teachthe4ps.com - teaching the 4 ps

I know that I need this reminder once in a while.  Check out this short summary over at The Teaching Professor of “Characteristics of Good Teachers” (March 2, 2010).

Occasionally we need a reminder like this: based on a thorough literature review, Paul Ramsden, a noted researcher on teaching and learning, along with several co-authors offered this description of good teachers.

Seth Godin is great and I always enjoy following his blog.  In this blog post, “The brand, the package, the story, and the worldview,” Godin offers advice to African chocolate maker Madecasse on how putting a story on its package might help its sales.  Could be a good example, or turned into a mini case for discussion.

I am becoming more and more a believer in the power of stories.  I think they help in marketing and for teaching marketing.  If you are interested in learning more about stories, you might read Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind:  Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future” (this morning I listened to the “Story” chapter on my way in to work) or the Heath brothers “Made to Stick.“  I know we all use stories (extended examples) to supplement our teaching, but what I am reading has me thinking about how I can develop better stories.

Do you want to add vintage ads to your class presentations?  Or do you want to buy posters of vintage ads?  Or just like to look at old ads?  If any of these appeal to you, go to the Vintage Ad Browser.

Hello and welcome to “Teach the 4 Ps” a blog for marketing instructors and people interested in reading about marketing.  The blog came about after Bill Perreault and I (Joe Cannon) developed a newsletter (Teach the 4Ps) for instructors using our text books – Essentials of Marketing and Basic Marketing.  The newsletter is designed to give instructors current articles, websites, viral videos, and online advertisements – with comments suggesting how they could be used in teaching the introductory marketing course.  We all know our students like current examples, so Bill and I want to provide more for users of our books.  We received many positive comments on the newsletter – so we decided to share our ideas with anyone teaching marketing or interested in marketing.  We hope you will share back – and give us comments and ideas on the blog.

For several reasons, this resource is even more valuable in a blog:

• It makes the newsletter interactive – we hope you will offer comments on our posts.
• We post almost every day – making everything that much more current.
• The blog format makes it easy to find J.I.T. (just in time) examples for your classes.  For example, say are you teaching pricing this week – click on “Price” in categories to the right and you will have a listing of only those blog posts that have something to do with price.

So, please take a look around.  We are kicking this off with more than 80 posts already up.  Let us know what you think?  Do you have ideas about how we might make this resource even more valuable?  Click on the headline above and add your comments (or read those of others).

One of the primary objectives for “Teach the 4 Ps” is to give you ready access to examples you can use in your marketing classes.  Most of us teaching marketing know the value of well-chosen examples.  If you visit our blog to get ideas for examples, you might appreciate this post from The Teaching Professor on the “Power of Examples” (December 2, 2009).

“Examples are instructional workhorses: they carry a great deal of the burden of teaching and learning. They help us dig into ideas and plow the land of the abstract. They help us transport information and ideas from one person to another and from one context to another. One way to improve teaching and learning is to improve the examples we use so that they more effectively communicate difficult concepts.” (Deyck, 1994, p. 40)

This instructional video shows you how to embed a YouTube video directly into a PowerPoint 2007 presentation. Note that you have to have an internet connection, sound connected, and it might take 5-10 seconds or more for the video to start up. If you need to do this in PowerPoint 2003, check out How to Embed a YouTube Video in PowerPoint (2003).

In a previous post “No Wall Street Journal Subscription, No Problem,” I explained how a “back door” for non-subscribers to gain access to online Wall Street Journal articles. This post at TechCrunch suggests the Journal may not continue to leave this back door open — allowing non-subscribers access to WSJ content.

Here is a trick for you.  Do you know how to get access to Wall Street Journal articles without an online subscription?  Just Google (or Bing or Yahoo) the title of the article.   As of this time, the Wall Street Journal has chosen to allow this “back door” to its content — but I have read that they are reconsidering this.  Note – this doesn’t work for AdAge.com and some other subscription only sites.  Most academics should be able to access Advertising Age articles through library databases like Business Source Premier — although I have found that they appear here a couple weeks after the print or online version.

Do you want to add more photos and images to your PowerPoints?  I like to add photos of products or a company logo to remind me of an example I want to use.  I will go to Google and do an “image search” for “7-11 logo”.  You can then click through to the image.  If you move your cursor over the top of the image and “right click” you can choose the option “Copy Image.”  Then go back to the slide, right click and choose “Paste.”  Resize the image as you would other PowerPoint objects.  If my understanding of educational (Joe is not a lawyer) use is correct, there are no issues with copyright if you are simply using the images in your own class.

Do any of you have other ideas for adding interest to your PowerPoints?

Teaching Tip:  Do you want to add online videos to your PowerPoint presentations?  There are different ways to achieve this, but the following process is simple and effective.  This technique requires an Internet connection in your classroom.

1. Start by copying an image from the Internet (see other Teaching Tip in this newsletter).  I often get the logo of the company in the video.  You can also insert a PowerPoint shape.
2. Then go to the website where the video you want to show is located.  Double click on the web address so that the whole address is highlighted.  Choose the “Ctrl” and “C” keys to copy the address.
3. Go back to your PowerPoint and right click on the image.  Choose the “Hyperlink” option.
4. In the window that opens, click on the blank next to “Address:” and use “Ctrl V” to paste the address in.
5. From Slide Show mode, you simply click on the image and the web page will open up (this might take a few seconds).
6. You can then control the web page – perhaps choosing to show the video clip full screen if this is an option at the website.
7. Warning:  be sure to test this in your office – and on the computer you are using in class.  You want to make sure that sound is working and the site loads properly.