How To Have The Best Customer Service with Shep Hyken and Leading With Courage, Compassion, And Wisdom with Jim Bouchard

How To Have The Best Customer Service with Shep Hyken and Leading With Courage, Compassion, And Wisdom with Jim Bouchard
Top 100 Vocabulary Words That Adults Should Know
Educators often use words with meanings that students may not fully understand. Rather than looking foolish and asking for an explanation, students may go through years of schooling and not truly grasp the meaning of important terminology.
After consulting with a past English teacher, my sister, Lesley Hamilton, and a future English teacher, my daughter, Terra Rothpletz, we came up with a list of 100 words that are dispersed by educators but not necessarily understood by students. Rather than list the definitions here, I thought it might be better to just include the link so that you could test yourself. Look at the following words and see how well you do. To find out the definitions, just click on the word.Â
- Acquiesce
- Acronym
- Ambiguity
- Analogy
- Anachronism
- Andragogy
- Antithesis
- Antonym
- Articulate
- Assonance
- Benchmarking
- Brainstorming
- Circumspect
- Clandestine
- Cognition
- Collaborate
- Colloquial
- Connotation
- Contrived
- Conundrum
- Correlation
- Criterion
- Cumulative
- Curriculum
- Deference
- Developmental
- Dialect
- Diction
- Didactic
- Dissertation
- Divergent
- Egregious
- Eloquence
- Emergent
- Empathy
- Enigma
- Epitome
- Epiphany
- Epitaph
- Erudite
- Existential
- Exponential
- Formative
- Holistic
- Homonym
- Hubris
- Hyperbole
- Incongruous
- Infamy
- Initiation
- Innate
- Intellectual
- Interactive
- Irony
- Jargon
- Juxtaposition
- Malapropism
- Magnanimous
- Mentor
- Metaphor
- Meticulous
- Mnemonic
- Monologue
- Motif
- Myriad
- Nemesis
- Nominal
- Norms
- Obfuscate
- Obtuse
- Onomatopoeia
- Ostentatious
- Oxymoron
- Paradox
- Paraphrase
- Pedantic
- Pedagogy
- Perusal
- Phonemes
- Phonological
- Plagiarism
- Plethora
- Posthumously
- Preposition
- Pretentious
- Pseudonym
- References
- Reflection
- Rubric
- Sardonic
- Satire
- Simile
- Soliloquy
- Superfluous
- Syntax
- Thesis
- Validity
- Vernacular
- Virtual
- Vocational
Related articles
Are Teachers Being Treated as Inventory? LIFO Used as a Method of Deciding Teachers’ Fate
Any business major should probably be able to define LIFO and FIFO. These letters stand for “Last in First Out” and “First in First Out”. They are usually associated with how inventory is handled. For example, if you had produce on a truck, and you dealt with it in a LIFO method, that means the last produce put on the truck would be first to come off of the truck. That would probably not be good of a method in that situation because the produce put on first would get rotten. So in that instance, FIFO would be a better system…First on the truck, first off the truck so that the inventory would stay fresh.Â
LIFO is now a term you may be hearing when schools are considering laying off teachers. In other words, last teachers hired would be the first teachers fired. CNN reported, “A wave of layoffs will likely happen this summer…StudentsFirst.org, calculates that at least 160,000 teachers are at risk of losing their jobs. What makes this even tougher on kids is that the majority of the country’s states and school districts conduct layoffs using an antiquated policy referred to as “last in, first out.” The policy mandates that the last teachers hired are the first teachers fired, regardless of how good they are. As it stands now, teachers’ impact on students plays absolutely no role in these decisions.”
In the produce example, using FIFO made sense for the sake of product freshness. In the example of how to decide educator layoffs, schools may be choosing LIFO for reasons of fairness to those who have put in their time. However, does being on the job for extended periods of time, make the employee a better employee? Michelle Rhee, author of the CNN article, thinks not. Rhee launched StudentsFirst to defend children’s’ rights in schools. “StudentsFirst formed in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better education system in America.” For more information about StudentsFirst, click here.
Related Articles
- NJ joins NYC war on LIFO – New York Post (news.google.com)
- Reasons Why LIFO is Outdated (brighthub.com)
Free Social Media Tools for Teachers
In my books, I often write about using social media tools.  I think they can be invaluable in the classroom.  I recently found a great article about media tools for teachers on Mashable.com.   I am a big Mashable fan. They have wonderful articles about technology and every one of them is more interesting than the next. If you haven’t checked out their site, you really need to do so.Â
In Sarah Kessler’s article 7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers, she point out some great tools that can be used in the classroom including:
- Edu 2.0Â Â – site that allows teachers to share content
- SymbalooEDU – site allows teachers to organize classroom resources, school logos may be added
- Collaborize Classroom – site allows for online discussions to remove intimidation factor
- Edublogs  – site is great for group projects, newsletters and more
- Kidblog – good site for K-8 classroom
- Edmondo – site is similar to Facebook but more controlled environment
- TeacherTube, SchoolTube, Youtube – TeacherTube and SchoolTube are alternatives to Youtube for teachers
To watch videos about each of these tools, click here to read the Mashable article.  Â
Mashable already had a really interesting article about the need for social media in the classroom. Click here to read that article.
Related Articles
- 7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers (mashable.com)
- The Case For Social Media in Schools (mashable.com)
Associate Professor Writes Book for Online Students
Story by Trevor Green – UAT.edu
Advances in computer technology have made education available to students far removed from a traditional classroom, with universities of all sizes instructing learners digitally – never physically interacting with their teachers. For many students, the trappings of online classes – writing papers, using course shells, submitting work – is a foreign concept that can impede academic progress.
UAT-Online Associate Professor Dr. Diane Hamilton, a longtime online instructor, recently published the book The Online Student’s User Manual to help them succeed. She was compelled to write the paperback after finding a lack of works covering frequently asked questions of first-time online learners.
“The books out there, they’re good about telling you, ‘online’s good.’ They’re good about telling you, ‘you need accredited,’ or what the other choices are or how to get financing, but they don’t tell you what you’re supposed to do,” she said.
She added: “I kept answering the same questions over and over and over, and I thought, ‘Well, how about writing a book that explains it?'”
(To learn more about Dr. Hamilton and her book, The Online Student’s User Manual, check click here.)
Hamilton develops curriculum and teaches classes like Ethics in Technology and Foresight Development for UAT-Online. Possessing a Ph.D. in business administration and career experience in corporate training, entrepreneurship and realty, she melds her years of business and technology knowledge to computer-savvy students.
With content on everything from rubrics and syllabi to essay formatting, Hamilton sees her work as a good aid for online pupils and instructors of various ages, skill levels, disciplines and educational backgrounds.
“I think the book’s a good resource, not just for new students but for people who have been in it for awhile, or even professors to know how to teach people how to do these things.”
A self-professed techie, Hamilton picked up various facets of Web 2.0 technology – including blogging and Twitter – to market the book, and she offers advice for students on her blog with tutorials using screen-recording software Camtasia and Microsoft PowerPoint. She sees the breadth of electronic tools as essential to embracing distance teaching.
“I like to embrace new technology, and I think students have to realize that [online learning] is the future.”