This book is the latest of Joel Barker's well known futuring ventures, including "The Business of Paradigms" and "The Power of Vision" videos, which have been widely used in Extension across the U.S.
Future Edge takes the trailblazing efforts of Toffler, Kuhn, and Naisbitt into the practical reality of each of our daily lives. The question Barker addresses in this book is "how do we best prepare people for the future?"
Three central ideas backstop future success - anticipation, innovation, and excellence. To be ready for the future, we have to understand "paradigms," the guidelines, principles, and frameworks that structure and set boundaries for all of our activities. Many of the changes happening to us come from unanticipated revolutions in the prevailing paradigms rather than from predicting trends based on existing paradigms.
In these paradigm shifts we can see innovation - in theories, like "constructivism," in the communication sector; or in practical functions, like "total quality management;" in the work place. Anticipation results from "good strategic exploration." People must (1) understand their perceptions and the influences upon those perceptions, (2) cultivate divergent thinking skills, (3) develop convergent thinking skills, (4) learn how to map ways to get from the past to the future, and (5) image possible futures, either by writing, drawing, or explaining. Next, Barker presents over 20 examples of the power of people's current thinking, their established paradigms, and their altered perceptions of reality. In doing so, he makes three major points: (1) our existing mental frameworks do indeed influence our judgments; (2) disregarding the strength these frameworks have over our perceptions hinders our ability to see other, possible futures; and (3) to construct the future, people must be primed and able to shift their "paradigms."
To support what he says, Barker introduces a spectrum of innovations that broke existing paradigms and created new realities. From IBM and Apple, the Total Quality movement, to the Discman, he provides an array of challenging examples, helps us see old situations in new ways, and offers insights into how others dealt with anticipating the future and developed new forms of excellence.
Most of us, and most of the universities, companies, or departments we serve, are stuck in old ways of thinking. We can become more predictive in our future vision and can work in proactive ways to build desirable directions by asking Barker's paradigm shift question, "What is impossible to do in your business (field, discipline, department, division, or technology), but if it could be done, would fundamentally change it?" The keys to the question are in the words impossible and fundamentally, which force a different structure on the current reality that can create a new perception, or a paradigm shift.
Communication is experiencing a meteoric and, at times, an unpredictable revolution. Joel Barker's insights on how to study and understand change is a valuable and welcomed tool. In fact, some of Barker's infectious thinking is already taking place in ACE. Recent discussion about what ACE should be, the questions over relationships with other professional groups and regarding professional activities, provide opportunities to define a vision for ACE and each of us professionally - a new paradigm. In Future Edge, Barker gives us a strategy and some tactics to create our vision.
In a comprehensive overhaul of their now classic 1978 book, Fleming and Levie have turned out another masterpiece for educational designers.
In what is really a brand-new book rather than a second edition, the authors review the scope of research on learning and teaching and offer clusters of principles for the practical design of educational materials and programs. They cover motivation, perception, psychomotor concepts, learning, concept-learning, problem-solving, and attitude-change, as well as briefly and adequately describe instructional design.
Originally, Fleming and Levie wrote the entire book. Now retired, they agreed to edit the book if a new group of experts would prepare the content. In this edition each chapter is written by an educational design specialist and researcher who covers both the previous material and adds new principles from the cognitive sciences. For example, John Keller tackles motivation, discussing variation and curiosity, stimulation, and challenge, as well as readable style, interest, and formatting in text and graphics. Writing on perception, Bill Winn discusses cognitive processing and message design variables. Michael Hannafin and Simon Hooper examine learning, highlighting learner attributes and characteristics with sequences of instruction, instructional strategies, and transfer and generalization.
The book is full of examples for each principle. For example, when discussing the use of "adjunct questions to emphasize relevant information," the book offers four types of questions with suggestions on when to use them, a specific example of review questions and learning techniques, such as backward and forward effects, and note taking. It is supported by examples of message structure, with maps, perceptual clustering with figures and models, and spatial arrangements with text.
An excellent section on learning compares depth processing and engagement with the typical passive learning role. The problem solving chapter includes an excellent table that summarizes the three design issues vital to help learners acquire relevant information, build internal linkages, and devise external associations. It also includes samples of principles to help designers successfully develop strategies for each area using such tools as adjunct questions, signal words, and elaborative questions.
Although Instructional Message Design can be criticized for its high price, typical layout, barely adequate indexing, and lack of contemporary visuals and color, it will serve as an excellent design reference and message guide well into the 21st century. As agricultural communication becomes more "educational," this book will be extremely valuable to all of us involved in designing those higher order educational efforts.
This book is intended as a basic college text. Ward describes it as "a comprehensive, practical and positive approach to writing newspaper features and magazines articles." It proves to be exactly that.
Ward claims that in his 18 years of teaching he never found a text that adequately covered both the essential basic skills and the trends and current practical issues critical to excellent magazine and feature writing. This book was designed to remedy that situation; that is an ambitious undertaking, but on the whole Magazine and Feature Writing accomplishes the author's goal.
Fortunately, "basic skills" in this context does not mean the rules of grammar and sentence structure. Rather, Ward had the good sense to cover such things as query letters, library reference sources, interviewing techniques, and basic formats for personality profiles, how-to pieces, investigative articles, and other types of generally marketable writing. Ward deals at a very practical level with each genre: writing about science, about travel, about history and religion, and writing for children. He devotes a full chapter to business and trade publications.
Other chapters deal with ethics and legal matters libel, privacy, copyright, contracts, and agents. As is the case with the entire book, these chapters are peppered with useful authentic examples. Sample model releases and consent forms complement his section on privacy, for example, and sample permission forms accompany the text on copyright.
Even though this book succeeds in demonstrating that most types of magazine articles and longer newspaper features can be defined by common characteristics (if not outright formulas), Ward pays appropriate attention to individual style. He explains style as the flow of words, but admits that, like charisma, it defies definition. And, bless him, he insists that rewriting "and rewriting and rewriting" almost always is essential to a good writing style.
Magazine and Feature Writing is fully indexed. That index includes more than 300 publications, most of them magazines, that are mentioned in the text. The majority of these mentions are in some form of example, clear evidence of the scope of this book.
My favorite characteristic of Ward's work is its optimism. He begins, "Why not write for publication?" In a postscript he urges, "Consider a Book." I found a great deal in his book that I learned the hard way over years of writing and wish I had known much earlier. For competent writers who want to enter the magazine field as freelancers, but do not know how, Ward offers a good place to start. His book contains just enough basic information to help such people get a foot in the door.