Teaching Financial Literacy with Technology

The subject of teaching financial literacy is one that has been bandied about for decades in America's schools.  How many times have you heard someone say, "Algebra?  I never use Algebra!  But I was never taught how to balance my check book -- that I need to know!"  Well, some areas are starting to inject this into their curriculum -- and there are some great digital resources to help!

Some states, such as Ohio, have an economic and financial literacy requirement in their Ohio Core state standards to be taught within social studies or another class. In their state, teachers certified in social studies, business education, marketing education, and family and consumer science are all licensed to teach financial literacy. These teachers can help develop a curriculum starting in the earliest grades to make sure these literacies are woven seamlessly throughout the curriculum at all grade levels.

The Council for Economic Education has developed a set of standards for financial literacy that start in grade three.  
These Standards Include:

• Earning Income
• Buying Goods and Services
• Using Credit
• Saving
• Financial Investment
• Protecting and Insuring

Of course, financial literacy standards are also found in the National Business Association’s standards, the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences standards,  and state standards, such as the ones in Ohio, Oklahoma (7-12), Nebraska (K-12) and New Jersey (4-12). There are even sets of standards, such as the Jump$tart Coalition’s National Standards in K-12 Personal Finance Education that can serve to help you embed economic and financial literacy across the curriculum.

As a great tie-in to these standards, Discovery Education has built a great series of streaming videos that can augment your financial readiness curriculum called, "Financial LIteracy: Teach It!"  Below, I've included some links and descriptions of these videos.  They do require that your school or district be subscribed to Discovery Education in order to view them.

Financial Literacy for Students: K-2

• The Meaning of Money
• Counting Bills and Coins
• Writing Out Money: Decimals and Dollar Signs

Financial Literacy for Students: 3-5

• Earning Power
• Needs Versus Wants
• Saving for a Goal
• What Do Banks Do?

Financial Literacy for Students: 6-8

• Creating a Budget
• Savings Accounts
• Checking Accounts
• How to Use a Debit Card and ATM

Financial Literacy for Students: 9-12

• Security and Banking Online
• Calculating Interest
• Risks and Rewards of Credit Cards
• Loans: Car, School and Home
• Long-term Savings and Investing

Other great resources:

• Money As You Learn: Common Core aligned math lessons that teach financial concepts.
• United States Federal Reserve Bank: Worksheets and lesson plans for K-12.
• Federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission: Information, games, fun facts, curricula, lesson plans and more to aid in teaching financial literacy.
• Your Life, Your Money, What is Financial Literacy? by PBS.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also a lifelong baseball fan who has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Reaching Teachers for great lesson ideas!

Reaching Teachers is a great resource for teachers all over the world.  This handy little infographic is just  a sample of the great things they have going on at their website and the great ideas available there.  They have tons of downloadable lessons for every subject and every age level!  Take a moment and check them out to find out more here: ReachingTeachers!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Create digital learning platforms with Time to Know

Time is elusive for all of us.  You always have the best intentions to find the time to do that professional development... but then things just kind of come up, don't they?  And what about that digital content that you need for your students?  You have looked high and low for something that fit your curriculum, but it just isn't there!  What if you could build a library of digital classroom tools that you could use over and over?  And then edit when you need to?

Now you can with Time to Know.

Time to Know is an online platform that allows you to create, manage and publish digital classroom material whether it is for History 101 or How to Use Your Interactive Whiteboard!  It doesn't matter -- these tools are powerful enough to illustrate just about ay concept.  

If you want to check it out, take a look at the video below.  If you want to know more -- check out their website and see all the awesome things you can create with Time to Know -- and all the people who are already doing it!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Introduce kids to robotics with ROMO: Your Personal Smartphone Robot!

One of the things I love the most about working in educational technology is coming across something neat, fun and educational to share with students.  While surfing on Niftyreads.com I came across a couple of things, but this one really caught my eye.

It's called Romo: the Smartphone Robot!  

While Romo was largely designed to entertain you, if you look at what it is and what it does there are a number of educational opportunities here.  Romo is a fully motorized, durable plastic base with tracks and gears that enable its movement.  The base is controlled by an app that runs on your iPhone (sorry Android, that support it supposed to be in the works).  The iPhone is connected via the headphone jack (which may be a little awkward given that they are on the bottom now - this picture is using an iPhone 3G) and delivers its commands through this interface.  Simple plug-and-play!   You can also control it via your iPad with your iPhone plugged in -- very cool stuff!

But the fun is in the missions that are included in the app.  The missions allow students an entry-level method to get into robotics and how robots work that is different from LEGO MindStorms.  The programming is simple, yet allows for a great deal of complexity in what you ask Romo to do.  I think that this product has direct implications for grades 4-8, and maybe even some introduction to robotics courses in high school that might move on into LEGO MindStorms.  Check it out!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Interactive Touch Surface with Zmartframe Touchmax!

A recurring theme in classroom technology is being able to create a viewable and interactive screen for students and teachers to use.  Traditionally, this has been the interactive whiteboard.  As technology moves forward and prices come down, more and more we are seeing televisions enter into this marketplace as a viable alternative.  The ZmartframeTouchmax looks to change ALL your perceptions about viewable, touchable and interactive lessons in your classroom!

The Zmartframe Touchmax is an Indiegogo project that is a frame that goes around any surface and creates a touchable surface.  It could be wood, drywall, marker board, glass... anything!  It works with any existing projector, no matter the age or resolution.  And the projected cost of the Touchmax is a fraction of what interactive whiteboards -- plus no pens!  Just imagine being able to make anything in your classroom -- from a wall, to a board, to a table, to an existing monitor -- an interactive surface!  The implications are staggering!

Having seen it in action, this is truly one of the most exciting potential products at this price point in this market that I've seen in some time!  You can watch a video of the product below.  Take a minute and get all the details on the Zmartfram Touchmax on their Indiegogo page and consider supporting this project to make it a reality!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Google Classroom - First Look!

I posted a BLOG at the beginning of August about Google giving us a drop date for Classroom.  I've had some time now to play with it and get a solid impression of the product... here are my thoughts!

Google's new LMS (Learning Management System) would, on the surface, look to be an entree into the market in which products like Blackboard, FinalSite and Moodle have been the traditional heavyweights.  If you think that, you'd be wrong.  It plays much more in the space of something like Haiku or Edmodo when it comes to overall functionality... but let's talk about that a little.

For those educational institutions that are using Google Apps for Education (And if you aren't, you should ask yourself WHY... and have a reason).  But, if you are, you can request to have the App added to your suite and then it's easy to hop right into Classroom just like any other Google App.

Once you are inside Google Classroom and classes have been set up, the interface should be very familiar to you.  It is a similar clean, organized look and feel to other Google Apps.  It works via a class stream of information very similar to Google+, and everything that happens within the class will show up in the stream.  When something is assigned, turned in, graded, comments added etc -- it all shows up in the stream for the teachers.  The student view is slightly different and carries a little less information in it.

You can set up your class with information about it, upload a syllabus and post announcements just like you'd expect in any kind of system that hopes to help you organize your classes.  You can grade based on just about any scale you'd like, as long as it is a whole number.  No 89.5's here.  It is easy to take an assignment and grade it, and have it show up to the student as a newly graded assignment.  However, this is largely where the grading features stop.  A number of grading features are missing out of the box including timed-release of assignments, take-home exams, online assignments and several others that you'd expect to see in a full featured LMS such as Blackboard, Moodle or FinalSite.  But... keep in mind this is just the initial release!

The current layout of the stream and how it works contains all the information a student would need, but it is very much like Twitter or Facebook... if something is a few hours old you may have to hunt for it!  FinalSite has a similar issue with their FinalSite Social plug-in.  A student gets assigned something first period, doesn't check their stream until sixth period and ends up having to scroll through assignments, returned work and sporting event updates to find it.  It is imperfect -- and I'd expect will be refined over time in all products.  One thing to note is that there is a great deal of integration between Google Classroom and Google Drive.  This is a boon for teachers who need that little bit extra to help keeping the classes they have running on Google Drive working smoothly!

This pretty much sums up Google Classroom.  Quick, right?  I know.  It is a product still growing... it looks good and clean, but lacks a lot of features found even in Haiku.  If you are currently using something like FinalSite LMS, Moodle or even Whipple Hill you might not want to make the switch to Google Classroom.  But, for a school that is using Google Apps for Education and does not currently have a standardized LMS -- Google Classroom is something worth looking into!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Make Your Classroom Truly Interactive with ClassFlow

When I walk into a school and see that they have interactive whiteboards, I am always intrigued to hear how they actually use them in class.  That conversation generally begins with "Well, I don't really know how to use it..." or "I never got any training..." or "I'm sure I could be doing other things with this..", it really isn't any different at any school.  Sure, there are those who go out of their way to design neat, interactive lessons with their interactive white boards -- but they tend to be a handful at the most.  What we usually end up doing is giving them a tutorial on how to use the whiteboard, and then dive into their curriculum.  What are they teaching?  How?  And how would they like to?  And more-often-than not, we end up with a teacher who really just wants their students to be invested and involved in their learning process.  And they tend to not care if the interactive whiteboard is involved.

Enter ClassFlow.  Now, ClassFlow isn't specifically an interactive whiteboard application -- but it *is* an application that gets your students involved and interactive with the lesson in multiple ways.  You can, of course, use your interactive whiteboard with it -- no sweat there.  And -- it will juice up that lesson, too!  Do you have a Promethean ActivBoard?  If you do then you *must* see ClassFlow and ActivExpression working together - video at the bottom of this post!

Want to see ClassFlow with ActiveExpression?

ClassFlow allows you to design interactive lessons that bring your students into the lesson via an iPad iOS, Android or Windows 8 app.  The ClassFlow Student App is completely free for the students to download, and the use of the web app and tablet apps allow you to create lessons and unify your classes easily, with a few clicks.  It allows you to receive real-time student progress information through a combination of interactive and differentiated assessments.

Sound interesting?  It is!  Here's how you get started (for free by the way):

ClassFlow is a fantastic new platform that any teacher looking to create lessons that are not only interactive, but exciting and become something that students look forward to!  Below is a video that goes over some of the features of ClassFlow.  You can also click HERE to get started!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Teaching Programming in Class AND in the CLOUD!

Being an educational technology professional, I end up teaching technology classes more than other subjects.  Sure, I've taught history and english -- but it is a more natural progression to be teaching a subject matter that is nearer to what you do every day than, say, the implications of the Dredd Scott decision on the Civil War.  While I can certainly go on about that, it isn't what I end up teaching.

** side note: my students will tell you that I have a particular knack for finding a way to work in history to my technology classes.  That, and waffles with bacon.  I love waffles with bacon. **

But one of the biggest challenges I've run into was finding an easy-to-use, easy for students to access, device and network independent method for students to write and debug code -- and be able to do it no matter what language I was teaching!  One of my biggest criticisms of programming over the past decade (or so) is that programmers do not learn the art of coding, they learn how to use a specific environment (Visual Studio, Borland Studio, Eclipse, etc)  I found something great and I wanted to share it with you, it is called Compilr.  Compilr is an online (device independent, yes, read that as "works on iPads") code editor and sandbox that allows students to write code from anywhere, anytime.  All you need is your device, and an Internet connection.  It works on iPads, iPhones, Windows, Windows RT, Android and Google Chromebook devices seamlessly.  It even includes (new) support for touchscreen interaction (which is way neat).  And, as an added bonus, if you are teaching advanced coding with a GIT repository -- you can just put that info in and BAM - import those projects.

What is really nice about Compilr is that it not only allows you to write your code, but it allows you to test and debug it -- all online.  When I first tested this with my Java classes, we have issues with some external libraries and even some basic ones.  But that seems to have been ironed out in the newest incarnation (now owned by Lynda).  And what's more -- it supports a gaggle of different programming languages natively!  Including C, C#, C++, Objective C, Objective C++, Fortran, HTML, Java, Javascript, Pascal, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual Basic and x86 Assembly.  Click here for more information on their platform support.  

Sound awesome?  Well it gets a better!  Tired of saving code on Dropbox or a USB drive?  No more -- Compilr serves as a central repository for all your code and allows you to create and share groupings of code for classroom activities!

Want to hone your skills on your own?  Compilr includes access to many tutorials and videos on coding in various languages!

Compilr goes a long way to achieving the cloud-based programming platform that almost every programming instructor has been longing for.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Google Announces Date for Google Classroom!

Teachers and administrators alike have been awaiting the news that Google just dropped --- a launch date for Google Classroom!   That date is August 11th, 2014!

Beginning on August 11th, all Google Apps for Education customers (it's free kids - why don't you have it?) will have full access to the Google Classroom environment.  This means that any teacher in your Google Apps for Education domain will be able to create or join a class, invite students and post assignments!

The Google Classroom is designed as an integrated part of Google Apps for Education that will allow teachers to create, interact and collect assignments all online -- and in the familiar Google Apps environment.  It does this by interacting directly with Google Drive and creating Google Drive folders for each assignment and class automatically for you when you create assignments.

Administrators can enable or disable Google Classroom in their Google Apps Administrative Console for the entire school or even specific departments -- just like any other Google App.  Google says they are continuing to grow and develop the product, and that input from teachers and administrators is key to the growth of Google Classroom.

To get started, users would go to the Google Classroom URL (http://classroom.google.com) and tell Google if you are a student or a teacher.  The Classroom Help Center is a great resource that Google will continue to develop for students and teachers to go to get help and answers when needed.  In addition to that, Google has launched the Classroom Forum for peer-to-peer question and answers!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

New Google Apps and Google Docs Updates for Your Classroom!

Google has recently released a new set of fantastic features that extend your Google Drive and Google Apps experience.  I've taken a few minutes and listed them out here for you, so you can be ready for them before classes begin in September!

Google Docs Updates:

Edit Microsoft Office files in Google Drive

My favorite new feature is the ability to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files -- natively!  Because sometimes people send you files and you need to be able to open them, make some edits, and send them back. If they don’t use Docs, Sheets and Slides it can be a challenge. With the latest update from Google Drive, this is no longer an issue because both the web and mobile apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you edit Office files—without conversion—so you can now edit and send back files in their original format.  Sweet!


Suggested Edits

This new feature is great for collaborative work on Google Docs. Before, when you share a Google document with your collaborators and grant them the editing rights they can edit anything in it. But with "Suggested Edits" you, as the owner of the document, can control this editing process by allowing collaborators to make only suggestions which you can either accept or reject. This new feature is not available on Google Docs for mobile yet, but look for it in the near future.

Google Slides Updates:

Widescreen Format

Google now allows a widescreen view of presentations. Now when you try to make a new presentation you will have a widescreen where you can get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image. You can also change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu. Widescreen presentation are a good fit for TV or monitor.

Editing the Master Slide

This functionality allows users to change customize the theme of their presentations as they like. can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to a specific font, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.  This one is one of those things that you'd pull your hair out about and just decide to use PowerPoint instead -- kudos to Google for finally adding this.

Edit, Crop and Add Borders to Images

With this new feature, users can now customize and edit images they use in their Slides. Before this update, users were limited as to what they can do with images they upload to their slides, now Google makes it easier for anyone to crop, edit, apply shape masks, and add borders to their images from within the presentation.  This is a huge time-saver for anyone who works heavily in Slides - and adds some real power to the application when comparing it to PowerPoint.

Slides is Now Available as a Mobile App
This one is pretty simple -- now you can use Slides on your Android and iOS devices!  Again, Google is making a good effort to make the weakest application in the suite more usable.

Google Apps Admin Tool
Admins can now restore a given user’s deleted Google Drive files for a specified date range. This helps ensure that, if a user accidentally deletes important files, those files are not permanently lost. The feature pertains to files that have been emptied from the Trash only. Files still in the Trash can be easily recovered by the user.  This is a great feature to enable true versioning in the Google Drive file system.

That's my quick and easy round up.  Hope this helps you prep for the kids coming back! (And yes, they are coming back!)

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

iPads or Androids in the Classroom?

Yesterday I posted about the great strides Windows 8 has made towards becoming a viable classroom tablet alternative -- so today I thought I'd tackle the incumbents, Apple's iPad and the myriad of Android devices that are out there.  In the phone sector, the battle between iOS and Android continues to rage on... people loving one and hating the other.  So the question is... does the same sentiment exist in the tablet world?  Not as much, but both are a viable option in the classroom as long as you buy good hardware.  You know you are getting good Apple hardware, but beware of cheap Android tablets -- you tend to get what you pay for in Android-land.

So the question looms: What tablet is best for my technology use in the classroom?

iPads to date seem to still be the leaders in the choices of tablets schools are investing in for their students. Apple announced that its share of the education tablet market reached 94% at the end of its third quarter in 2013.

Apps
With tablets and many educational curriculum today, it’s all about the apps. We know this; Apple leads the charge in terms of amount of applications available. If you have an Apple device you can pretty much assume that any major app can be available for download and updates will be available as early as anyone else.

With an Android device you are likely to get most major apps but there are exceptions and the main difference lies in the quality of the applications, wait time for updates with wait times at weeks or months after the iOS version is available.  For the most part, Android has basically caught up to Apple when it comes to e-book applications.

So, perhaps, for what your classroom needs, the Android has all available apps. Perhaps not... it is imperative that you check all of that out before committing to one or the other.

Price
In the almost twenty years working with schools, I've yet to work with a school who have stated they have unlimited budgets for technology in their classrooms. Schools have come to recognize the importance of spending money on tech, but budgets have not necessarily grown in that area.  When it comes to price Android devices can be a bit more budget conscious than the iPad. You can get a current generation Android tablet with plenty of processing power for around $250.00 which comes in much cheaper than the iPad mini at $329.00.

It is imperative that schools stay away from the cheaper $99 and $129 Android devices.  They are, generally speaking, built with inferior hardware, have poor battery life and sometimes do not even have apps like Android Market or Amazon Marketplace on them.  It is worth noting that mobile device management may be important in your school, and that carries a significant price tag.

Ease of Use
Usability in a tablet is a very important aspect to consider when making a decision. iPads tend to be a perfect tablet for those a bit intimidated by the technology with its streamlined operating system that is simple to use. The iPad as a whole has fewer bugs and is known to run smoother, thus making it generally a better user experience.

On Android tablets, things are little more difficult to figure out so it will take hitting up the “Settings” feature a few times to really familiarize yourself with the features. Tutorials and general sessions for staff and students can easily solve this issue if Android is the tablet choice you are leaning towards.

The good news is technology is the language of our students today and more likely than not they are capable of grasping and learning any tablet handed to them.

Security
We can’t be done with our comparisons without looking at security. Is it essential for schools to think about the security aspects around the devices they are choosing? Both the iPad and Android devices are super protected from taking on any viruses but both run the risk of applications being run on them with infected malware.

From the Apple store every app is tested by Apple for malware before being released so there is that added protection in that regard. Google removes malware after it has been reported but also includes many settings in the Android operating system that can prevent malicious attacks.

Any device running Android 2.2 or higher (which is nearly all of them) has access to Google’s malware scanner so if that setting is activated you will also have the added “checkup” before the application gets pushed out.

So, regardless of which device you go with make sure to remember to not put the cart above the horse. Your school must first decide what the main goal is with these devices, and then do your research to figure out which is the best fit for that goal.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!