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If they respond with "But don't you like my idea?" or "You mean you don't want to help me?" respond with something like "I haven't done enough research to know if the idea is good or not, and it's really hard to predict how the market is going to go, especially in technology. I think it'd be awesome if you built this thing... I just can't offer much more than moral support, high-fives, and maybe a little bit of advice. If you really want someone to build this, try hiring a freelancer on ODesk... I just can't make the time right now."
Don't worry about whether the idea sucks; very few ideas survive through the full development of the product, and very few of these people will follow-through.
If they keep pushing, end the conversation with "Look, you're my friend, but I'd much rather we stay friends than become business partners." or "Look: I'm choosing to spend my time on my projects. This doesn't mean I don't like you, or that I dislike the idea; it just means that I'm not the guy to build it for you. I'll gladly point you to resources, or show you where to go to hire a programmer, but this is your project, and you should be the one to build it."
*Obviously, you'd have to compile a list like this, but that should be relatively easy to do.
I don't mean this to disparage teachers as a whole. But the power rush is pretty substantial, if one lets it take hold.
I grew up an unabashed geek in the midwest, and felt no more social isolation than anyone else in my peer group at school.
Some of this was because I played sports (not well, but this was a relatively small school so I wasn't going to get cut). Most of it, came down to two factors:
1) I didn't react to taunting, teasing, name-calling, or even the occasional bits of violence. I only really had to deal with this in 8th and 9th grade, but those who would do such things figured out after a while that I wasn't going to give them any satisfaction.
2) My peers respected people who were good at things. I was good at things (our academic bowl team won nationals, for example, and I had several short stories published). In fact, I'd go so far as to say most people respect people who are good at things, especially if that "good at things" is immediate and visible and public.
Frankly, if schools/teachers adopted a broader view of "success", and if they provided a chance for students to showcase their successes in a public fashion (I'm talking actual successes here, rather than "Congratulations! You're made of carbon, and that makes you special!" psuedo-successes designed to prop up self-esteem), a lot of the bullying would probably stop.
Then, in class the next day, the teacher answers any questions, briefly covers any difficult concepts, and they can spend the rest of the class-time engaging with each other instead of lecturing.
My suspicion (disclaimer: I was, at one point, a teacher) is that if you want people to use this service, you'll have to show how it improves instruction, and you'll have to do so in much more concrete terms than you have here.
That said, if I ever have a classroom of my own again, I can see myself using this tool when appropriate.
I noticed some places where I think I could clean up and improve the writing. Do you mind if I take a stab at it?
Personally, I enjoy having students come up to the whiteboard. But when we do so, I present it as the student at the board is a representative of the class. The whole thing is collaborative, and I have students who are sitting explain what the student at the board is doing.
What this means is that students who know what's going on are able to take the lead (when at the board), whereas students who are less confident can rely a bit on their classmates. The whole time, I stress "Look, we're learning new stuff and it's going to be challenging. Work together and you'll get it." This makes a different vibe than if we just sat and watched before I determine if the answer is correct or incorrect.
I don't use this for individual assessment, and I don't attach any guilt or shame. It's purely done to get students working in the Zone of Proximal Development and to get someone other than me talking.
If the start of the book is any indicator, it's a great resource.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" had a similar effect, though with the Classicist/Romanticist split more than any other part of the book. Also: "Itty-bitty rules for itty-bitty people" made quite a few things make sense.
Some of this gets filed under "Growth Prospects", and some of it gets filed under "Autonomy". If your employees have challenging and/or meaningful things to work on, and an environment where they feel they'll be successful, that makes it quite a bit easier to stick around.
Not to say that grunt work is bad, but your employees who need a larger motivation than "It's my job" or "It's how I earn money" need to see how the work they do contributes to something larger than the stack of paperwork on their desk.
Alternatively: $50 seems to me like a pretty reachable number, while still being large enough that it's not immediately reachable.
Though I won't presume to know the OP's motivations.
I'd never heard that semantic sense of "rake" before, and felt somewhat scandalized that "hoe" would be a response on national television (while in high school, I felt great affinity toward the puritans).
In fact, this is a service I'd gladly pay for if the folks at Crocodoc would give me a way to do so.
When I taught "Gatsby", I did so in a Language & Rhetoric course. Instead of doing the standard New Critical Theory thing, we evaluated the statements Nick presents as factual, particularly those he makes about himself and about Gatsby, with the larger goal of 1) building a broader understanding of character as it relates to language and the presentation of the self, and 2) looking for inconsistencies (the end of Ch. 3, for example: "Everyone is guilty of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine. I am one of the most honest men I know." (paraphrased slightly)).
I can't speak conclusively to whether or not this was the best possible approach, but I will say that I had more than 30 students (out of just over 120) come up to me and say "Mr. E, this is the best book we've ever read in an English class." I'll also say that class discussions were livelier and better informed than any of the college literature courses I took (students were required to use quotations to back up almost every evaluative statement they made, and by the end of the 3-4 weeks we spent on "Gatsby" knew the book almost as well as I did. I cannot say the same for even my senior/grad level literature courses in college).
After you are finished, go back and re-read the first 2 pages or so (until the double-carriage return); they take on a whole new meaning when the end of the novel is known.
You'll also be able to see a full transcript of the board, as well as all questions provided by contestants, at www.j-archive.com.
I'm usually able to read any given question in about a second. Granted, I used to practice speed-reading trivia questions for an hour or so per day (one of the leagues we competed in projected questions via powerpoint), but there's at least one reason most Jeopardy! contestants are able to buzz in almost immediately on most questions.
It's all about having enough breadth that the other bits of information presented can help whittle down answers by way of association and relationships. Good trivia players rely quite a bit on intuition.
Ken Jennings mentioned (in his book) how Jeopardy! often has questions about rivers, so it was a fairly simple matter to just memorize river names and some basic associations with which to answer questions.
It seems like Watson is mostly a really sophisticated algorithm on top of lots of brute force (2880 processors?!). Though I guess it could also be said that humans are just ugly bags of mostly water.
That said: in something like medicine (differential diagnoses), such a system could also be extremely useful, given the frequent occurrence of a fairly limited number of "answers".
"messiahStudio can be used as a complete stand-alone animation and rendering package, or as a powerful addition to Modo, Maya, 3DMAX, SoftImage XSI, LightWave, Cinema 4D or an in-house proprietary application; through extensive animation export capabilities (fbx, mdd, collada), Host Connection plugins and Host API."
When I read this the first time, I assumed that "animation" meant modeling as well, but only because I don't know very much about this whole process.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Said search turns up quite a few rapidshare/torrenting links, but with a price point of only $40, I don't see why anyone would go that route.
I'm going back to school next year to pursue an engineering degree (I used to be an English teacher), and will be working through via some of my freelance gigs.
A full courseload still leaves you with at least 20 hours per week to work a job while maintaining a social life, so you're certainly not going to be shackled.
There's a huge jump in psychosocial development that happens sometime in or shortly after the collegiate years, and it's a great place to meet people and to explore, at least for a few years. Ideally, you'll learn quite a bit, too, though that's mostly up to you to decide. Personally, I'd recommend taking a few linguistics courses, as well as a good writing course (rhetoric, if possible, and also narrative).
One thing to remember: if one of them doesn't pan out, you can always go do the other, or do something else. Now is not forever.
Best of luck.
Frankly, I'd like to see this entrepreneurial spirit be encouraged in high school (and even middle school!) as well as college. Students do pretty amazing things when they're given a chance to take ownership and responsibility of something with actual meaning.
One must certainly be prepared for failure and for flakiness. But I'd be more than happy to accept the risk of either in exchange for the chance of success. I'd definitely be willing to accept the risk of either for the chance that even just a few students would recognize that there is more to life than simply accepting one's place.
You're right in that not much was particularly revelatory, as all of the discussed elements are discussed in multiple other places, often with greater depth.
But it's rare to see it all come together in a way that is almost immediately pragmatic and sensible.
Sometimes, I need to sit with an idea for a week or so before taking action, and the product is great, albeit somewhat rushed. This gets me in trouble on occasion, but less often than one might think.
I've found lately that working piece by piece well before deadline gets about the same quality of work done, but I also have bigger projects and more generous deadlines now.
When rooming with others (say, on school trips, which were fairly frequent), some of my schoolmates would talk in their sleep, and others would sign.
According to my college roommates, I used to do both with some regularity.
As for telepathy: you're probably correct in asking "How would we know?" Perhaps self-reporting after dreams?
I'm no longer good enough with ASL that I can do all that simultaneously (I'm a native speaker as a result of 8 years at a school for the deaf, but use spoken/written English all but one or two days out of the year).
It looks like Virgin uses Sprint's 3G network. Here's their coverage map: http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp?ECID=vanity:coverage
Finally, here is a CNET review of the LG Optimus V (the phone featured in this particular plan): http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/lg-optimus-v-virgin/4505...