Thread started: Feb 20 2009, 4:44 PM EST
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Some advice I always give authors of technical books... I hope this isn't too negative and proves useful.
I'm also aware that you're teachers, and these points brush against learning theory so I'm teaching granny to suck eggs.
Put all the "what is Twitter?" type stuff at the back of the book. Anything that is about Twitter but not directly about TEACHING with Twitter is basically appendix... get it out of the way. Background should be at the back.
The first chapter should be something like "what can Twitter do for teachers?" -- short simple success stories (even if they're made up) work well here, to give the reader a "vision" of what they can achieve with Twitter. You could also address some common objections but keep it short.
Then as soon as possible stop telling the reader stuff and start them doing educationally productive stuff. That is, using Twitter to do things that teachers care about. This could be discussing education, it could be complaining about student behaviour or senior management idiocy... the sooner the reader thinks "hey I GET it now!" the better. And people get the "I get it" moment from doing things, not from reading about them. (The exception to this might be reading stories that they relate to.)
Once people "get" something their brains start whirring and they become keen to learn more and innovate, so your job gets a lot easier. Don't make the reader do much work before they get to that moment (for example, don't even consider telling them to download a Twitter tool or visit a 3rd party service until they've hit some limit of what the standard web interface can do.)
I would try to make each chapter title something that the average teacher cares about and will see benefit in.
Ha! Hitting the character limit on my first post. Ooops.
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RE: Publisher's tip: move background to the back!
By: ,
Feb 25 2009, 10:23 PM EST
I happen to agree with David. I have found that sometimes we are so excited to share the technologies we assume everyone gets it. Making it relevant to the readers' experience is key to getting those people less experienced engaged and interested.
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