I belong to a generation who can actually remember a world without the internet. At high school, my library was filled with physical books (not a computer in sight), and I would love the texture and beauty of a brand new physical book in my hands.
I thought that I would never get into reading books on an app, or through some kind of electronic means. However, since publishing my book on Kindle a few days ago, I’ve been amazed at how professional and presentable each page looks as you flick through a book. Just check out these screenshots from my book here:
As you can see, Kindle books have numerous advantages over physical books, such as:
Images are in full colour. A lot of physical books will contain black and white images as this reduces the manufacturing costs
You can zoom in on images
You can keep hundreds of books on your smart phone, tablet or Kindle device at once. Imagine carrying 100 physical books around with you!
Kindle books often have a ‘text to speech’ feature, so you can ‘listen’ to your books
Chapters are clickable: you don’t have to flick through loads of pages to get to a chapter
It looks like eBooks are here to stay. Are the physical book’s days numbered?
Richard
Phew! Well there was light at the end of the long tunnel after all, and it wasn’t an oncoming train!
My book, ‘The Quick Guide to Classroom Management: 45 Secrets That All High School Teachers Need to Know’ is now available on the Kindle store at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016ZG1IX0, and will be available as a paperback, physical copy in about seven days time.
It’s been a long, but enjoyable journey to get here!
It has been a very long and arduous journey to get here. The book stands at 52,000 words and is heavily illustrated with elaborate charts, infographics, diagrams, illustrations, examples of student work and screenshots. The amount of research that went into this book was absolutely astronomical, and I have become a better teacher in the process of producing this work.
I wanted a front cover showing happy, stimulated students.
I never knew that writing a book was such a huge process until I embarked on this journey. From purchasing and registering an ISBN number, to designing a front cover and requesting permission from outside publications (to use their material), this whole project has been a wonderful journey and I have only become a better person because of it.
I have really tried to make the whole dynamic of classroom management clear and direct (with no ‘nonsense’ attached) so that, finally, high school teachers around the world will wake up from the illusion that you need some quick tricks and techniques to improve poor teacher-student rapport. Unfortunately, this mindset is very commonplace, and I really tried to show (in my book) how our interactions with colleagues, parents and our students all feed into each other to create a ‘composite practitioner’ that’s truly able to foster positive interactions and implement outstanding classroom management on a daily basis.
I probably should have called this book ‘The Complete Guide to Classroom Management’, as it is 259 pages long and 16MB in size (which is massive for a Kindle file). However, I’ve deliberately omitted references to traditional (and obscure) overviews of pedagogical literature (such as that of Piaget, De Bono and Bloom’s) and have, instead, produced a practical, no-nonsense guide to real, effective, classroom management.
My new ISBN number and barcode
Some of the truths in my book will be unpalatable for some people – the real truth behind effective classroom management involves hard work on the part of the teacher, and there are no ‘quick fixes’. However, I can guarantee that any teacher who reads my book to completion, and implements all of the points I’ve raised, will drammatically increase their effectiveness as an educator.
Happy Saturday, and keep teaching! (we never really stop!)
ISBN number now purchased and undergoing registration. Kindle version will be uploaded tomorrow (all being well), with my paperback version being available a few days later. I’ll keep you posted. Thank you to everyone who has supported and motivated me over the past 8 months. I respect all authors now: writing a decent book is a mammoth task!
The Quick Guide to Classroom Management: 45 Secrets That All High Teachers Need to Know
