Class EEXX-510 Focus Question – Chapter 1 What are characteristics of students with learning and behavior disabilities? Students with difficulties during the learning process and social interactions, exhibit behaviors like focusing problems, they are easily distracted, and tend to be impulsive not acknowledging the consequences of their behavior. Their learning and behavior difficulties always call the educator’s attention, it can be manifested in diverse ways as the following: · Poor academic performance: these students despite of having the cognitive processes to succeed academically, they have a significant difficulty in one or more learning areas. · Memory: students with problems remembering the lessons they are taught, these students have short memory problems, they may remember one day and may not remember the next day. · Attention problems: it is very hard for these students to keep themselves on task for a long period of time, they have problems following directions and are very easily distracted. · Hyperactivity: they are overactive and find it very hard to be seated, or in the same place for extended periods of time, they hardly complete a task and are very distractive. · Aggressive behavior: they are physically or verbally assaultive. They tend to kick, hit, get involve into fights, and insult others. · Poor language abilities: this characteristic can be manifested in many ways, through problems understanding vocabulary, concepts, expressing themselves writing or orally, even developing age-appropriate math skill. · Withdrawn behavior: these students are very shy and hardly interact with other students, they are considered loners who avoid getting involved with others. · Bizarre behavior: they may stare at objects for a long period of time, they ma sit and rock, or can exhibit aggressive behaviors. When determining the complexity of the learning and Behavior disability we need to consider that students can exhibit more than one of the difficulty or behavior mentioned before, and that there are many factors to consider in order to determine the severity of the disability. References: Vaughn, S. & Bos, C.S.  (2015). Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning and Behavior Problems (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, I http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2071.html Gerstner - IBM Gerstner is credited with saving IBM from going out of business in the early 1990s. In his memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his arrival at the company in April 1993, when an active plan was in place to disaggregate the company. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed for obsolescence. The company's own management was in the process of allowing its various divisions to rebrand and manage themselves — the so-called "Baby Blues." Gerstner reversed this plan, realizing from his previous experiences at RJR and American Express that there rem ...

1. Class EEXX-510
Focus Question – Chapter 1
What are characteristics of students with learning and behavior
disabilities?
Students with difficulties during the learning process and social
interactions, exhibit behaviors like focusing problems, they are
easily distracted, and tend to be impulsive not acknowledging
the consequences of their behavior. Their learning and behavior
difficulties always call the educator’s attention, it can be
manifested in diverse ways as the following:
· Poor academic performance: these students despite of having
the cognitive processes to succeed academically, they have a
significant difficulty in one or more learning areas.
· Memory: students with problems remembering the lessons they
are taught, these students have short memory problems, they
may remember one day and may not remember the next day.
· Attention problems: it is very hard for these students to keep
themselves on task for a long period of time, they have
problems following directions and are very easily distracted.
· Hyperactivity: they are overactive and find it very hard to be
seated, or in the same place for extended periods of time, they
hardly complete a task and are very distractive.
· Aggressive behavior: they are physically or verbally
assaultive. They tend to kick, hit, get involve into fights, and
insult others.
· Poor language abilities: this characteristic can be manifested
in many ways, through problems understanding vocabulary,
concepts, expressing themselves writing or orally, even
developing age-appropriate math skill.
· Withdrawn behavior: these students are very shy and hardly
interact with other students, they are considered loners who
avoid getting involved with others.

2. · Bizarre behavior: they may stare at objects for a long period
of time, they ma sit and rock, or can exhibit aggressive
behaviors.
When determining the complexity of the learning and Behavior
disability we need to consider that students can exhibit more
than one of the difficulty or behavior mentioned before, and that
there are many factors to consider in order to determine the
severity of the disability.
References:
Vaughn, S. & Bos, C.S. (2015). Strategies for Teaching
Students with Learning and Behavior Problems (9th ed.). Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, I
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2071.html
Gerstner - IBM
Gerstner is credited with saving IBM from going out of business
in the early 1990s. In his
memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his
arrival at the company in April
1993, when an active plan was in place to disaggregate the
company. The prevailing wisdom of
the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed
for obsolescence. The company's
own management was in the process of allowing its various
divisions to rebrand and manage
themselves — the so-called "Baby Blues."

3. Gerstner reversed this plan, realizing from his previous
experiences at RJR and American
Express that there remained a vital need for a broad-based
information technology integrator. His
decision to keep the company together was the defining decision
of his tenure. The subsequent
refocusing on the IT services business (which grew to nearly
50% of the IBM's revenues), the
embrace of the Internet as a business phenomenon, and a broad
effort to revive the company's
culture are widely seen as having resulted in one of the most
remarkable turnarounds in business
history.
In his memoir, Gerstner described the turnaround as difficult
and often wrenching for an IBM
culture that had become insular and balkanized. After he
arrived, over 100,000 employees were
laid off from a company that had maintained a lifetime
employment practice from its inception.
Layoffs and other tough management measures continued in the
first two years of Gerstner's
tenure, but the company was saved, and business success has
continued to grow steadily since
then.

4. Gerstner was named a Knight Commander of the British Empire
and given a KBE on the
recommendation of former United Kingdom Prime Minister,
Tony Blair, The award was for his
services to UK education and his contribution to the Internet. In
2008, Gerstner received the
Legend in Leadership Award from the Yale School of
Management.
Upon his departure from IBM, Gerstner received a 10-year
consultancy contract worth up to $2
million annually, plus expenses and full use of IBM facilities
and services, such as office, cars,
aircraft and financial planning. He is only required to work one
month out of the year. [2]
Following his success in IBM, Gerstner has also become a
mentor to Howard Stringer, CEO of
Sony Corporation to turnaround the Japanese corporation. [3]
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2071.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Who_Says_Elephants
_Can%27t_Dance%3F&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanized
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Blair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_School_of_Management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#cite_note-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Stringer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.#cite_note-2
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? is an account of IBM's
historic turnaround as told by Louis V.
Gerstner, Jr., the chairman and CEO of IBM from April 1993
until March 2002. Lou Gerstner
led IBM from the brink of bankruptcy and mainframe obscurity
back into the forefront of the
technology business. After a brief foreword and introduction in
which Gerstner provides his pre-
IBM background, he jumps right into the story of his IBM
experience. The book is divided into
five parts: "Grabbing Hold," "Strategy," "Culture," "Lessons
Learned," and "Observations."
Part I, "Grabbing Hold," is the story of how Gerstner wrestled
with the idea of taking the IBM
job (he turned it down at first), followed by highlights from his
first year on the job. It provides
an interesting insider's view of the CEO recruiting process for a
Fortune 50 company and

6. describes how Gerstner addressed IBM's severe financial crisis
in the early '90s and managed to
keep the company solvent. It also reveals just how precarious
IBM's financial position was
during that time, which many readers (including myself) might
not have known. Still, although
Part I is quite interesting, the real meat of the book is in the
subsequent parts.
After stepping back to provide a brief history of IBM, Part II
("Strategy") dives more deeply into
how Gerstner repositioned IBM's corporate strategy to keep the
company together and pull off a
successful turnaround. When Gerstner came on board, the
conventional wisdom, from both
industry pundits as well as many IBM insiders, was that the
only way to save IBM from eventual
disaster was to break it apart. But Gerstner looked beyond this
advice and opted to preserve the
real strength he believed IBM brought to customers. His
decision to keep the company together
and "teach the elephant to dance" was "the first strategic
decision, and, I believe, the most
important decision I ever made -- not just at IBM, but in my
entire business career," Gerstner

7. writes.
Fixing IBM: "All about execution"
What Gerstner realized is that IBM had a unique and unequaled
capability to "apply complex
technologies to solve business challenges." It was this unique
value proposition that would
enable him to bring IBM back from near extinction. But to
accomplish this, IBM needed not only
a corporate makeover, but also a complete facelift and some
liposuction as well! Gerstner likens
his arrival at IBM to stepping through a time warp and arriving
back in the '50s. A massive,
difficult, and painful reengineering feat was required to get the
insular IBM to focus on bringing
value to the customer in the marketplace. Ultimately, though,
this led to the "new" IBM. It also
gave rise to a hilarious statement that the book credits to a
senior IBM executive: "Reengineering
is like starting a fire on your head and putting it out with a
hammer."
In Gerstner's own words, "fixing IBM was all about execution"
and required "an enormous sense
of urgency." His whole approach was to drive the company from

8. the customer's view and "turn
IBM into a market-driven rather than an internally focused,
process-driven enterprise." And it
worked. It was all about execution -- and honest ways to
measure its effectiveness. Before
Gerstner arrived, IBM had a tendency to fool itself with bogus
indices and data (e.g., customer
satisfaction numbers generated from hand-picked samples;
subjective product milestones, etc.),
but he changed all that. "People do what you inspect, not what
you expect," he explains.
I couldn't help thinking that perhaps Gerstner took a peek at
Rational's mission statement and
Five Field Measures to craft his IBM strategy, but then I know
these things work because they
are based on sound general business principles. As a new IBM
employee, I was very encouraged
by Gerstner's maniacal attention to customers' notions of
success and his single-minded focus on
responding to marketplace needs. If his market-driven approach
to doing business really does
pervade the "new" IBM culture, then it will be no surprise if
IBM ends up dominating the

9. technology landscape in this century, just as it did in most of
the last one.
Back to top
Culture is everything
Part III (Culture) was particularly interesting to me because one
of the main reasons I wanted to
work for Rational was the company culture, and I was
concerned about its compatibility with
IBM's culture. Many Rational tech reps (myself included) say
they have enjoyed working at
Rational because the company culture empowers individuals to
make a difference. Fortunately,
company culture was another of Gerstner's main targets for
change:
Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that
culture was just one among several
important elements in any organization's makeup and success --
along with vision, strategy,
marketing, financials, and the like. I came to see, in my time at
IBM, that culture isn't just one
aspect of the game; it is the game. In the end, an organization is
nothing more than the collective

10. capacity of its people to create value.
Gerstner's most important and proudest accomplishment was to
institute a culture that brought
IBM closer to its customers by inspiring employees to drive
toward customer-defined success.
Now, the company's strong customer focus will allow Rational
to continue pursuing the same
mission that has guided us for more than twenty years.
Back to top
by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Harper Business, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-052379-4
Author of this article - Dennis Elenburg
Wisdom and Insights
There are nuggets of wisdom throughout the last two sections of
the book. In "Lessons Learned"
and "Observations," Gerstner points out that some integrator,
fundamentally acting in a service
role, controls every major industry. This was the basis for
building IBM Global Services.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2071.html
#ibm-pcon
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2071.html

11. #ibm-pcon
Another shrewd Gerstner insight is that every major industry is
built around open standards. It
was this realization that led IBM Software to enable and build
on open standards in a network-
centric world, and Gerstner provides a compelling argument for
abandoning proprietary
development and embracing software standards (e.g., J2EE and
Web Services). In fact, Gerstner
argues that the most valuable technology companies are OEM
suppliers who leverage their
technology wherever possible; therefore, IBM must actively
license its technology in order to be
successful. The book's three appendices contain, respectively,
some interesting e-mail
correspondence, Gerstner's vision of e-business (including the
IBM IT On Demand, autonomic,
and grid computing initiatives), and a financial overview of
IBM from 1992 to 2002.
The latter clearly demonstrates that Gerstner got results.
Although many people criticized IBM
for selecting a non-technical CEO, based on IBM's performance
during his reign (and the insight

12. he reveals in this book), Gerstner was definitely the right
person for the job. His reinvention of
IBM was one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds of the
twentieth century, and the
numbers in Appendix C of this book will certainly shut the
mouths of any would-be critics.
Before opening this book, I had assumed it was Gerstner's
autobiography and would highlight
not only his IBM career, but also his years at the consulting
firm McKinsey and Company and
his executive tenure at American Express and RJR Nabisco. I
also assumed that, as is typical of
many books by high-profile executives, the book was
ghostwritten in part. Gerstner dismisses
both of these assumptions in the foreword. Not only did he
write the book himself, he claims, but
also the book deals (as the subtitle "Inside IBM's Historic
Turnaround" suggests) almost
exclusively with Gerstner's IBM years.
Under other circumstances I might regard this book as just
another well written and interesting
memoir from a captain of capitalism; both Rational employees
and Rational customers now have
a stake in the success of IBM and will gain a better

13. understanding and appreciation of the
company by reading this book.
For further reading about IBM's past, I also recommend:
Making of IBM by Kevin
Maney (John Wiley and Sons, 2003).
J. Watson Jr. and Peter
Petre (Bantam Books, 1990).
Dennis is a Technical Representative on IBM Rational's Dallas
sales team, joined the company
in 2000. Prior to that he spent several years consulting for
various telecom companies in North
Texas and worked at Coopers and Lybrand (before the
company's merger with
PriceWaterhouse), as well as at EDS. He holds a BA in Physics
from Austin College.