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Play Games to Learn Business and Entrepreneurship

Discusses the use of virtual worlds for business collaboration

Using second life to facilitate business meetings is an indicator of how virtual collaboration is becoming more prevalent in the business world.

Business still early in development. They are trying to provide solution for this problem: 'it's extremely difficult to track, quantify and contextualize the diversity of experiences in informal lifelong learning." Too early to say if this is even a sustainable business model but we will see. 

Nice to hear business ppl taking consequence of education to the society seriously. Unfortunate all solutuions he suggest is about the money...

Schools throughout the country are experiencing the same teacher-driven adoption of technology tools. Internet-savvy teachers are increasingly finding tools to use in the classroom on their own, and lower business-startup costs mean the tools are more readily available. In response, many education companies are changing how they market and sell their products. Nationwide sales teams and central-office visits are giving way to word-of-mouth and sophisticated business-intelligence software as preferred methods for pushing adoption. Companies offer free products to teachers with the goal of influencing districtwide purchases of more-robust versions-known as the "freemium" pricing model. But in most sectors of the existing K-12 system-with its various stakeholders, budgetary restrictions, and procurement regulations- the so-called "consumerization" of education faces many barriers, experts say, making it difficult to find the right balance between selling directly to teachers and addressing the needs of central-office administrators.

Some key training initiatives in cyber security, big data, analytics, mobile, etc. IBM's recent report "found that only 1 in 10 organizations has the skills needed to effectively apply advanced technologies such as business analytics, mobile computing, cloud computing and social business."

Seems to be getting some coverage on this topic lately. Interesting comment here. Probably reactions many disruptive innovation driver will face. Doesnt mean they are failing though. Reactions from their users seem to be relatively muted. It is the skeptics and traditional players who is making big deal out of it. 'Obviously, the company does not want to say that its free content is cannibalizing the revenue generated from charging students and institutions for premium features and content, but it's clear that the company didn't quite get the balance right.' 'Unfortunately, although Flat World would never admit it, this announcement certainly serves as validation of the doubt over Open Educational Resources (OER) as a business concept.' Whatever you do though, the business model should be sustainable..

Influence of Politics and business on education with Florida as a case in point. What is Good for Business, may not necessarily good for education. Interesting article with interactive maps.

One way business industry is trying to overcome the 'safety' issue related to ''ubiquitous'' environment. This is about making automobiles 'smart' and use it as a mean to collect data. 

This is not necessarily related to technology but think is relevant to the concern presented by Dr Turkle on 'multitasking'. Many of us and current management have fostered the bad habit of multitasking, responding to the expectation that we will respond immediately, seek to keep ourselves busy to reward our brain... This famous book by Ghoshal introduces the concept of 'active non-action'. Figure 2-1 provides 4 types of managerial behaviors (the detached, procrastinators, frenzied and the purposeful). how many of us are being 'the purposeful' today? 

An interesting article on how resistant to change different types of organizations are. Educational institutions rank pretty highly resistant. Though it is interesting to note that businesses rank the most adaptive (non resistant)--so the education technology and startup trend may be a good sign!

Interesting. from where I am from (=Japan), business organizations with long history with the majority of employees committed until retirement age of 60 (slowly this is changing though), maybe NPO and even government (with so much shuffling going on) would rank higher...

The author makes a good point that heightened market competition seems to contribute to reduced resistance. I noticed that the more-resistant organizations operate in more highly regulated markets, which would seem to create internal cultures more oriented to compliance and, thus, resistance.

Lessons learned from Cisco's experience indicate that business-education partnerships should: * Be set up so that all aspects of the project are transparent to outsiders, even if corporations profit from the R&D * Foster experimentation, because it is not always clear in advance which ideas and projects will work best * Establish in-depth training for every new technology, with businesspeople and educators learning from each other

This article discusses some tech careers and locations of these opportunities. "The results are clear. Mobile computing, cloud computing, social business, and business analytics have gone beyond niche status and are now part of any modern organization's core IT focus," said IBM's Jim Corgel, general manager of ISV and Developer Relations. "IT professionals who can develop the skills needed to work across these technologies will be ready to meet growing business demand in the coming years."

Fascinating article about backlash to a non-profit working with school districts to integrate student data sources. Raises lots of pertinent issues beyond student data: intersection of business, foundations, and school districts; parent reactions to educational technology; districts going down the rabbit hole of tech contracts without a clear sense of what they'll get....

I was speaking with Chris yesterday and we agreed that it was going to be the entertainment industry that would pioneer this technology. At this point, it looks as if Vuzix core market and strategy for growing their AR library is business (training) and academia. The fact that you can see through the lens but ALSO see the 'broadcast' image is huge. Yesterdays AR demo would have been soooo much more immersive had we been able to keep one eye on the R (reality...cars, appraoching hornets, etc) and one I on the AR.

Harvard Business Publishing makes five forcasts about the future of augmented reality.

Basic but a good refresher on the maverick mind of futurists in business

Industry top firms, including Google, News Corp, Disney, and NBC Universal, are showing interest in online education. "Demand for online education is exploding. The global market for online learning at schools and businesses is expected to grow from $32.1 billion in 2010 to approximately $50 billion by 2015, according to research firm Ambient Insight."