Best of the week

Believe it or not, I'm off again tomorrow. Lest you think I'm shirking, I'll explain that during the summer we have the opportunity to take every other Friday off if we make up the hours with longer days during the two weeks. So here is my list of the most intriguing articles this week a day early again.

Can telework save your family? The founder of StaffCentrix, a company that trains the spouses of military personnel to start businesses as virtual assistants, thinks that telework can help save the American family. Here's a link to a previous article on the virtual assistants training as well.

"My Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy." A professor of psychology and winner of the 2003 Sloan-C award for Excellence in Online Teaching shares his thoughts. Each principle includes several practical examples. Although his background is in higher education, the author's ideas and tips are applicable to corporate e-learning as well.

How Fast Do You Read? This Web tool enables users to measure their reading speed and could be useful for e-learners. The instructions state, "Press the Start button and begin reading. Read at your natural pace. Do not skim. When a minute has passed, you'll hear and see the alert on your screen. Stop reading. Press OK on the alert. To see your results, click the last word you read when the alert appeared."

Brain Hacks. From Boing Boing, the "directory of wonderful things," comes this description of a new book that tells you how to push your brain further. The book is co-written by an engineer and a cognitive neuroscientist for the O'Reilly Hacks series, which usually covers strictly techie topics like Linux, Google, Mac OS X, etc. Go here for the Brain Hacks co-author's first-hand description of what the book will cover. (Matt Webb writes that it's "100% practical and understandable probes into the design quirks of the brain, concentrating on the sensory and motor functions and their coordination.")

"Cellphones Becoming a Pocket Boss." The International Herald Tribune reports on the trend of cell phone services that enable employers to monitor remote workers. 1984, anyone? It seems as if these services are based mainly in Europe, but their spread to the United States can't be far behind.