Change or Die (Fast Company)

Why do (and don't) people change? This is a great article on this question. Here are some quotes.

"Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear," he [Dr. Dean Ornish] says.

The big challenge in trying to change how people think is that their minds rely on frames, not facts.

"When one is addressing a diverse or heterogeneous audience," he [Howard Gardner] says, "the story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences."

Radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often easier for people than small, incremental ones.

Xerox now holds "alignment workshops" that ask middle managers -- the people who make processes work -- to outline the ways its systems could inhibit its agendas for change.

"Everyone needs a new project instead of always being in a bin," Merzenich says. "A fifth-day strategy doesn't sacrifice your core ability but keeps you rejuvenated. In a company, you have to worry about rejuvenation at every level. So ideally you deliberately construct new challenges. For every individual, you need complex new learning. Innovation comes about when people are enabled to use their full brains and intelligence instead of being put in boxes and controlled."

Fast Company, May 2005, p. 53+: Change or Die

Plagiarism

In the fall I will have a PR campaign for SafeAssignment and original writing. This normally goes as Plagiarism. As such I will need to collect some materials to draw on when creating the PR campaign. Here is a collection of links I have found related to Plagiarism. Rather than post each one individually, I am going to keep editing this entry.

• Plagiarism - Nice, short article, directed at students to define plagiarism and suggest ways to avoid it.
• Getting It Done Without Getting in Trouble: Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due - Student workshop offered at UM by ArC
• Has the Internet led to increased plagiarism in Higher Education? - Fact sheet including statistics and quotes
• Student Rebel Beats McGill in Essay Fight - Article on a student that refused to submit his paper to TurnItIn.com.
• Composition Symposium 2002: "Punishing Forgery, Preventing Plagiarism, and Teaching to Motivate" with Rebecca Moore Howard - Flyer for UM Composition workshop
• Plagiarism: What Should a Teacher Do? - Written for teachers asking them to differentiate between fraud, patchwriting, failure to cite, and failure to quote, and giving them a clear set of steps to follow to try to understand the students writing process and help them meet your expectations.
• Academic Dishonesty, Plagiarism, and the Use of Secondary Sources: A Guide for Instructors in the Syracuse University Writing Program - Draws on the WPA Statement on Best Practices to provide guidance to writing instructors at Syracuse.
• Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach. by Rebecca Moore Howard - Article to guide us from the mass hysteria surrounding the plagiarism issue. Available through the link above for subscribers of The Chronicle in Higher Education. Available from the Univ. of Miami campus through ProQuest on IbisWeb
  

Schools with Required Laptop Computers

Wired Campus reported on a site that has details on schools that require laptop computers. It lists details like when they started and what programs have the requirement.

Blog: Wired Campus Blog: Tracking a Trend Toward Required Laptop Computers

List: Colleges & Universities with Laptop or Notebook Computer Initiatives

[ED-TECH] W32.Sober.O@mm

I sent out a notice earlier today about strange e-mail I was getting with attachments like account_info.zip, mail_info.zip, and our_secret.zip.  THIS IS A WORM.  Delete them.

 

Before I sent out that notice I checked Symantec to see if they had anything about a new virus.  That is very easy for me to do because the most recent viruses are listed on my www.snurl.com/mysecurity web page.  There was nothing there.  I just checked again, after dealing with the 20-30 infected messages I have gotten today, and Symantec has now named the worm, W32.Sobor.O@mm, and is studying it.  They don't know much about it yet.  You can follow their progress at:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.sober.o@mm.html

 

If you think you may have opened one of the attachments you probably should turn off your computer and wait for a removal program to be created.  It will be shown automatically on the www.snurl.com/mysecurity page when it is available. 

 

Just what we need as finals week starts, right?

 

Bill Vilberg

305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)

 

[ED-TECH] Worms?

I just got two strange e-mails. If you get something that looks strange, DO NOT OPEN IT! Here are the details on my two. I have also heard from someone else that they got one with my e-mail address on it. They were smart and replied to the message to ask me if it was legit. I let them know that I had not sent it. If you are not sure of a message either delete it or send a message to the alleged sender to see if it is real. BE SAFE!

Subject: Registration Confirmation
Allegedly from: register@umiami.ir.miami.edu
Attachment: account_info.zip

Subject: Your email was blocked
Allegedly from: hostmaster@intervideoinc.com
Attachment: mail_info.zip

Bill Vilberg
305-284-3949 (work); 786-218-3052 (cell); 305-255-9138 (home)