacing live classroom teaching by technology that will change the campus from a thinking place into a pure workplace. Price predicts that video and computer technology will devalue the classroom experience by replacing live human classroom teachers altogether with staged and canned computer and video-instruction that can be cut, edited, centrally controlled and transmitted .

Price documents teacher and student reactions to the techno changes: "They ripped my classroom up," one teacher is quoted. "A lead teacher . . . described a macabre scene. A student teacher was sitting in front of a row of students. She was wearing a headset with an attached microphone. Each third grader had a microphone on the desk just in front of them. A curriculum expert from the University of Athens sat in the background, miles away, and transmitted corrective feedback to the student teacher."

Most students recoiled and retreated into silence. The teacher judged the experience of teaching on-camera as having little day-to-day value.

Most young university graduates who would be professors naively believe that entering academic life will offer them freedom and opportunity. But "Campus, Inc.," presents a picture of bleak exploitation and systemic, corporate manipulation of young academics. " ... instead [they] find themselves in an existence as throwaway 'adjunct' instructors, hired and then fired, adrift like the Ancient Mariner and forever roaming the earth in search of a tenured port."

Michael Parenti writes that if American campuses have had any instinct of linkage to the world of progressive activism, political action has been browbeaten out of them by decades of draconian surveillance. This assessment is seconded by Noam Chomsky who states, "all that has kept the vast university sector afloat was money from the Defense Department, which led to students and teachers becoming little more than an obedient home army providing technical and logistical support for a government that is at permanent war.

Essayist Jeff Lustig promotes faculty unionization, citing the victory of the California Faculty Association at California State University at Sacramento where he teaches. However, he also charts an alternative to the campus as a knowledge factory and vocational training school for the corporate world order. Lustig proposes a democratic university to train academics in the mold of philosophes of the Enlightenment who brought to society itself the fruits of their learning in the form of a radical criticism that nurtured history's earliest movements for revolutionary democracy.

American students as activists in a world struggle is an entirely new concept of a university mission that "Campus, Inc.," helps to popularize. Campuses could be a battleground against corporations that degrade

workers and wreck economies around the globe. Chapters detailng the success of student actions against international sweatshops, against a California attempt of communications companies to gain access to the campus market in return for provision of educational technology, and opposing foreign investment of human rights violator Burma.

"Campus, Inc.," can serve as a handbook for those in the forefront of mounting campus reisitance to presidents trying to run them like for-profit companies; who act like corporate CEO's by downsizing faculties, cheapening academic services and programs, and peddling access to whole student bodies to outside vendors and corporations.

Parents of high school students who read "Campus, Inc.," will become skeptical about computers in classrooms. They will get a powerful urge to protect their children from video cameras on campus. Also, they will anxiously wonder where to find a corporation free, good old fashioned liberal arts campus that can prepare their children to become mature, independent thinking and democracy defending citizens.

This compilation documents the disturbing trend of so-called "Corporatization" in US Higher Education...includes articles & commentary by Ronnie Dugger of "The Texas Observer" and by Ralph Nader, as well as by student activists themselves, documenting their successes and failures in combating "Corporatization" and struggling to make universities more deomcratic. If you liked David F. Noble's _Digital Diploma Mills_, you'll love this book. If you buy this book and have never heard of David Noble, read up on him also! Likewise, this book makes a nice companion piece to any number of books by Stanley Aronowitz on Higher Ed, especially his books _The Knowledge Factory_ and _The Last Good Job In America_.
Essential reading for exploited graduate students, academic librarians, part-time adjuncts, and all members of academia's proletarians.

Thanks to Geoffry White for putting together this book.

Applicable Hotel Sales know how. Ismail's breadth of hotel industry knowledge is astounding. Great reading for anyone interested in a hotel career.

I am in the hotel business and have been for 10 years. Mr. Ismail and one of his contributers, Mr. Sweetland both are dead on target with their advice and I recommend this book to anyone who is even thinking of getting into the Hospitality Business. This book is to be required reading for anyone aspiring to management in my hotel from this day forward. If you are considering purchacing a franchise, this is a must read!

It's awesome to see industry colleagues putting in print how the industry functions. It's comprehensive and enjoyable to read.

Critique W. Edwards Deming's work at your peril. After all, he probably set whatever standard you're using. This volume - revised by the author before his death in 1993 and partially based on his 1950s work with the Japanese - may strike the contemporary reader as a curious mixture of seminal process thinking and idiosyncratic ruminations on education. Portions read like an artifact of the early 1990s, but in this regard, however, his volume offers a unique perspective on a turning point in American economic history: the shift to the knowledge-based economy. We [...] recommend Deming's volume to any serious student of management thought, and all human resources professionals should familiarize themselves with his work, which set the foundations for many of the transformations now underway in the corporate world.

I have recommended this book in my previous review of "Out of the Crisis" to managers who are new to Deming's ideas, being a manual that will be easier and more effective to comprehend and follow. At the final stages of his life, Deming (1900-1993) wrote this epilogue of his career with an honest attitude and sincerity that I, along with many of my colleagues, admire. The frankness of his opinions regarding the (lack of) essentially fundamental leadership traits in today's modern global societies, in all vital areas at all organisational strata, are both valid and brave; the information voiced is made possible only through his previous experiences and status in the field.

If all managerial leaders of this world were to listen, be able to understand and follow Deming's ideas and underlying philosophies, societies will be enhanced beyond recognition in many aspects.

However, if you are a lone crusader in your organisation or even country, then you are in for hell... but do hang on tight, as the world generally hates challenges in any forms and situations... Implementing Deming's philosophies (as with any corporate strategy) involves innovation by the introduction of new ideas into an organisation, which includes rearrangements from jobs and roles to structures and systems; which people generally hate. Even within the book, Deming had already highlighted the various problems to that, and had always emphasised on EDUCATION of the organisation, rather than decreed training to extinguish corporate flames, for he had said:

"Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge."

- W. Edwards Deming 12th September 1993

This is my humble tribute to a great man.

This is the last book written by Dr. Deming before his death in 1993 at the age of 93. Dr. Deming is perhaps best known for the work he did in Japan at the end of World War II, and his famous 14 points. In this book Dr. Deming introduces his System of Profound Knowledge, which consists of: An understanding of Systems,A Theory of Knowledge, An understanding of Variation and Psychology Dr. Deming defines a system as: "A series of interdependent components that try to work together to achieve the aim of the system." The system must have an aim, without an aim there is not system. Dr. Deming explains variation as follows: All systems have some variation in them. The secret is to know what kind of variation is occuring and to respond accordingly. Common cause variation is the random variation tha occurs in any system. Special cause variation is a result of something outside the system acting on the system. An example would be that it normally takes you 25 minutes to drive to work, give or take a few minutes, but this morning, because of an accident the commute required 50 minutes. The normal drive time, with variation represents common cause variation, while the accident represents special cause variation. A theory of Knowledge is a way of doing experiments, or defining a mind set. According to Dr. Deming without theory no learning takes place. He give an example of a rooster that has a theory that he causes the sun to rise because he gets up early and crows. One morning he forgets to crow. The sun rises anyway. While the rooster's theory is blown out of the water he has learned that he is not responsible for causing the sun to rise and in the future he can sleep in. Dr. Deming's discussion on psychology has to do with the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. His basic theory is that people enter the world motivated to learn and do well and that the excessive use of extrinsic motivation kills the intrinsic motivation. In this book Dr. Deming also discusses in some detail his famous Red Beads Experiment which he uses to demonstrate the power of systems and how they victimize the people working in them.

This 238 page book is loaded with the facts we all need to intelligently make final arrangements for our loved ones, or pre-need for ourselves. Everyone should read this book as it guides you and makes it easier for you to make funeral arrangements. It will help you arrange for the most appropriate funeral cost-effectively, and you'll avoid the pitfalls that can occur at your time of need. Major topics include: Caskets, embalming, vaults, visiting the mortuary, memorial gardens, FTC rules, paying for the funeral, how to deal with the funeral director and more. It exposes rip-offs, and exposes some of the tactics used that can result in your spending more than is necessary. Most funeral directors are very helpful and honest at your time of need. This book will help you make the decisions that must be made. It is written by someone well experienced in the field, and is written honestly and with wit. You will gain by reading this book. It WILL help you get through a difficult period.

I quite enjoyed this book. I have been interested in the funeral industry as my father was once a mortician. I believe that anyone who wants to educate themselves about the industry should read this expose.

Profits of Death is tremendously well-written and presents important information that affects each of us at some point in our lives. No one wants to think about death, but Darryl presents his information in an empowering, yet "light" and somewhat entertaining manner. A must read for everyone! Darryl not only provides readers with insights into what goes on when you plan a funeral, but provides specific tips to prevent one from being scammed.

I work in the human resource department of a large school system in Virginia. After reading this book I have a new perspective on my job. Mr. Holland makes some very valid points and has me rethinking the way our school district hires teachers. This book should be a MUST read for ALL Administrators in the education field be it Principals, Superintendents of School Districts, the Head of Human Resources or the people in HR who do the actual hiring. Teachers should read this book to see that there are alternatives to traditional public education and that while NCLB will change things for them, all is not lost. So even if you disagree with the theory Mr. Holland present, reading this book should open your mind to the different approaches to the public vs. private education debate.

Again, an insightful book that you should read if you are in the education field in any manner.

Kristi Hurd

REVIEW

To Build a Better Teacher
The Emergence of a Competitive Education Industry
By Robert Gray Holland

Written by J. E. Stone, Education Consumers ClearingHouse

Robert Gray Holland is a former columnist and editor for the Richmond Times- Dispatch. He has won the H. L. Menken Award for incisive writing on education.

His analysis of how teachers are trained and its relationship to public education's failings reflect that heritage. There is no better overview of the issue available today.

Holland's assessment revolves around what most people would find a surprising observation: Teachers and schools are substantially less effective than they might otherwise be because almost all teacher training programs advocate a teacher-as-facilitator approach to teaching. Practically every educational fad of the last eighty or so years has been a variant of this approach. It works, but only under ideal circumstances.

Teachers know that there is a problem. Despite their varied situations and backgrounds, the teachers Holland interviews see a disconnect between the training they receive and the realities they confront in the classroom. All recognize that classroom realities require them to manage student learning and behavior to a far greater extent than theory suggests.

Of particular importance to policymakers, Holland explains how schools of education, state and national accrediting bodies, and teacher licensure agencies effectively control access to the teaching profession and resist reform. As the system currently works, anyone who would become a teacher has to undergo indoctrination in teacher-as-facilitator theory.

Especially useful is his account of the battle between the forces of change and defenders of the status quo. Both call themselves reformers. Defenders of the status quo, however, want to improve the current system through greater centralization and control while those who want change seek decentralization and the emergence of alternatives to the teacher-as-facilitator orthodoxy. Holland compares the clash to the struggle for baseball supremacy between the NY Yankees and the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks.

Holland discusses policy alternatives as well as the advantages of training practices such as "mentoring" as a means of bringing new teachers online. Equally useful is his discussion of value-added assessment as a means of monitoring teacher performance. Unlike many proponents of teacher accountability, Holland recognizes the huge advantage of tracking the value-added achievement gains of individual students rather than simply comparing test score averages for comparable groups.

In the end, Holland suggests that teacher preparation and public school outcomes could be substantially improved by mixing New Jersey's teacher certification policies with Tennessee's value-added accountability system. Both are tried and proven.

Agree or disagree, Holland's case is well put and clearly worth a read.

This Book is Excellent!

Currently I'm writing about with the title of "How to be a Professional Presenter".

For reference, I've read dozens of books on presentation,

and with no doubt this is the best book I could find.

Very well Organized and Clear, Simple and most of all Powerful!

HOW TO BUY A CAR WITHOUT GETTING TAKEN FOR A RIDE

This book provides an "insider's view" of exactly what goes on when auto dealership managers and their salespeople set out to deceive and defraud the public. The author, an attorney who also worked as an auto salesperson and manager for five years, takes the reader step-by-step through the process of victimization from the moment the buyer first enters the dealership until he or she finally walks out--sometimes hours later--"signed, fleeced, and laid away," as the dealers so aptly put it.

These startling revelations will confirm the public's worst fears--from the enticement of false and misleading advertising to the devious machinations of the finance department to the time the buyer goes back for repairs. The reader learns that the confusion, distortion, intimidation, and in many instances actual fraud, are practices condoned and encouraged by management. Mr. Rothman pulls no punches in exposing the secret business policies--many of which are illegal--in order to educate the public to the tricks they will inevitably encounter.

Most importantly, the author hopes (as will the reader) that the information provided will not only help the prospective buyer find his or her way through the mine field of auto dealerships, but will prove to be an impetus for legislative reform that is long overdue.