To Give or to Get?

I teach a fourth grade religious school class every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning. Yesterday afternoon I was in the middle of teaching and I remembered that I had not done something I promised to do. Bob Schwartz, our business development guy, had asked me to schedule a meeting with somebody he met who was interested in our company. Beth Kahn, our office administrator, schedules all of my meetings and I had forgotten to speak with Beth. So, in the middle of class I called Beth and asked her to schedule the meeting.

Why is this such a big deal?

Michigan's economy is one of the worst economies, if not the worst economy, in the nation. Many, many people are unemployed, particularly those who used to work at one of the car companies, which supported Michigan's economy for a very long time. Obviously when an industry that supports a local economy suffers, as the automobile industry has suffered, other local industries suffer as well. The individual with whom Bob wanted me to speak used to work at one of the automobile industries. (I'm not certain what he did there, but my guess is he worked on an assembly line.) After working for twenty years he decided that he wanted to pursue a lifelong dream and become a writer and speaker. First, he earned both an associates degree and a B.A. I was most intrigued after Bob showed me a book that this individual wrote. Wow!! The title of the book is "Grade Grabbers: Improve Your GPA."

I suspect that this individual is interested in a job. But, even though my schedule has gotten pretty busy, I'm eager to sit down with somebody who decided after twenty years on a job to go back and get a college degree and then wrote a book. Without even having met this individual yet, he sounds rather interesting.

So, why did I call my office in the middle of teaching? I suspected that this individual might be waiting for a phone call from my office. I know that if I was in his situation I would be anxious. My thought was why make him wait. Alleviate his anxiety. After I got off the phone, I explained to my students why I had made the phone call. I told them the old adage that if you give somebody a fish you feed them for a day but if you teach somebody to fish you give them the skills of feeding themselves for a lifetime. If this guy is as much of a go getter as he sounds, then I would have no problem in giving him a job.

In Judaism, the greatest act of charity is giving somebody a job. Yet, thinking about this fact from my chair, I'm wondering why this is the case. I don't give people jobs to be generous. (I'm simply not in that kind of a position.) Rather, I give people jobs so that they can help my company grow and be successful. Perhaps this is selfish, not charitable? Can selfishness and charity compliment one another? I'm not sure but it sounds like an interesting question, at least to me.

A Freelancing Organization

This past Wednesday Pass-Ed held it's weekly strategy meeting. During the meeting I made the following point: One way to think about Pass-Ed is as a freelance organization. In other words, as an organization we do what freelancers do but on a significantly larger scale. I then challenged my staff to consider what differentiates us from individual freelancers.

Two important points came up:
First, we have resources available that individuals simply could not have. Rather than asking a single individual to do everything we divide up the work according to expertise. So, if we have a project that calls for both writing and animation, we'll divide the work appropriately. Furthermore, we always seek advice as to how to improve our content development from practicing our teacher associates, practicing classroom teachers whom we've contracted with to specifically fulfill this advisory function.

Second, the same resources that make us a valuable partner to publishing houses and other organizations needing K-12 educational content, makes us a great place to work for developers. We ask them to work to their expertise and they're supported in other areas, collaboratively. Furthermore, unlike so many freelancers who must spend a large portion of their time looking for new business, our developers don't have to do this. Instead our sales and marketing team gets the business for them. This means that they get more time to do what they want to be doing.

I'm in the process of developing a tri-fold brochure about our organization. (We have rented an exhibit booth at the Association for Educational Publishers' annual summit, in early June, in Washington, D.C. and we'd like to be able to distribute this tri-fold.) Well, after writing this blog post, I think I've just written the first draft for one of the tri-folds. It seems like a useful explanation of what we do.

International Reading Association Conference

One of the things that I really enjoy (at least some of the time) about being the head of a company is the travel. I get to meet many interesting people as I travel across the country. Earlier this week I was at the International Reading Association annual convention in Atlanta.

I was amazed at how few companies were promoting products related to technology. While I spoke to many people who advocated the importance of developing more web-based products, few companies were selling these kinds of products. However, more companies had such products this year than last year. My guess: Within six years the exhibition hall will be filled with technology products. One only has to look at the report, "America's Digital Schools, 2008" to recognize that the use of computer technology in U.S. schools has dramatically increased over the last couple of years.

I had one dominant thought as I perused the booths in the exhibit hall. Pass-Ed is in a wonderul position to help publishing companies reposition themselves to take advantage of opportunities in the digital world. As I write this blog post, one of our staff members is sitting across the hall working on a flash development project, another is developing a transcript for a training video, and still a third is working on educational content for a website partner.

The next few years do promise to be very exciting in the educational publishing industry.

A New Logo

I'm thrilled to introduce Pass-Ed's new logo to the world.

There's something about a bridge that has intrigued me since I started to think about education from what I hope is a sophisticated perspective. I've always thought that good teachers connect important content matter and students. They develop bridges. The best teachers know how to construct lots of individual bridges so each student can interact with subject matter in meaningful ways.

Bob Schwartz, Pass-Ed's new head of sales and marketing, and I just had a discussion about the role of a bridge from a publishing perspective. I suggested that a quality publisher might be compared to an automobile. People need cars to drive across bridges. But a car without a driver, or published material without a teacher, is pointless. I'm not sure how much I like this metaphor but it's an idea.

I'm certainly not willing to equate a driver and a teacher. For the best teachers know that students often learn best when they are encouraged to follow their own chains of thought and motivations. Perhaps in these cases, the published content becomes both a car and a driver. Here's a current example: Dan Wilson, an intern with our company, is currently developing an activity considering Western expansion using Google Earth, for a client. The KML file includes video, pictorial images, prose, and critical thinking questions among numerous other content. Dan's also developed activities to engage students. Students might enjoy interacting with this content at their own pace and in their own methods. Too much teacher guidance might hinder the learning experience, since it's a student centered activity. Pass-Ed's content has become both driver and car. The content is actively enabling students to interact with important ideas about Westward Expansion. The content is serving as a bridge.

Judging a Book by its Cover

Sometimes you should judge a book by its cover. This is especially true of Chip and Dan Heath's new book, "Made to Stick." The book presents a paradigm for understanding why some ideas attract a following and others don't. You can certainly understand why somebody would pick up this book - they stick to the duct tape.

After reading this book, I'll never look at velcro in the same way again. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that one side of the velcro has dozens and dozens of little hooks that catch on to threads on the other end. Go ahead and try and see those hooks.

As the founder and CEO of Pass-Ed I'm constantly thinking about hooks. What can my organization do to try and catch the attention of others? What can we do to make people give us a second look? We need to have a great story to tell - a story that makes people want to listen.

Just what is that story? It's one thing to write that our company produces content in all major subject areas for both print and digital venues, as we've been writing. However, that story isn't going to inherently keep people's attention, unless of course they recognize a need for content and don't have the ability to produce their own content.

Perhaps the story that will cling to people's attention is that of a little boy who couldn't speak properly. This cute little five year old had such a hard time talking that he pronounced "biurthday party" as "diddy daddy." Given this child's gross motor skill deficits he was in special education through first grade and in speech therapy through junior high school. He did wonder if he had the skills to succeed and often felt as if he did not. This kid never scored a basket in a basketball game or hit the ball out of the infield. But, he did enter an Ivy League school and go on to pursue his doctorate in education at one of the top schools of education in the country. This kid, now an adult, still wonders if people are listening to him. After all they certainly had a hard time listening to him when they couldn't understand him. Consequently, he recognizes that students must learn to respect one another, listen to one another, and challenge one another to think critically as they discuss important ideas. This kid has built an educational development company that promotes healthy interaction between students, an interaction that promotes respect and development of self confidence. Following in the footsteps of his own teachers, this kid has worked hard to develop resources to help students take advantage of their strengths and overcome their weaknesses.

This is my true story.

I wonder if my story has the necessary hooks to make people want to pay attention?

The title of this blog post, Judging a Book by It's Cover, makes sense to me. Because my story is truly the cover of a book. Just because I have this story does not mean that my organization produces rich content of the highest quality. But, will my story make people take a second look?

Pass-Ed

I've been writing this blog for almost two years and the focus of the blog has changed more than twice. However, one thing has remained consistent throughout the entire two year period - the author, me, has been working hard to establish an educational development company that works with publishers and other organizations needing content to produce that content. Fortunatetly, I've met with some success and am quickly on the way to generating our first million dollars in revenue for a single year.

A year ago somebody told me that the key difference between a $250,000 company and a million dollar company is that in a smaller company the owner has to keep in going. In a little larger company there are staff members to take care of the day to day management. I'm lucky to have hired several wonderful people who are going to help Pass-Ed become a multi-million dollar company. In many regards, I get to take on the role of cheerleader as my staff runs the organization.

As a new business owner I am constantly thinking about different ideas, some personal and others organizational. I am going to try and make this blog a site where I can write about these ideas. I'll also write about books that I'm reading in an effort to make myself the best educational business leader that I can be. Fortunately, I've been able to carve out a little niche for myself in which I can read twenty or twenty five pages a day. (I do this as I exercise, ride a stationary bicycle, in the morning. It's a great way to get two important things done.)

Before ending today's post, I want to write one important disclosure. In writing this blog, I hope that I put forth ideas to which others can relate. Some of these ideas might even prove helpful to others. But, I do not claim to be a brilliant business guy. Some of my ideas will likely crash and burn. However, hopefully my readers will interact with me and help me make my ideas even stronger.

Economics: China vs. USA

I'd love to get some informed feedback on the following ideas:

In 2006, the last year for which statistics are available, China’s Gross Domestic Product was $10.21 trillion, the second largest GDP in the world, after the United States. For the past twenty five years, China’s annual GDP has grown faster than any other major nation, at the fast rate of 10%. China’s per capita income has also grown quickly, at 8% over the last three decades. In contrast to China, the GDP of the United States only grew at approximately 2.2% for the same time period. Per capita income in the United States grew at approximately 1.3%.

	GDP	GDP Growth	GDP Per Capita	Per Capita Income Growth
USA	$13.86 Trillion	2.2%	$46,000	1.3%
China	$10.21 Trillion	10%	$7,800	8%

Imagine that the first and third columns in this table did not exist. We could conclude with question that China’s economy was far superior to that of the United States. Even if we add in the first column, GDP, we can see that China is catching up to the United States fast. Within six years, China’s GDP will be greater than the U.S.’s. When today’s kindergarteners are in middle school, the U.S.A. will no longer have the largest GDP in the world. China’s economy will be larger than our own. Granted, the per-capita income in the United States will remain higher than the per capita income in China for the next twenty eight years, if everything remains consistent. But, twenty eight years is not a very long time. Just think about the fact that today’s infants will be starting to raise their own families when China’s per capita income passes our own, if everything remains consistent.

McCain Wins

I've posted a series of discussion questions related to Senator McCain capturing the Republican nomination here.

Here I want to ask how educators might use modern technology to help students understand the Presidential elections. You might consider having students read about the candidates' backgrounds on Wikipedia. But, even better challenge students to find something interesting about a candidate that they could add to his/her wikipedia profile. Where could students look online to find out this interesting information? Would it be possible to call somebody for some help in this regard?

Newsweek's educational site has a fantastic collection of lessons related to this year's elections. Though it's only open to members, it has a lot to offer.

What else can you think of?

ArchieMD

Today I wrote about a Washington Post article entitled, "Immune Systems Increasingly on Attack" on my SchoolNet blog. The article discusses possible reasons why children have so many more allergies today than they had in the past.

I'm not a scientist but I do have horrible allergies. Sometimes when my nose is irritated I'm wondering what is really happening. Why does it hurt me?

So, how does this relate to modern technology?

Very simply, one technology company, ArchieMD has developed what it describes as "created the most scientifically credible library of health and science imagery in the world. Comprising six terabytes of electronic data, the library consists of several thousand images and high quality 3-D animations." Several weeks ago, while in Florida, I had the opportunity to meet with folks at this company. They showed me some of their animations and one word describes them: Incredible!! Students of all ages could benefit from this content. The only caveat is that the content is not free. In this age, of Web 2.0, so much content is free. But, does content have to be free for people to use it?

In five years will content have to be free for people to use it?

Tutor.com

Take a look at a discussion starter that I just had posted on Tutor.com's website. If you are not familiar with Tutor.com it is a high quality on-line tutoring service.

Michael Eisner and Web Television

I have posted a series of questions about a New York Times article entitled, "The Very Model of a Modern Media Mogul," here.

The article prompts me to think about the importance of writing.

When we ask students to interpret literature, be it the written word or a movie, we ask them to critically consider a message. We ask them to think. These thinking skills can help students understand and react to numerous different situations that they'll encounter throughout life.

The written word, typically contained in books, provide a useful venue for challenging our students to think in this way. The written word is important, right?

Well actually, I can't help but wonder if books actually are as important to the future as they are to the present. Certainly Gutenberg made it very easy to convey messages through the written word. But, would the written word have been as important and useful if people could have developed and easily communicated messages contained in other types of media, as early as they could spread writing?

My guess is that if people could have developed multi-media messages hundreds of years ago, messages containing spoken word, music, and moving pictures hundreds of years ago, the written word would not have gained its current importance. Using these multi-media messages we still could have taught the importance of literary analysis and critical thinking. Instead of interpreting written words, we'd be interpreting movies. Many would certainly find this aesthetically pleasing.

My guess: In time the written word will become less prevalent in schools. Video will increasingly take its place.

What do you think?