kitchen table math, the sequel: stickiness

Thursday, April 12, 2007

stickiness



I mentioned this book a few weeks back, and am finally getting a link posted:

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

It's terrific.

the website

Made to Stick in TIME Magazine

Made to Stick in U.S. News


U.S. News

It seems to happen every day. A meeting is called to outline a new strategy or sales plan. Down go the lights and up goes the PowerPoint. Strange phrases appear—"unlocking shareholder value," "technology-focused innovation," "maximizing utility." (What does that mean?) Lists of numbers come and go. Bullet point by bullet point, the company's goals float across the screen.


I think we can all agree that concepts like "technology-focused innovation" are not made to stick.

Of course, I would have said the same thing about activating prior knowledge and constructing your own knowledge.

So don't listen to me.

5 comments:

Instructivist said...

"Of course, I would have said the same thing about activating prior knowledge..."

Hey, don't knock activating prior knowledge. It's a good teaching method. You need to find out what students know (usually next to nothing) and build on it. If you don't do that and connect, you'll be talking to a wall.

+++++

On a completely unrelated matter.

It's baffling to me how mighty and tech savvy Google can't fix blogger amnesia. I find it annoying that I have to log in each time I want to post something.

Catherine Johnson said...

what is with Google?

we never did get the recent comments thingamajig fixed

Anonymous said...

I am definitely going to read this book, but I'm having trouble keeping up with all the reading assignments on this blog.

Right now, I'm halfway through The Power Broker. It's excellent.

Catherine Johnson said...

Is that the Moses book??

oh gosh; yes it is

I MUST read that book.

Ed learned so much from it.

Catherine Johnson said...

You can get quite a lot of what you need from Made to Stick in the 3 articles linked to on the site.

The principles they discuss are fairly common sense once you read about them. They're not obvious, and yet they are common sense.