Jim McLaughlin's Blog

Recently, InFocus held a “What Not to Present” contest, looking for the worst PowerPoint slide ever created. After reviewing tons of horrific submissions, they came up with their top choices, and yep, are they bad. Your slides are a visual representation of your idea and are a reflection of you. So, we wondered what kind Read more

Research clearly shows that the quality of teachers is the most important school-level factor affecting students’ learning. During the past decade, as U.S. schools have hired over two million new teachers, policymakers and school officials have experimented with an array of new approaches to improving teacher quality—from signing bonuses and alternative preparation to instructional coaches Read more

Some innovations change everything. The rise of personal computers in the 1970s decimated the mini-computer industry. TurboTax forever changed tax accounting, and MP3s made libraries of compact discs obsolete. Even venerable public institutions like the United States Postal Service, which reported an $8.5 billion loss in 2010, are not immune. It experienced a 6 billion Read more

A year after seventh grade teacher Elizabeth Delmatoff started a pilot social media program in her Portland, Oregon classroom, 20% of students school-wide were completing extra assignments for no credit, grades had gone up more than 50%, and chronic absenteeism was reduced by more than a third. For the first time in its history, the Read more

Create an Effective Presentation – Video – Harvard Business Review. Read more