Interview with Shelley Hayduck of Brain Technologies

I had the pleasure today of interviewing Shelley Hayduck from Brain Technologies, the developer of the PersonalBrain and BrainEKP. During the interview I had the opportunity to ask Shelley about the PersonalBrain and how it is being used to help solve real world problems. The PersonalBrain is a very unique software application that is ideal for information and knowledge management. The underlying technology allows you to create linkages to your thoughts, files, folders, and URL's in a very quick searchable database. If you would like to try out the PersonalBrain just go to their website and download the free version. I hope you enjoy this interview!

If you are interested in meeting Shelley, she will be presenting at the IQ Visual Mapping Conference on October 2-3, 2008. If you are a PersonalBrain user then please consider attending the conference, and who knows maybe there will be some new announcements:-)

Draggable Math

For the past couple of months I have been actively engaged working on the INCLUDE Grant which focuses on improving math instruction and math achievement in grades 5-7. The school districts that won the competitive grants were able to purchase computers, interactive whiteboards, software, as well as extensive training in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and its implementation in the classroom. All of the districts that I have worked with have also had professional development from math educators with extensive classroom experience. I have the opportunity to work with the teachers on UDL Theory and practice in the classroom as well as teaching them how to use scan and read technologies as required by the grant. While I was training last week with my colleague Roz, she showed me the Draggable Math site which really blew me away. It is incredible to think of all the fantastic websites that allow students to show us what they know which was once the province of commercial software. The Draggable Math website lets students solve addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems by dragging numbers from the side panel to the worksheet grid. Students are able to show all of their work as if they did it with pencil and paper. When I first saw the application on the web site it reminded me of Mathpad from Intellitools. Draggable Math is a wonderful web site for students who have poor fine motor control and need to work on their computation skills. Draggable Math allows students to show all of their work as if they were solving it with pencil and paper. Take a look at the site and I'm sure you will be as impressed as I was when I was introduced to it. Enjoy!

Twitter Acquires Summize

For all of your Twitter users you will be happy to hear that Twitter has acquired Summize a search engine which lets you search through Twitter for key words. I have been using it to track certain keywords that others are twittering about to keep up with the conversations. Try it and let me know what you think. I have found the Twitter Search engine to be very quick and returns very relevant twitter posts. Give it a try when you have the chance.

Expedia Service - Horrible - Don't Use Them

The title really says it all, but here was my experience ...

I booked tickets for several one-way hops through different cities in a long week of travel on several airlines through Expedia. I needed to make a change to one of the legs and there's no way to do that online, so I called Expedia customer service. For a dual fee - both Expedia and the airline charge a fee for changing the ticket they changed the leg. What I didn't realize is that the customer disservice representative also change the other flights in my itinerary. She read the flight times over the phone very quickly to me (at the time I was wondering why she was bothering to mention the other flights) and I stopped her on the one that had changed and asked her what it was - and yes, she got that one right. The rest she changed from evening flights to early morning flights.

Unfortunately, I didn't catch that she had made that change until I was looking at what time my flight left in the morning of my second day - whoops - I missed the flight already. So I call Expedia. I'm on hold forever and then the rep tells me that, yes, they can see what happened, but that there's nothing they can do about it. I should talk to the airline. I asked repeatedly to talk to the supervisor or someone who would have authority to do something about this (note: the whole time I'm at a client site with them waiting for me to resolve this). The rep absolutely refused to put the supervisor on the phone. Literally refused. They kept refusing and saying there's nothing we can do until I was actually pretty mad and expressing that to the rep.

I finally asked, "So what you are telling me right now is 'screw you mr. customer' and 'you cannot speak to anyone else'." And he said, "Sorry for the situation."

Yikes! I'm still somewhat shocked.

Delta (the airline involved) did handle the situation at a cost of $150 per leg of the journey in order to yank the reservations back from Expedia.

By the way - total time - 90 minutes - 60 minutes with Expedia being put on hold while the rep talked to people. And 30 minutes with Delta waiting for them to answer and then to make changes. My client was understanding about the situation - but that made things uncomfortable to say the least.

From now on, it's go direct with the airline for me. And make sure I tell everyone that Expedia should absolutely, under no circumstances be paid anything. Go ahead and look up travel arrangements, but book direct.

I'm also struggling a bit to figure out what I can and should do here.


By the way - I'm not alone. I did a quick search for Expedia Service and found lots of examples - actually - I didn't see anything that indicates a good experience:

Expedia: Customer Service Shortcomings - Associated Content
Expedia Bad Customer Service

Free Textbooks

Normally when a PR person approaches me with a story, I'm not all that interested, but this one struck me as a pretty interesting development, so I thought I'd put out the information with a bit of commentary.

Flat World Knowledge, a publisher of free and open college textbooks, today announced it will soon begin the nation’s largest in-classroom test of open college textbooks. The nationwide beta test of its books involves hundreds of students from 15 colleges and universities across the United States. Flat World Knowledge’s free and open textbooks will replace traditional textbooks in a single class or class section at each participating institution. The beta test begins this August and will run through the completion of the Fall 2008 semester.

Flat World Knowledge has built a business model around offering free textbooks to college students. Through their open platform, students will have access to complete textbooks free of charge, with the option to purchase affordable alternate formats of the content (i.e. print & audio versions of the text, podcast study guides, mobile phone flash cards, etc.).

Flat World Knowledge’s mission is to take the best characteristics of traditional textbook publishing - such as expert-written, peer-reviewed and professionally edited texts -- and then flip the old model on its head. Flat World’s books will be open for faculty to customize, and free to students online. Flat World and its authors earn compensation by offering affordable choices to students beyond the free online book, from printed textbooks for under $30 (printed-on-demand), to audio books for under $20, to downloadable and printable files by the chapter, and more. The company supplements its texts with low-priced study aids like DRM-free podcast study guides, digital flash cards, interactive practice quizzes, and more.

Free textbooks. Pretty cool. I wonder if they can make money with the alternative models. If you look at companies like Cramster that provide community and answers to text book problems - often oriented around particular college texts without the direct involvement of the publisher, then you have to believe that there will be communities around text books emerging and likely you can monetize off of that. Just not sure if it will be the publishers.

Eric Frank, Flat World Knowledge co-founder and chief marketing officer. “This new model of textbook publishing will result in increased choices and dramatically lower costs for students. It can enhance learning by giving instructors more control over content, and by leveraging the power of social learning networks around content. Between the oligopolistic practices of the big publishers on one end of the spectrum, and piracy on the other, lies a better solution – open textbooks.”

There's quite a few things in between - and there's also social text books. But this would seem to be a good approach for publishers to stay relevant in a Wiki world. It will be interesting to see what happens.

INTELLIGENT VISUAL MAPPING CONFERENCE

INTELLIGENT VISUAL MAPPING CONFERENCE:

October 2^nd and 3^rd 2008

AT:

COLLEGE of ST ELIZABETH, MORRISTOWN, NEW JERSEY

·Become a more visually-oriented systems thinker, decision maker and problem solver.

· Increase your worth value to your clients, colleagues and employer.

· Take your information management strategies to a higher level of effectiveness.

· Streamline your business processes and procedures, becoming lean and effective.

· Discover how to develop a comprehensive and effective marketing plan utilizing visual mapping.

· Network with and learn best practices from visual mapping thought leaders.

· Realize your information management potential and conquer information inertia.

· Become a superior business manager who can utilize and integrate linear and non-linear information.

· Understand the monetized value of your business information economy.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO EXPERIENCE THIS SUCCESS:

DON’T REGISTER AT: https://www.regonline.com/checkin.asp?eventid=608611

Interested in trying Crossloop?

I recently came across a free screensharing tool called Crossloop that lets you share your computer screen and take control of the other person's computer. I am interested in trying it out with someone to see how well it works. To get started you need to download a free copy of Crossloop from their website. It was easy to download and install. Once you have it downloaded shoot me an email so we can see how well it works.