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Read TEXT 3 and answer question.  

TEXT 3  

THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING  

Michael Scherer

Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.

Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.

“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”

At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.

Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”

Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.

Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014 

TEXT 1  

WHY MILLENIALS WILL SAVE US ALL  

By Joel Stein

I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.

Here’s the code, hard data: the incident of narcissistic personality disorder in nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a senator, according to a 2007 survey; four time as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation as that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clarck University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the non-profit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.

Millennials consist, depending on whom you ask, of people born from 1980 to 2000. To put it more simply for them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, thanks to computers, the group is made up mostly of teens and 20-somethings. At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country’s millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the export of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials worldwide are more similar to one another than to old generations within their nations. Even in China, where family history is more important than any individual, the internet, urbanization and the onechild policy have created a generation as overconfident and self-involved as the Western one. And these aren’t just rich-kid problems: poor millennials have even higher rates of narcissism, materialism and technology addiction in their ghetto-fabulous lives.

They are the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers brought about social revolution, not because they’re trying to take over the Establishment but because they’re growing up without one. The Industrial Revolution made individuals far more powerful - they could move to a city, start a business, read and form organizations. The information revolution has further empowered individuals by handing them the technology to compete against huge organizations: hackers vs. corporations, bloggers vs. newspapers, terrorists vs. Nation-states, YouTube directors vs. studios, app-makers vs. entire industries. Millennials don’t need us. That’s why we’re scared of them.

In the U.S, millennials are the children of baby boomers, who are also known as the Me Generation, who then produced the Me Me Me Generation, whose selfishness technology has only exarcebated. Whereas in the 1950s families displayed a wedding photo, a school photo and maybe a military photo in their homes, the average middle-class American family today walks amid 85 pictures of themselves and their pets. Millennials have come of age in the era of the quantified self, recording their daily steps on FitBit, their whereabouts every hour of every day on PlaceMe and their genetic data on 23 and Me. They have less civic engagement and lower political participation than any previous group. This is a generation that would have made Walt Whitman wonder if maybe they should try singing a song of someone else.

They got this way partly because in the 1970s, people wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem. It turns out that self-esteem is great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great for keeping a job or a relationship. “It was an honest mistake,” says Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University and the editor of Self-Esteem: The puzzle of Low Self-Regard. “The early findings showed that, indeed, kids with high self-esteem did better in school and were less likely to be in various kinds of trouble. It’s just that we’ve learned latter that self-esteem is a result, not a cause.” The problem is that when people try to boost self-esteem, they accidentally boost narcissism instead. “Just tell your kids you love them. It’s a better message,” says Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, who wrote Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic. “When they’re little it seems cute to tell them they’re special or a princess or a rock star or whatever their T-shirt says. When they’re 14 it’s no longer cute.” All that self-esteem leads them to be disappointed when the world refuses to affirm how great they know they are. “This generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers and the lowest levels of satisfaction with their careers at the stage that they’re at,” says Sean Lyons, co-editor of Managing the New Workforce: International Perspectives on the Millennial Generation. “It is sort of a crisis of unmet expectations.”

What millennials are most famous for, besides narcissism is its effect: entitlement. If you want to sell seminars to middle managers, make them about how to deal with young employees who email the CEO directly and beg off projects they find boring. English teacher David McCullough Jr.’s address last year to Wellesley High School’s graduating class, a 12-minute reality check titled “You Are Not Special,” has nearly 2 million hits on YouTube. “Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you,” McCullough told the graduates. He says nearly all the response to the video has been positive, especially from millennials themselves; the video has 57 likes for every dislike. Though they’re cocky about their place in the world, millennials are also stunted, having prolonged a life stage between teenager and adult that this magazine once called twixters and will now use once again in an attempt to get that term to catch on. The idea of the teenager started in the 1920s; in 1910, only a tiny percentage of kids went to high school, so most people’s social interactions were with adults in their families or in the workplace. Now that cell phones allow kids to socialize at every hour – they send and receive an average of 88 texts a day, according to Pew – they’re living under the constant influence of their friends. “Peer pressure is anti-intellectual. It is anti-historical. It is anti-eloquence,” says Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, who wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). “Never before in history have people been able to grow up and reach age 23 so dominated by peers. To develop intellectually you’ve got to relate to older people, older things: 17-year-olds never grow up if they’re just hanging around other 17-year-olds.” Of all the objections to Obamacare, not a lot of people argued against parents’ need to cover their kids’ health insurance until they’re 26.

Millennials are interacting all day but almost entirely through a screen. You’ve seen them at bars, sitting next to one another and texting. They might look calm, but they’re deeply anxious about missing out on something better. Seventy percent of them check their phones every hour, and many experience phantom pocket-vibration syndrome. “They’re doing a behavior to reduce their anxiety,” says Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University at Dominguez Hills and the author of iDisorder. That constant search of a hit of dopamine (“Someone liked my status update!”) reduces creativity. From 1966, when the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking were first administered, through the mid-1980s, creativity scores in children increased. Then they dropped, falling sharply in 1998. Scores on tests of empathy similarly fell sharply, starting in 2000, likely because of both a lack to face-to-face time and higher degrees of narcissism. Not do only millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, but they also have trouble even intellectually understanding others’ points of view.

So, yes, we have all that data about narcissism and laziness and entitlement. But a generation’s greatness isn’t determined by data; it’s determined by how they react to the challenges that befall them. And, just as important, by how we react to them. Whether you think millennials are the new greatest generation of optimistic entrepreneurs or a group of 80 million people about to implode in a dwarf star of tears when their expectations are unmet depends largely on how you view change. Me, I choose to believe in the children. God knows they do.

Source: Time. Available at http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/ Accessed on October 24, 2016.  

Text 3

The Assistants, by Camille Perri

Chapter 1

In less than a second I was at his desk, notepad in hand. Behind me a wall of flat-screens flashed the news being broadcast by Titan and its so-called competitors. Robert had the uncanny ability to devote a small portion of his gaze to each screen simultaneously. In all he owned nine satellite television networks, one hundred seventy-five newspapers, one hundred cable channels, forty book imprints, forty television stations, and one movie studio. His total audience reached around 4.7 billion people, which came out to around three-fourths of the population of the entire globe. But the news was his baby. He was never not watching it, analyzing it, shaping it. That’s why he situated his office at Titan News headquarters, where he could keep close watch not only on his wall of flat-screens but also on his journalists. A man as powerful as Robert could have hidden himself anywhere, pulling at the strings of the world from a lounge chair in the Seychelles, unseen by his employees—but he needed to be here at the center of it all, at the hub.

Our office didn’t look like a newsroom that you’d imagine from movies or TV drama series. The floors below ours were more like that—the broadcast, print media, and digital newsrooms, each of which could have easily passed for something out of The Matrix. And there was an entire floor of flashy studios used for our non-stop news coverage and thrill-a-minute opinion shows. But our office on the fortieth floor was far less exciting, just row after row of desks and cubicles. Still, we were the brain of the whole operation, the source from which all orders trickled down. Titan’s chief editors and all of Robert’s most trusted deputies had desks on our floor so Robert could pull them into impromptus with the business leaders and celebrities he met with— and so he could foster relationships between them and the political-party representatives (yes, from both parties) who came to lobby him. I guess what I’m trying to say is, what the fortieth floor lacked in flash it made up for in influence.

(Taken from http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317172/the-assistants-by-perri-camille/9780399172540/)

TEXT 1

What is administrative excellence?

Administrative Professionals perform some of the toughest functions in an office. Not only are you required to keep pace with ever-changing technology, you need to work with and through many people to meet deadlines, resolve conflicts, gather information, and coordinate schedules and logistics. Additionally, you are often the first point-of-contact for customers – your competence and professionalism in meeting their demands might be one of the most important factors in how your organization is perceived in the marketplace. To satisfy the needs of so many, your technical skills and your interpersonal skills must be well-balanced to generate efficient and effective results.

Administrative excellence pertains to the quality of work and the caliber of service that you provide in carrying out your responsibilities. Excellence by definition exceeds the routine expectations of managers, coworkers, and other customers, but it is a standard first set by you. It is something that many aspire to and work hard to deliver. I once read that excellence means "you are better today than you were yesterday, but not as good as you will be tomorrow." With that understanding, you can see there is no finish line. Excellence is a commitment to continually do and give your best.

Although we each have personal standards and differing values in terms of excellence, there are a few things that help to streamline administrative efforts in reaching high levels of job performance. Here are what I considered to be the "5Ps" of administrative excellence:

1. Perception – Self-awareness of behaviors and skills that maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses.

Know yourself and what you like and what you dislike about your job. Pay attention to those activities that excite and engage you. Typically, these are things that come naturally or easily for you – your strengths. Find opportunities to do more of what you love to do – you’ll be happier and more satisfied with your work. Take control and find solutions for those parts of your job that are less fulfilling so that your emotions and attitude don’t work against you.

2. Purpose – Understanding the importance of job responsibilities and identifying with the overall objectives of the team, department, and organization.

It’s one thing to know how to do your job, but it’s more important to know why you do what you do. Understanding your role in the bigger picture of organizational success helps to ignite feelings of inclusion and professional pride.

3. Progress – Ability to think progressively for continuous personal and professional improvement.

Challenge yourself to try new things and new ways of doing routine things. Don’t let yourself stagnate or become too comfortable – seize opportunities to showcase your skills or push self-imposed limitations. People rarely gain a professional edge when others can’t see or don’t know what they are capable of achieving.

4. Partnership – Willingness and ability to foster good relationships and teamwork with coworkers, managers, and customers.

Good relationships are the foundation for resourcefulness in your job. Treat others with respect. Do what you say you will do, offer to help others, exhibit a sense of urgency in responding to requests, and extend common courtesy – when others reciprocate, a trusting partnership is formed.

5. Professionalism – High standards of appearance, personal conduct, work product, and expertise.

Don’t leave doubts in the minds of others. Match image with skills and knowledge to help shape the thoughts and experiences of others. Continue to learn and produce accurate, timely work and your reputation and credibility will "speak for itself."

There are many other measurements of excellence. Find things that are unique about you and make your pathway to excellence your own. No one else will do it or achieve it in exactly the same manner. It’s often the small things that make a person stand out in a big way. Several years ago, a manager described his admin’s stellar performance in this way, "I don’t know how else to explain it…everything she does for me comes back just a little bit better than I expected it to." That’s a strong endorsement for administrative excellence – a little effort, a lot of admiration.

©Administrative Excellence – 2010 (Adapted from: https://adminexcellence.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/what-is-administrative-excellence/, in 12/01/2017)