Shall We Pivot with EssayKKN?

T-Direction is a great web app, decidedly simple, just covering two main use cases:

1. Ask us to write anything. We will send back the finished essay into your Inbox in less than a week.
   
2. Write anything and send it to us. Our feedback works just like an X-ray scan.It shows you where you are unforgivably weak, where you can reap big benefits with very small effort.

However, as I wrote in previous posts on this blog, kids apparently hate to write essays, and parents also do not seem to appreciate essay skills undergird many essential life skills.

Anyway, I decide not spend much for customer acquisition.

We still have many great features to do on our todo list:

1. Let users show their cute pictures.
   
   
2. Let users show off how witty and eloquent and creative they are.
   
   
3. Let users write bite-size.
   
   
4. Let users write as a team.
   
   
5. Let users play educational and yet entertaining games. Turn the dreadful essay into a fun game!
   
   
6. Make the app accessible to mobile phones.

We still have many great technologies to embed into that app:

1. Can we let a robot teach in place of a human teacher?
   
   
2. Can we let a robot read the essay and feedback sensibly?
   
   
3. Can we let a robot urge on the writer, in place of a human teacher?

Well, our team at EssayKKN know full well that in the 3-D Chess, there is always a good move to make next, and that in the 24-D Universe, there will be many more moves we can make at our leisure and for our pleasure! Enjoy the journey with us.

Kids Who Hate Essays Until They Become Generals and Ministers for Kings

Kids who hate essays, hate them until they become generals and ministers for their kings.

Are we exaggerating?

Check with James Lacey and Williamson Murray's "Moment of Battle: The Twenty Clashes That Changed the World." Focus on the Midway naval battle. Focus on how senior Japanese officers over-ruled a junior officer's suggestion/hypothesis.

Check with Hugh White's paper in Patrick M. Cronin's "The Impenetrable Fog of War: Reflections on Modern Warfare and Strategic Surprise." See what the king's ministers do when they don't like to think up new "policy responses"

The kids hate thinking when at schools.

They go on hating thinking when at their king's court.

Well EssayKKN is here to help. Enjoy the ride with us.

National Identity, Product Identity, Personal Identity

First I read an article titled "It's Over" in Psychology Today issue of May/June 2015. It is about breakup recovery and contains a sidebar titled "Rejection Relief"  on page 85. Here are the first two, or most important suggestions:

1. Reconnect with yourself: Who am I? ... How should I spend my time?
2. Cultivate Self-love: ... being compassionate and gentle with yourself ... kind and forgiving ...

Second, I read about building a national identity. These two readings remind me of what I have kept reading in psychology and branding/positioning.

It's all the same.

When you know who you are, and you are proud of it and you want to continue with it, you get a strong sense of identity.

Such an identity,whether national, organizational or personal ,come from what you stand for (your values), what you want to accomplish (your aspirations) and from how you overcome obstacles.

Soul-searching and identity-seeking always do us good.

When the chips are down, when you are against the wall, as in the breakup article, you only have yourselves to rely upon to re-build your lives. Know yourself, your values and your aspirations to lead a worthwhile life.

Who are you?

What do you stand for?

What do you want to achieve? How do you want to be perceived / remembered?

We at EssayKKN are also thinking about our product identity.

Courage Math and Imagination Essays - Part 2

We can teach kids to be imaginative by asking them

1. to copy Degas, Gauguin, Picasso, Monet or Van Gogh
2. to design new Lego Mindstorms, BeagleBone, Arduino, Raspberry Pi robots 
3. to play Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Tchaikovsky 
4. to write Harry-Potter yarns or Roald Dahl thrillers 
5. to design their own dresses and accessories 
6. to design their own makeup 
7. to design their own furniture 
8. to take very nice and unusual photos and selfies 
9. to compose jingles, rhymes, and songs 
10. to write movie scripts.

All these are nice and can be effective. But some of them incur some considerable costs.

Essays, you don't even need papers and pencils to write.

You can write "air"/ verbal/spoken essays like Obama, Steve Jobs, Lincoln. Or like Stalin or Hitler.

Kids hate essays because they don't know how to imagine, to dream, to envision.

Kids grooming to be CEO's, Prime Ministers, Generals, articulate and therefore value-multiplying scientists, communicative and therefore value-adding knowledge-workers need all these skills.

We at EssayKKN know better.

Dont' we? ;-)

                                                     

Courage Math and Imagination Essays - Part 1

We can teach kids to overcome fear by asking them:

1. to do extreme sports such as rock climbing, wing suit flying, parkour 
2. to join street gangs and take part in streets fights 
3. to go out of their comfort zones by studying strange math problems 
4. to go out of their comfort zones by studying strange foreign languages 
5. to taste the fear of the unknown by visiting Syria or Afghanistan 
6. to sell by cold-calling total strangers 
7. to eat scary-looking but harmless insects or creatures 
8. to touch scary-looking but harmless snakes like Python,or fangless cobras

But then I have some reservations for some of these proposals.

1. We have only 1 life. A bad fall can end my kid's life before s/he learns how to control her/his fears.
2. Same with reptiles.
3. What s/he learns in Syria may not apply in other parts of human civilization.
4. S/he may not need to use those foreign languages that often in her/his later lives.

So we teach Yoda-style fear-controlling mind tricks through Math, Physics, Chemistry or Javascript or Essays. With us, kids will never fear to think on their own feet.

Steve Jobs once saw a few masters disassemble and re-assemble electronic gadgets and he never feared them throughout his life.

We at EssayKKN, try to do the same for your kids with science and learning and essays.

Plans and Outlines Are Not for Use

We insist on students taking essay exams to make plans and outlines first. Some of them still don't appreciate the values of this practice.

First of all, plans serve a budgeting function. They show you how much you should, must or can write, and how much time you can afford to spend on each step or component of your overall plan. Without this valuable information, you can run short of time while writing.

Secondly, more crucially, the plan shows you gaps in your approach and gaps in your knowledge or data. Because this is just the beginning, you still have time to act on these gaps. Better still, you can choose to find substitutes or work-arounds for these gaps. Remember it is not necessary or possible to fill out every knowledge gap.

Thirdly, plans allow you to exploit your muse, your inspiration more effectively. Let me illustrate this more graphically.

Say, a student has 3 ideas each worth of 20 points as s/he begins.
Another student has no ideas as s/he begins.

Since our subconscious can never stay idle, each student is bound to come up with new ideas while writing.

Then when inspiration comes, the first student has a benchmark to judge these new ideas. If any goes higher than 20 points, s/he will take it. Else, s/he will stick with the original plan, or show to examiners that her/his ideas are better than the newcomers.

For the second student, like a drowning person clutching at anything, s/he will take anything gratefully at first. A few minutes later, her/his mind will show her better ideas and s/he will regret her/his impulsive choices made just a few minutes earlier.

Remember the popular quotes and practices:

Plans are nothing. Planning is everything.
Jesuit priests --> Peter Drucker: feedback analysis

We need plans and outlines, not to follow them blindly, but to deviate from them, and even to drop them intelligently.

Finally, outlining helps you think better. Only if you don't aspire to become a better thinker, you can rightly reject outlines and plans.

We at EssayKKN passionately believe in thinking better.

Commonsense Beats Science Every time

Commonsense tells me that the Earth is flat. Science tells me that it is not.

Commonsense tells me that the Earth is the center of the sky/Universe. Science tells me that it is not.

Looks like I've chosen a title to beat or contradict myself. Not so fast.

Within seconds, commonsense whispers to me that in such matters I should not trust it but find another perspective.

Commonsense works like a grand master of Judo, Akido or Taichi, yielding so sensitively that it avoids any injury.

Commonsense knows and readily admits its limits. Ask it : How far is it from here to the Sun? It will meekly replies: I don't know. Ask it : How thick is a water molecule? The same answer we get.

Science when really good, also works that way: It knows its limits. It is honest. It is always ready to defer to truth.

Here is a simpler calculation for commonsense:

In commonsense areas, commonsense wins.
In science, commonsense draws with science because it defers to science.

But what about science?

In commonsense areas, science suffers because it is overstepping.
In science, science draws with commonsense as explained before.

How come science has come to mean "arrogance," "rigidity," "hype" and "insincerity"?

At EssayKKN, we help you appreciate humble commonsense and authentic, honest science.