Group items tagged

Interesting article published 1/6/2014 on Second Acts for baby boomers. Quotes Marc Freedman, Elizabeth Isele (who lived in ME for a long time), and mentions Bevan Rogel. The Boomerworks online service for matching BBs with work opportunities is very interesting--wonder how they are doing? And whether we should try to ally with them? "In 1998, living in Maine, Isele created CyberSeniors, a multilingual nonprofit computer training company that eventually trained more than 28,000 seniors in 24 states. She's led numerous nonprofits over the decades and is now pushing public policy changes and forging connections between organizations to create an "entrepreneur ecosystem." That ecosystem is flourishing in Sarasota. Sarasota's Institute for the Ages, established in 2009 to change the conversation about aging as one of deficit and decline to one about enhancing lives, is a lab for companies and services that want to tap into the needs of older adults. In late 2013, the Institute launched Boomerswork.com, a web-based network to connect freelancers with companies seeking seasoned professionals for project-based work. The program started in Canada and the Institute is the first organization to bring it to the U.S. When the Institute convenes a national convention here in February, entrepreneurship and encore careers will be a large part of the agenda. In addition to a keynote address by Freedman, Isele is leading a workshop on entrepreneurship with Bevon Rogel, who runs a Freedman-related Encore Academy in St. Petersburg to help seniors find meaningful work. For Southwest Florida, which has one of the highest concentrations of seniors in the nation, the idea of an "encore" seems natural. As the rest of the country and world grays, branding this life stage as one that brings years, or potentially decades, more productivity and meaning to life has become an imperative."

Authors did an opening exercise at a conference in 2010 to force choices by educators on organizationally controlled vs. individually controlled PLEs. It clear that the shift is toward individualized learning supported/guided by educators side by side not in front of the learner. Excerpt "To help them in this endeavour, institutions have an important role as guides (not leaders) that have to trespass their own walls and enter the environments (in plural) where learning actually takes place, which increasingly is outside of the framework of formality. In fact, this seems to be answering at the WHAT question: what is learning in the digital era? The rest of pairs (Openness and the Barriers) seem to be pointing at the HOW question: how should learning be carried on in the digital era?. The answer seems to be open and flexible institutions, new educational systems and methodologies and a dire organizational change."

Connected Learning, a new research-driven initiative was introduced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012. This blog post by Jackie Gerstein discusses its essence and includes TED video of Henry Jenkins and separate video of Mimi Ito. See excerpt on core values and principals of connected learning: At the core of connected learning are three values: Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in. Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute. Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity (http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles). This initiative is being driven by the following design principles: Shared purpose - Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today's social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals. Production-centered - Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today's rapidly changing work and political conditions. Openly networked - Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popula

Article on web 2.0 marketing to millennials by Strategic Enrollment Management February 2009. "Although we are not going to dedicate our article to a recap of millennial marketing, we do want to reinforce the importance of understanding the millennial mindset before you begin to build your Web 2.0 plan. Consider that 64 percent of your audience (teens 12 to 17 years old) are reported to engage in at least one type of online content creation, up from 57 percent just four years ago. Understanding what they are doing online allows our plans to be more comprehensive and effective and fully integrated into a successful enrollment plan. There is even an emerging classification of teenagers using a host of technology options for dealing with family and friends, including traditional landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging and e-mail. These "super communicators" represent about 28 percent of the entire teen population (Guess 2008). And possibly the most interesting statistic to watch comes out of Noel-Levitz's "E-Expectations: The Class of 2007" report, which claims that 43 percent of high school juniors have a profile page designed for use in researching colleges (Lenhart & Madden 2007). This all means that if you are not already participating in an active use of online marketing you are overlooking a large group of your audience. Frankly, they are keenly aware of marketing, and as marketers we need to understand their mindset to build effective plans to reach and educate them. We cannot expect that they will conform to marketing as it has been done in a traditional way. Tools of the Trade: Components to Consider The goal of any Web 2.0 is to inform and connect. Simply stated, the tools you choose should work to reinforce that goal and integrate with the other tools of the trade you are using. Enrollment managers who know their audience understand the need to consider a variety of marketing options, from traditional adve

Terese Bird and Grainne Conole are holding a webinar on A Pedagogical Look at MOOCs. Funded by the EU project eMundus, they are trying to map out patterns of open educational partnerships between institutions around the world. This webinar will take a pedagogical look at MOOCs. They chose 5 MOOCs, each corresponding to a primary learning approach. They then mapped each MOOC against the 12 dimensions Grainne identified. The blog goes on to attempt to do this with one MOOC as an example.

Terese Bird and Grainne Conole are holding a webinar on A Pedagogical Look at MOOCs. Funded by the EU project eMundus, they are trying to map out patterns of open educational partnerships between institutions around the world. This webinar will take a pedagogical look at MOOCs. They chose 5 MOOCs, each corresponding to a primary learning approach. They then mapped each MOOC against the 12 dimensions Grainne identified. The blog goes on to attempt to do this with one MOOC as an example.

page from Buckminster Fuller Institute that explains how they work--they build across disciplines to understand divergent needs/answers, then facilitate convergence across the disciplines of art, science, design, and technology to "address the unprecedented challenges before us."

Future Work Skills Summary by the 2011 Institute for the Future for University of Phoenix Research Institute. All Rights Reserved. Phenomenal graphic on key drivers pushing the development of key job skills in 8 areas. Key drivers include extreme longevity, computational world, superstructed organizations, globally-connected world, new media ecology, rise of smart machines and systems.

Stephen Downes on what learners need and want in a networked world. Although he does go on in his usual way, this is a really interesting take on current educational models vs. what students want and need, and are beginning to access themselves.

Interesting and tied to online leadership, I think. Haven't read the whole thing yet, but it is a interesting perspective.

Compelling blog post by Stephen Downes on free vs. not free resources, especially the distinctions made by educational institutions and OERs, November 27, 2012

Fascinating article by Marina Gorbis on Fast Company site regarding how we must be able to learn online in micro-learning episodes that may last minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. far removed from schools, MOOCs, and other structured and semi-structured curricula. Excerpt: "We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows. Instead of worrying about how to distribute scarce educational resources, the challenge we need to start grappling with in the era of socialstructed learning is how to attract people to dip into the rapidly growing flow of learning resources and how to do this equitably, in order to create more opportunities for a better life for more people." In the comments, this summary: "It doesn't matter if you are a physicist, chemist, sociologist, welder, mathematician, teacher, economist, lawyer, restaurant owner, farmer, trucker, whatever, the information most relevant and valuable to your employment is up to you to find! The task requires you find and digest information, on your own. This task used to be a pain, but now we have near-instant access to the entirety of information across the planet. The author is talking about making this access actually instant, not near-instant. Its really just an inevitable thing. "

Blog post by William Bowen, March 25, 2013, on movement towards online education. He would like more hard evidence to understand impact/success among other effects, tool kits (platforms), new mind-set to attempt online to reduce costs without adversely affecting educational outcomes, what we must retain in terms of central aspects of life on campus such as "minds rubbing against minds." Excerpts: "My plea is for the adoption of a portfolio approach to curricular development that provides a calibrated mix of instructional styles." ... "Their students, along with others of their generation, will expect to use digital resources-and to be trained in their use. And as technologies grow increasingly sophisticated, and we learn more about how students learn and what pedagogical methods work best in various fields, even top-tier institutions will stand to gain from the use of such technologies to improve student learning." Really like this comment for value of MOOCs for post-college graduates: "A quibble. I am intrigued by your comment about "minds rubbing against minds." While there is undeniable worthiness of the thought inside academic communities perhaps underestimated is the lack of such friction after graduation and how MOOCs can provide opportunities outside the alma maternal environments. To take courses at the local U. costs both in inconvenience of scheduling, transportation and monetary costs equivalent to constantly having a new Hyundai. Those requirements wind up as being unreasonable. Since January I have had the great pleasure of thinking about the thoughts of Dave Ward and colleagues from the University of Edinburgh and arguing about points in the forums. More recently, Michael Sandel on Justice from Boston. These opportunities are enormously better than nothing at all, clearly benefiting myself and probably also friends, colleagues and civil society. While these experiences do not provide the intensity of a post seminar argument in the Ree

Fascinating article on Baylor research on how internal social networking sites supported and managed within the workplace helps newcomers (younger people usually) to connect and learn from each other, interact directly with more senior people, and inadvertently cause problems for middle managers who did not want to mentor new hires and who did not necessarily have the social/technology proficiencies to participate in the SNS, Science Daily, 1/29/2013. Their conclusions showed that a "company can improve morale and reduce turnover." Researchers are Hope Koch, Baylor, Dorothy Leidner, Ph.D., Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor; and Ester Gonzalez from Washington State University. Excerpt: he study centered on a financial institution's efforts to reduce IT employee turnover by starting a social and work-related online networking site. Under the supervision of executives, the IT new hires developed and managed the site's content. Since most new hires had moved hundreds of miles to start their new jobs with the institution, they initially used the social pages as an introduction to the community. After a year or so with the organization, the more senior new hires began using the system to acclimate and mentor incoming new hires. All study respondents worked in the institution's IT department and included new hires, middle managers and executives. With less than three years of experience, most new hires and interns were men between 21 and 27 years old. The middle managers and executives were baby boomers or members of generation X. The internal social networking site helped the new hires build social capital in several ways, according to Koch. "It gave them access to people who could provide useful information and new perspectives and allowed them to meet more senior new hires and executives. These relationships set the new hires at ease during work meetings, helped them understand where to go for help and increased their commitment to the financial

a list of 30 terms for working with computers online at the National Institute on Aging, nice basic set of terms with pictures to illustrate what is meant by scrollbar or address field, etc.

Coaching, training, affective leadership are all part of Carrie Stack, M.Ed.'s site. We should look at this as a connection, for our directory, and as a competitor for WLS.

Similar services to WLS without the online emphasis. Check out Carrie Stack and the Say Yes Institute web site.

important report on repositioning employers and workers to enable the best rewards for both

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just ten percent of the population holds an unshakeable belief, it will always be adopted by the majority of society. Tipping point...

I like this term "free-range learning" and believe it might be part of the Studio language. "Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase "free-range learning" to describe students' behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they're on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized "brands" like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says." Also this comment: I don't think academe has really come to grips with the very large role peer-to-peer sharing plays in the way students learn. We proved this interesting phenomenon this year in a very large online course that we were in the process of redesigning. One section of the course piloted the redesign, which had dropped the former textbook in favor of all online content, cut out 1/3 of the subject areas covered in the old version of the course and changed the assignment instructions and interaction modalities radically. Despite the fact that all students in the pilot section were fully informed that they were in a different and new course, and were required to go though an extensive introductory module covering all aspects of the new version of the course, including the syllabus, and were required to pass a test covering the course requirements and structure, we still had something like 5% of the students turn in work that was based on the old course assignments and old course structure. Some of them had apparently not read any of the assignment instructions from their own section, and were relying entirely on peers in other sections for information on how to complete assignments.

#change11, blog post by Bon Stewart, May 2, 2012 And here's the rub... "The original MOOCs - the connectivist MOOCs a la Siemens & Downes, and the work of David Wiley and Alec Couros and others - have been, for the most part, about harnessing the capacity of participatory media to connect people and ideas. They've been built around lateral, distributed structures, encouraging blog posts and extensive peer-to-peer discussion formats. Even in live sessions showcasing facilitator's expertise, these ur-MOOCs have tended towards lively backchannel chats, exploring participants' knowledge and experiences and ideas. They've been, in short, actively modelled on the Internet itself. They've been experiential and user-driven. Their openness hasn't stopped at registration capacity, but extended to curricular tangents and participatory contributions and above all, to connections: they've given learners not just access to information but to networks. They've been messy, sometimes, but they have definitely not been business as usual. The problem with EdX is that, scale and cost aside, it IS essentially a traditional learning model revamped for a new business era. It puts decision-making power, agency, and the right to determine what counts as knowledge pretty much straight back into the hands of gatekeeping institutions."

Blog post by Ron Carlee, October 25, 2011, on Societal Impacts of Digital Exclusion, TechSoup for Libraries. He was "asked to comment on the importance of digital technologies from the perspective of local govenrments." Great quote for connected learning value. See cost proposition below: This increased societal connectiveness and awareness, however, is only available if one is connected. If you're not connected, you're really not connected. In an earlier day, we could legitimately debate the importance of a digital divide relative to other public priorities. In its infancy, informational technology was interesting and useful, but was it truly essential for everyone all the time? This is no longer a credible question. Without digital connectivity in the 21st century, people will earn less, pay more for the things they buy, live life with fewer personal connections, and they will not be exposed to virtual worlds of vast knowledge, art, and even frivolity. If we really care about having successful communities of educated people who can compete in a global economy, who are entrepreneurial and creative, if we really want people to connect with one another, if we want our institutions to connect with the people they serve, if we want a sustainable world that improves the lives of all people, then we must ask the question: can any community afford involuntary, digital exclusion for any of its residents?

Very nice site by the Milken Institute (changing the world in innovative ways) featuring bite-size multimedia appetizers of its Best Cities for Successful Aging research.