The 69 important online articles I read later on Instapaper in 2012

It's easy to tell the best or most-important online articles of the year: they're the ones I saved on Instapaper. 

Do yourself a favor and join the site, download the app, and start reading stuff later like Larsen does. Soon you too will be referring to yourself in the third person, losing your hair, and compiling your favorite online reads list on a year-end blog post. It's just that damn addictive. 

Education and teaching

• Why college students today can't write, via Brain Track

• Why American students can't write, via The Atlantic

• The Writing Revolution, via The Atlantic

• Secret Teacher: stop micro-managing teachers and give them time to think, via the Guardian

• Why (and how) teachers should start using iTunes U, via edudemic

• 30 surprising (and controversial) ways students learn, via edudemic

• The iPad and critical pedagogy, via Mark Anderson's Blog

• Implementing best practices in online learning, via Educause Review

• Nine tools to turn create e-magazines and newspapers for your class, via Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• A simple guide for teachers to create ebooks on iPad using iBook Author, via Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• The five biggest myths about online learning, via edudemic

• Teachers should change how they teach students today. That's our job: response to NY Times, via HASTAC

• To empower students, let’s bring interactive learning tools into the classroom, via VB

• Technology changing how students learn, teachers say, via NY Times

• Online universities: why they still don't measure up, via readwrite

• What 4,500 professors and administrators think about online learning, via EDTECH

• Content versus service in media and education, via BuzzMachine

• How the Nearpod iPad app changed an entire school, via edudemic

• The shifting paradigm, via edtech digest

• How to roll out a 1:1 iPad program, via Edutopia

• What we learned: a 1:1 iPad reflection, via Edutopia

• Nine sites to save you big on college textbooks, via Mashable

• Teachers on the defensive, via NY Times

• Building a better teacher, via NY Times

• New rules, via NY Times

• Developing a strategy for lifelong learners in Canadian universities and colleges (and its implication for online learning), via Tony Bates

• Twenty-five things you probably didn't know about higher education, via edudemic

• Teaching lessons, via the NY Times

• Ten edtech inventions you probably don't know yet, via edudemic

• Our future schooling? Via Our Future Planet

• From smoke signals to tweets: how the evolution of communication is changing your classroom, via edudemic

Advertising and PR

• NHL lockout is doing alarming damage to brand, via Globe and Mail

• Advertising on LinkedIn: your guide for 2013, via Mashable

• Does advertising help or hurt the economy? Via the Washington Post

• Seven metrics PR pros should track to gain respect, via PR Daily

• Are traditional media-planning jobs going the way of the dinosaurs? Via Advertising Age

• Which polls fared best (and worst) in the 2012 presidential race, via NY Times

• Four advanced targeting techniques every Facebook advertiser should master, via HubSpot

• The future of personalized pricing, via Six Pixels of Separation

• The trouble with online advertising, via Six Pixels of Separation

• Secret e-scores chart consumers' buying power, via NY Times

• Advertising's bumpy transition (and why it matters to you), via Seth Godin

• The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense. Via New York

• PR industry developing social media measurement standards, via PR Daily

• How to manipulate the law of supply and demand...and make a lot more money, via QuickSprout

• How the press release morphed into multimedia content, via The Wall

• How theatre ticket prices are changing like airline fares, via the Chicago Tribune

• Publishers start signing up for PostRelease's content marketing network, via TechCrunch

Technology

• How an iPad is a more powerful content-creation device than a laptop, via Douchy's Blog

• Six Twitter analytics tools to improve your marketing, via Social Media Examiner

• Is Amazon the future of media? Via Six Pixels of Separation

• Coming soon: Nielsen Twitter TV rating, via Twitter Blog

• iPhone 5 tips and tricks, via Apple

• Three tools to turn your tweets into a newspaper, via Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Social media eye for the small business guy: a Chicago Butcher gets a makeover, via Mashable

• Grow your business with Twitter, via Twitter

• New economics of photojournalism: the rise of Instagram, via British Journal of Photography

• Dub your cassette collection onto an iPhone, via Spin

• Five Google AdWords features you need to know about, via Mashable

• Google integrates new display interface with AdWords, via Search Engine Watch

• Google's Crystal Ball, via the NY Times

• Can technology boost our multiple intelligences? Via On Islam

Etc. 

• How much is an appropriate tip for good service? Via the Globe and Mail

• Don't tear down that wall! Via Roger Ebert's Journal

• A printer freezes up and the maker does too, via NY Times

• How to be a genius: this is Apple's secret employee training manual, via Gizmodo

• How to handle plagiarism and fabrication allegations, via Poynter

• How not to steal people's content on the Web, via HubSpot

• Are you spending 1,000 hours preparing for your next job? Via Harvard Business Review

The literary allusions of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

It's been a rough month for my childhood cultural icons.

We've lost Donald J. Sobol (Encyclopedia Brown author), Celeste Holm (Tom Sawyer actor), Sherman Hemsley (George Jefferson himself) and now Mel Stuart, director of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - one of the best kids' movies ever made (read my review on Amazon.com).

The film's original screenplay was written by Roald Dahl and punched up by David Seltzer, who - according to Stuart in his behind-the-scenes book, Pure Imagination - enhanced the dialogue, added the Everlasting Gobstopper and the fizzy-lifting drink storylines, developed the Mr. Slugworth character, and changed Veruca Salt's punishment (in the book, she's attacked by squirrels).

Among the film's joys are its many literary references. It's unclear who inserted them into the screenplay, but they're not in Dahl's original book, which may mean it was Seltzer. Stuart says they're among his favorite parts of the film:

"Miracle of miracles most children had no trouble understanding and appreciating these references. If they didn't understand them the first time around, they caught up with them when they saw the film in later years."

When you start dissecting the dialogue, the film is as much a mashup as the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. Unlike the Beastie Boys, Stuart confirms that the filmmakers got legal clearances for each of the lines, but "happily, most of them are from our good friend, William (public domain) Shakespeare."

One thing for sure: that Willy Wonka is a well-read guy. 

The literary allusions of Willy Wonka:

1. Shakespeare

• "Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?" (the Merchant of Venice) - when I was a kid, I thought it was "fancy bread." D'oh!

• "So shines a good deed in a weary world." (the Merchant of Venice, though it's "naughty" world)

• "Adieu, adieu, parting is such sweet sorrow." (Romeo and Juliet)

• "Spring time, the only pretty ring time. When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding, sweet lovers love the spring." (As You Like It)

• "Is it my soul that calls upon my name?" (Romeo and Juliet)

• "Bubble cola, double cola, double bubble burp-a-cola -" (Macbeth - the "double toil and trouble" line from the witches)

2. Ogden Nash

• "Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker." (Reflections on Ice-Breaking)

•  "99...44...100 per cent pure." (99 44/100% Sweet Home)

3. Oscar Wilde

• "The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts." (The Importance of Being Earnest)

4. John Keats

• "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." (Endymion: A Poetic Romance)

5. John Masefield

• "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by." (Sea Fever)

6. Hilare Belloc

• "Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about." (The Microbe)

 7.  William Allingham

• "Around the world and home again - that's the sailor's way." (Homeward Bound)

• "Up the airy mountain, down the rushing glen, we dare not go a-hunting, for fear of little men." (The Fairies)

8. Neil Armstrong

• "A small step for mankind, a giant step for us."

9. Thomas Edison

• "Invention, my dear friends, is 93 per cent perspiration, six per cent electricity, four per cent evaporation, and two per cent butterscotch ripple."

10. Arthur O'Shaughnessy

• "We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams." (Ode)

11. Lewis Carroll

• "You should open your mouth a little wider when you speak." (Through the Looking-Glass)

12. Horace (or was this updated by someone else?)

• "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." (Carmina)

13. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• "Bubbles, bubbles everywhere, but not a drop to drink." (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - that "water, water" line)

14. The Bible

• "Across the desert lies the promised land."

• "Swifter than eagles. Stronger than lions."

Any others?

Encyclopedia Brown made me Dictionary Larsen

I've always believed that one of the best predictors of a student's success is "books at home."

And research backs it up. More cash! Higher education! Break the ice at parties!

For me, the books that really made me the rich, entertaining Brainiac that I am are The Great Brain, anything by Judy Blume, and - maybe more than any of them - Encyclopedia Brown.

So, it's sad that we learned yesterday of the death of Donald J. Sobol, the creator and writer of Encyclopedia Brown, a series of 20+ books that launched in 1963.

Sobol's talent was writing, as the Globe and Mail says, books for "kids who hated to read." I don't know that I ever hated reading, but there's no doubt that Encyclopedia Brown was the literary equivalent of "I'll eat just one more potato chip." Just one more mystery before bedtime!

In the stories, Encyclopedia Brown is a boy detective for hire, a bargain at "25 cents per day, plus expenses," who also helps his police-chief dad solve mysteries too complicated for the police force. Assisted by the plucky Sally Kimball and plagued by arch nemesis Bugs Meany, Encyclopedia's solves mysteries with a keen eye for detail and ability to uncover factual errors in his suspects' stories.

The best part: you could solve the mysteries yourself. You flipped to the back of the book to get the solution, and generations of young kids (present company excluded) learned the thrill of reading the solutions before the mysteries in order to feel a little bit smarter (the equivalent of watching Jeopardy! earlier in the day to impress people with your "knowledge" later on).

However, one of my proudest moments is figuring out the Case of the Flower Can all by myself. There are two kinds of cans: flour and flower.

Where do I collect my quarter plus expenses?

***

Celeste Holm died yesterday - her role in the Tom Sawyer film musical (Jodie Foster's first movie!) was another childhood cultural touchstone (and underrated!).

That's Holm singing "uncouth, irreverent, wild..." in the opening line. 

Gladwell and Rowland: how to be an FBI profiler - and psychic!

If you want to see author Malcolm Gladwell in Winnipeg, you have a choice:

• You can buy tickets on Ticketmaster for the low, low price of a million dollars (I exaggerate).

• You can like the Centrallia Facebook Page and be entered in a draw.

• You can enter the Downtown Peggy contest by sharing your favorite odd or insightful tidbit from Mr. Gladwell. 

In other words: start with the last two, and drop the dough when you don't win!

My favorite Gladwell insightful tidbit

My favorite chapter from Gladwell's What the Dog Saw is "Dangerous Minds," in which Gladwell gives a shout-out to magician Ian Rowland and his book, "the Full Facts Book of Cold Reading" to debunk FBI offender profiling (the chapter appears in its entirety here in the New Yorker).

Gladwell's point: FBI profiles are "so full of unverifiable, contradictory, and ambiguous language that (they) could support virtually any interpretation," and by simply mixing and matching these simple techniques you too could be an astrologer, psychic or FBI profiler:

The Rainbow Ruse - "the statement which credits the client with...a personality type and the opposite." Example: "You are introverted, but you can also be lots of fun."

The Jacques Statement - "Named for the character in As You Like It, who gives the Seven Ages of Man speech, tailors the predictions to the age of the subject." Example: you say to someone in their 50s or 60s, "You sometimes think about your lost youth."

The Barnum Statement - Named after everyone's favorite hero of the circus and public relations, you simply "make an assertion so general that anyone would agree." Example: "Your life has been crazy."

The Fuzzy Fact - The "seemingly factual statement couched in a way that "leaves plenty of scope to developed into something more specific." Example: "I can see you're from Canada, possibly Manitoba. Could it be Winnipeg?"

Inspired by Gladwell, I picked up Rowland's book and got some more:

Fine Flattery - You can gain agreement by flattering those around you. Compare your client to "people in general" and then flatter them by suggested they're an improvement. Example: "Compared to most, you're very honest."

The Psychic Credit - Credit your client with having an intuitive gift. Example: "You're have great insight and perception into (whatever)."

Sugar Lumps - Get the client to embrace your psychic junk by giving them a pleasant emotional reward for doing it. Example: "You are more connected to the spiritual world than others - I get much stronger tarot impressions from you than from other clients."

Greener Grass - We're all fascinated by the road not traveled. Compliment the client, and then refer to the path not traveled. Example: "I see you are very successful in the professional world. However, this life has also brought its penalties..."

The Good Chance Guess/Lucky Guess/Fluke - Good chance: "Your home address has a 2 in the number." Lucky guess: give a common name or initials, and wait for the client to accept it. Fluke: "Your name is Claudine."

For some reason, these techniques also strike me as being of particular interest to advertisers. In next year's ad class: I start reading tarot cards.

Thirteen new words to the wise-ass

See number five.

1. Awarabouts - Having a vague sense you know where you are. "My awareabouts: Marylandish." See number 12.

2. Bandnesia - Going to see a live show and - in your excitement - later forgetting everything the band played.

3. Lameful - Lame and shameful. Like any song by the Black Eyed Peas.

4. Tune-a-Meld - Transferring all of your songs onto someone else's iPod.

5. Museums of Failure - Any library, centre, or museum with the words "George W. Bush" in the title.

6. OurPod - Sharing an iPod with someone else.

7. Sharity - "I've got something no one else has got, so now I'll make it available to everybody online, for free." From Simon Reynolds' great book, Retromania.

8. Skyrisers - High rises and skyscrapers: together at last.

9. Twibel - Libel on Twitter.

10. Twidiot - Idiot on Twitter.

11. Twilight - Using Twitter as a lamp. 

12. Unawareabouts - Not even vaguely knowing where you are. See number one.

13. Yesteryay - Your last hurrah.