Right around this time last year, I started working on a book with futurist colleague David Houle on transforming K-12 education. We had the book wrapped up by early fall, but with the world of traditional publishing being what it is (we published this with Corwin), Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education didn’t hit the shelves until early April. Since that time, I have done a pretty lousy job of doing my part in promoting it. With this post, I am hoping to change that situation, and my first step is to find some fellow bloggers who might be interested in getting a copy of the book and writing about it.
If you are interested, here’s the deal:
I’m giving away a total of five free copies of the book to the first five people to comment on this post and ask for one. There are, however, a couple of conditions:
- There needs to be some sort of reasonable angle for writing about this on your blog. I’m not looking only – or even mostly – for “edubloggers,” but on the other hand, if your audience is primarily World of Warcraft afficionados, you need to have some good reason why they might be interested in hearing about a book on education reform.
- You need to have a subscription base of more than 250. Apologies to smaller bloggers on this one, but publishers don’t give writers all that many copies of their books. I need to try to get decent mileage out of the ones I have. (This one is purely honor system – I don’t plan to go check up on people’s subscription numbers.)
If you meet those requirements and are interested, just comment below and be sure to put a correct e-mail address in the comment form (this does not show up for other readers). I will e-mail you to get address details.
How you write about the book is up to you. You can do a traditional review, if you like. Or, you could expand on one of the book’s themes. Or, you could offer your own thoughts on transforming education. Or, all of the above. I don’t require that you like the book or say positive things about it – though if you want to bash it, I do request that you be as constructive as possible in the process.
Shift Ed, by the way, is relatively short – around 150 pages – and it reads quickly. It is truly meant to be a “call to action” rather than an in-depth policy tome, and aside from what David and I have put into it, it contains contributions by some great thinkers and practitioners like Tony Wagner and Ian Jukes. Here’s what best-selling author Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind) has to say about it:
America needs a new educational vision. Shift Ed provides a clear vision that emphasizes the essential ingredients of a 21st-century education based upon creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Houle and Cobb make a great case that nothing less than transformation will be enough.
Whether you go for the free copy or not, I hope you will check out the Shift Ed Web site, consider buying a copy of the book, and spread the word to others.
Jeff
Hello Jeff,
I’d be very happy to write a review for your book and publish it in spanish and english for bilingual educational communities in Peru and Iberoamerica.
I am very interested in writing a review of your book for the hispanic community. Thanks a lot
Good idea. I have 600 people plus on my LinkedIn and 130 on a subgroup where I control the agenda. Your choice, this is a very good crowd, highly educated and relatively high influence. Check out my tweets and posts. I will do a good job with your book. Some of my stuff is self promoting but others are general and thought provoking. I do get attention as people as caqlling me out all the time. Hope you can send me a copy of the book, thanks Bob
@Build_your_biz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfcummings
I blog for PCWorld magazine and would love to write about your book. If Dan Pink likes your book, I’m a fan of your book sight unseen.