Teddy Wayne delves into when self promotion on social media is appropriate, when it can backfire, and how to mix it up with other info and links so you are providing info people want to know. Good article on line between promoting yourself or product and being narcissistic.

Using other info as well as promoting our blogs would be a good combo for twitter and LinkedIn. Good dig at FB ads!

Op ed piece by David L. Kirp, a Berkley professor. The business models that are proliferating in educational thinking and assessment does not work, and the greatest determiner of success are the interpersonal relationships of students and teachers, students and students, and teachers and teachers. Adding more and new technology has not been successful because of this. Rewarding "good" schools with merit pay while closing and punishing those in areas of poverty because they are "failing" schools without instituting known programs that engender success is a crime in his view.

Manta's tips on having copy that people can and want to read. Pay attention to white space, be useful yet create a sense of urgency, use graphics and pictures, etc. Nothing we don't know but a great reminder to do, and a call to have less text but say more with what you do have.

A series of slideshares that explores issues in leadership on both a national and international stage. According to the report, most leadership development programs are stagnant, and leadership development both on the organizational and academic levels are not keeping up with needs to develop competent, confident, and committed workers.

Interesting approach to conveying information that we should think about for our work. Great use of Slideshare to disseminate report findings.

An amazing project that utilizes gaming, social media, digital badging, and virtual worlds as methods to promote digital literacy to youth in high risk areas. These after-school programs are designed to "Global Kids believes that youth be not merely critical consumers but active producers of digital media". Kids produce games on social issues impacting them (such as neighborhood violence or racial intolerance) that are designed to teach others about not just about the issue but how it feels to be impacted by the issue.

The Global Kids definition of leadership is very in tune with what we have been trying to convey, I think. Here is there goal statement: "The Global Kids Online Leadership Program (OLP) integrates international and public policy issues into digital media programs to encourage digital literacy and technical competency, foster global awareness, promote civic participation and develop 21st Century skills. OLP was created in 2000 to bring new media into Global Kids' after school programs, introduce these programs into online communities, and explore how the combination of the two could develop 21st Century Learning Skills. Through programs utilizing video games, virtual worlds, social media, and other forms of participatory media, youth involved in our programs now have the opportunity to have their voices heard and make a global impact in ways that were previously unimaginable."

new studies showing companies that have at least 30% millennials in leadership positions have greater profits, and companies that have more women in leadership also have greater profits. Also there are listed more interesting articles on the page for me to read such as: 4 ways to retrain your brain to handle information;Should you outsource your social media?; Can technology really change your habits?

Catherine Davis outlines 5 simple things to do when designing e-learning for adults with low level literacy skills or for non English speaking adult (ESL) populations. Basically it is: simple interface without bells and whistles; simple short sentences; lots of visuals (infographs) and photos; on-screen text and visuals that support audio - audio is the driver of the pages; provide supplemental full audio transcript

Good to incorporate this into the proposal and brings up the need to investigate using audio and video as much as possible

Kate Murphy talks about how we are now a culture of always doing something, and we avoid any reflective time because we are so unpracticed at it that we dwell on the negative when we do have quiet time without distraction. People will go far to avoid introspection - in experiments they give themselves electric shocks rather than sit quietly alone without anything to do. Research, especially the new neural research, all show that allowing your mind to drift is healthy and productive. Google, for example, has courses for employees in mindfulness, meditation, and "Search Inside Yourself". The research also shows that not giving yourself time to reflect impairs your ability to empathize with others. "Feeling what you feel is an ability that atrophies if you don't use it."

Another example of why reflection is important to well being, creativity, satisfaction with life, and connections to others

Jessica Bennett of the NYTimes writes about how emoji are replacing words in emails. on twitter and other social media, even though it might be less time to type in the words. Although use is skyrocketing, communication by emoji is open to interpretation by the recipient. There are now sites, blogs, and a social network (Emoji.li) that uses only emoji for communication. A nonprofit devoted to emoji standardization across platforms (Unicode Consortium) has been formed. Examples: In their short life, emoji managed to find an exceptional cultural range: One Internet wit put out an emoji translation of Beyoncé's "Drunk in Love," and an emoji-only version of "Moby Dick," called "Emoji Dick," was recently accepted into the Library of Congress. Legal experts have even discussed whether an emoji death threat [gun and face] could be admissible in court. "I'm not sure you can really speak of it as a full-fledged language yet," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist, "but it does seem to have fascinating combinatorial possibilities. Any sort of symbolic system, when it's used for communication, is going to develop dialects."

I am certainly out of the loop on this one! A whole new language is developing - back to cave drawings but in a digital format?

Opinion piece in the July 19th 2014 NYTimes by Joshua Wolf Shenk, the author of the forthcoming book: Powers of Two: Finding Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs". He begins:"the lone genius is a myth that has outlived its usefulness. Fortunately, a more truthful model is emerging: the creative network, as with the crowd-sourced Wikipedia or the writer's room at "The Daily Show" or - the real heart of creativity - the intimate exchange of the creative pair, such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney and myriad other examples with which we've yet to fully reckon." and ends with: "This raises vital questions. What is the optimal balance between social immersion and creative solitude? Why does interpersonal conflict so often coincide with innovation? Looking at pairs allows us to grapple with these questions, which are as basic to the human experience as the push and pull of love itself. As a culture, we've long been preoccupied with romance. But we should also take seriously something just as important, but long overlooked - creative intimacy."

Although the author stresses pairs, the history of genius is really interesting - for example, before the 16th century, individuals were not geniuses, but having genius which was a value that emerged from within a person given to them at birth".

Emanuella Grinberg reports on Better By Design including offices, hospitals, etc. The office better by design is open spaces that boost creativity and collaboration. The workplaces of the future - and, in many cases, the present - will have fewer high-walled cubicles and private offices. "The good news? Innovative companies with commensurate budgets are creating offices that bring employees together in colorful communal workstations and collaboration areas, making "The Office" look like a monochrome vestige of a bygone era. And, designers are working with companies to maintain private spaces within open offices where employees can drill down on a report or take an important phone call beyond earshot of colleagues. It's part of the "alone but together" philosophy taking hold in office design, which attempts to balance employee collaboration with privacy in an era when personal space is shrinking,"

Good companion piece to the Genius is Dead NYTimes article

Great blog by Nick Bilton in the Sunday NYTimes July 16, 2014 about how social media sucks us in to spend a lot of time on it. Although there isn't data as such, scientists are beginning to wonder if this diversion of our time sucks creativity too. The author ends the piece by saying instead of spending the first hour of the day on social media, he has been reading a book and finding it much more satisfying, enlightening, and stimulating.

Interesting article on why content is not the important thing in a blog anymore, but how you market and promote it is, as well as the strategy you have mapped out to continuously engage those who have signed in as members or customers.

As mobile technology replaces pc and mainframe technology, and more business is done using tablets and smartphones, these skills, managing battery life,using your phone camera effectively, keeping work files,contacts, email ready offline so they can be used without wifi, managing alert noise, sending downloading, editing files, etc become very important.

The first will do anything you tell them, as long as the ones, zeros, and higher-level instructions pan out. The latter will do a variety of things depending on their needs, moods, emotions, and understanding of what is happening and acceptable and important. When the human beings start using the technology, failure becomes a problem that must be managed. As most anyone who has had their email hacked can tell you, the weakest link in any security system is usually the humans. And sometimes the humans leave the door wide open, in part because they don't understand how to close it, don't care enough about closing it, or think the IT folks are just jerks for demanding it be checked so often.

Full report by Mary Meeker from KPCB May 2014. Chock full of data, graphs, charts of internet use, trends, devices. According to the data, internet growth is slow, smartphones had strong growth but it is slowing, tablets had a 52% early stage rapid growth, and mobile data traffic is a +81% accelerating growth with video the strongest driver. The near future is in tablet and mobile technology, not internet and pc use.

I subscribe to Ramsey's Blog Tyrant blog and found this case study interesting. Although this is blog promotion, it seems as if it would be site promotion as well. Good info about Google Ads and Facebook ads and the return from them. Good information about the conversion of emails to subscribers and users, and the use of give aways. Most important - good content or no matter what you do people unsubscribe.

Some good lessons on marketing, content, conversions, launching or relaunching

Another blog from workintelligent.ly. 3 simple signs your company is not understanding today's technology - most of which point to not trying to control what is used and how it is used, sharing tech info, knowledge and skills, and using the expertise of everyone that uses technology. A unnamed dig at Microsoft and Explorer as an example of what not to do.

A good model for us to think about: 3 signs your organization doesn't understand networked learning and/or PD could be a blog or promotional outreach for us.

A blog from Workintelligent.ly about how intranet, based on social media concepts but for working within a company, could supplant email. I found the comments very interesting - issues such as most projects are by independent contractors who don't benefit from intranets, etc.

World Education's blog and index for adult education teachers on using technology in the classroom. These are practical lessons for use in adult ed, literacy, and college transition classes. They are fun and easy to follow, but don't really build teacher networked skills - they are use when you can or want to. Good for us to refer to, but what we want to offer goes deeper and aims to guide teachers to be networked learners themselves. This site does not do that.