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article by Joyce E. A. Russell, 10/28/2012, Capital Business, Wash Post on competitors collaborating.

finding space offline

Blog post by Lisa Lane in her (Online) Teaching Blog, June 25, 2011 She reviews Pink's book on A Whole New Mind. Excerpt: "Accumulation -> Meaning Pink says the predominance of the baby boomer mentality means that the goal of accumulating meterial goods is changing to the desire to find meaning in life, a kind of "post-materialism"." For each chapter on these aptitudes, Pink provides resources and tips to develop your own brain along the new lines. Thus we go from theory in Chapter 1 to a series of storied examples, then each chapter ends with self-help advice. (It's already pretty light - I find it very funny that there's a "Summarized for Busy People" version available.) But the mental yoga commercial was a distraction from the main idea. What's significant here is that right-brained, big picture, contextual, design-based thinking will likely be increasingly respected in our culture.

Explores value of Pinterest for business, Donston-Miller, March 6, 2012. Pinterest users are heavily women and younger (ages 25-44) Assessment: "Companies are finding themselves challenged to effectively marshal their externally facing social networking efforts, and most are likely focusing on Facebook and Twitter. So, with resources at a premium, should your company be paying attention to upstart social network Pinterest right now? The short answer is yes." Pinterest experiencing huge growth and now drives more traffic to Real Simple website than Facebook does. Caveat: Pinterest user boards overwhelmingly focus on food, fashion, home decor, and hobbies, things that are visual and usually visually appealing. "Pinterest is best used to inspire or remind... looking at capitalizing on Pinterest as a gift registry ...even if your company doesn't make or promote something highly visual ...it probably has something that can be visualized and put into context... data ...house infographics--things like data sets, visualization of data.... even with something like a technology company, there are always ways to visualize information in an engaging way."

Interesting blog post bu Elizabeth MacBride, April 5, 2013, on virtual partnerships, 5 secrets 1. must have the same agenda 2. you actually like the person 3. complementary skill sets or traits 4. open lines of communications 5. good legal underpinnings Excerpt "Our number-one rule - and the glue that holds our partnership together - is keeping the workload manageable. We don't take on too many clients, and we don't hold ourselves to unrealistic standards for production. "Our business is focused on helping people navigate a big, ongoing trend-the shift from traditional jobs to an economy built around freelance, contract and temporary work. Pulling all-nighters at the business and cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, as we might at a venture-capital backed startup, doesn't seem like the right way for us," Pofeldt says. "Why not enjoy one of the best parts of freelancing: the freedom to have an active life outside of work without apologizing for it?" Barry "CB" Martin and Larry Gaian are food writers and marketers-for-hire who met via their common networks. "This year I started several new ventures," Martin wrote via email. "I asked him to be a sounding board. On one of the ideas, he was thinking along the same lines so we decided to combine forces." They're working together under the moniker Guys In Aprons, asking food companies to hire them to write recipe posts and interview expert chefs."

video (18 minutes) by Clay Johnson, February 2012, hyping his book The Information Diet. Goes to food analogies again and again--pizza tastes better than broccoli--and abundance of entertainment, affirmation, and fear is secret pact between customer and media producers online. What is it that people want? What we tell them through our clicks and searches is that we want to be right acc: to Johnson. AP story--poll economic worries pose new snag for Obama. On Fox news, it says that Obama has big problem with white women. They changed headline and reduced story by 600 words, taking out everything positive about his work. They know that readers will read something negative about president. "Opinion tastes better than news." How AOL should make its editorial decisions--they want to spend no more than $84 on a piece of content. How they decide: traffic potential (using SEO to find out what people are searching for--no one is searching for Pentagon Papers or broccoli); bottom of list is editorial integrity because it is market inefficiency. Believes that we are living in land of info abundance where we want to be affirmed, not told the truth. SEOs complete the inquiry to present tabloid types of info that attract us and distract us and misinform us. Our clicks lead to poor information diets, a disease. Make a whole news movement, a slow news movement, demand that media change. We as readers need to upgrade. information over-consumption, not overload enable infoveganism--eat food, not too much, real food at bottom of food chain. 2. Use source material--show your work. 3. Let me pay you for ad free experience. 4. Content is not a commodity (for news producers)

Blog site named "e-Literate" catchy, no? (Wish I had thought of it! But maybe we can use e-literacy for the foundations course?) This blog post written by Michael Feldstein, one of multiple bloggers on this site, quotes extensively from a New Republic article written by Kevin Carey. What I think is interesting for us is how we must add value (coaching, badging, mentoring, etc.) as private providers of learning to what most people could do on a DIY basis if they had all the skills--technological, contextual, and others--to proceed on their own. Excerpt: "Other providers might take advantage of the fast-growing body of open educational resources-free online courses, videos, lectures, and syllabi-and add value primarily through mentoring, designing course sequences, and assessing learning."

Interesting blog post by Jennifer Dunn on Scoop.it, June 25, 2013. It suggests using LinkedIn, conferences, and current contacts as starting points for building your business network. Not so unusual but the point about how you don't have to go a conference to benefit from the circle of like-minded peers it attracts but go to the website or Facebook page or Twitter to circulate and get acquainted with the people who might be valuable for you to know is a good one. Makes me think, also, about how wikis or any record building device given to participants one year at a conference or workshop might be left open for one to go back and view current participants. (ex. BEtreat wiki is still open to me; WLstudio?)

"The Varied Functions of Badges" summary from HASTAC discussion, 9/2012 My interest in the functions of badges was spurred along when the MacArthur Foundation asked for help documenting the design principles for using digital badges that emerge across the 30 projects underway by the awardees in their Badges for Lifelong Learning project. We needed to come up with a manageable number of categories. Here is what we came up with: Recognizing Learning. This is the most obvious and arguably the primary function of badges. David Wiley has argued cogently that this should be the primary purpose of badges. If we focus only on purposes, then he may well be right. His point is that badges are credentials and not assessments. This is also consistent with the terrifically concise definition in Seven Things You Should Know About Badgesby Erin Knight and Carla Casilli. Assessing Learning. Nearly every application of digital badges includes some form of assessment. These assessments have either formative or summative functions and likely have both. In some cases, these are simply an assessment of whether somebody clicked on a few things or made a few comments. In other cases, there might be a project or essay that was reviewed and scored, or a test that was graded. In still other cases, peers might assess an individual, group, or project as badgeworthy. Motivating Learning. This is where the controversy comes in. Much of the debate over badges concerns the well-documented negative consequences of extrinsic incentive on intrinsic motivation and free choice engagement. This is why some argue that we should not use badges to motivate learning. However, if we use badges to recognize and assess learning, they are likely to impact motivation. So, we might as well harness this crucial function of badges and study these functions carefully while searching for both their positive and negative consequences for motivation. Evaluating Learning. The final category of

Believe these questions also apply to business start-ups Excerpt What is your pitch? Einstein said it best: "If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough." This is why elevator speeches are a good test. I loathe how reductive they make the mission feel, but they make for a really good exercise. Because if you can't tell me what you do in half a minute-especially if you're fired up about how right your cause is-do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go back to the drawing board so you can tell me, simply, clearly, and quickly, what it is you do. You want my attention, don't you?"

Beverly Wenger-Trayner's post from 8/2016 on learning together by asking the right questions is excellent

I saw this debate this morning and engaged with the topic and format. I like this way of presenting different perspectives on a hot-button issue and would like to experiment with it in WLStudio.

#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."

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

Blog by Matthew forti on Measuring Leadership Development, November 28, 2011 Neighborhood Builders by Bank of America builds high performing community-based nonprofits and gives them multiple three-day sessions of leadership training for the ED and emerging leader. Excerpts: "1. Develop a detailed theory of change. It isn't worth spending a dime on measurement until you've carefully defined which leaders you intend to target, what specific training and other programming they need, what they will gain, how those gains will be applied, and what should ultimately result." 2. Measure with mixed methods. 3. Continuously measure to improve impact. 4.Build rigor over time. Leadership programs don't need to build a full-scale measurement system right from the start. The best programs are intentional about whether and how to improve the rigor of their measurement over time, based partly on what they want to do with the results.

This post by Bob Miglani (author of best selling book Embrace the Chaos) is the way I want to be in leading the Studio--leaning in with ideas (because we don't have many resources right now), plowing ahead (taking action), and not letting my over-analytical DNA slow me down too much (so that we get lost in the marketplace trends moving ahead of us). I especially love the one line review of his book at the end--"...shows you how to relax and enjoy the messiness of life." So theoretically, it all fits well for me. But where is the $? :-)

WSJ/Digits by Courtney Banks, January 21, 2011 Quote: ""Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it. I would argue that implanting things in your brain is beyond the creepy line. At least for the moment, until the technology gets better."" 6. In an August 2010 interview published in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Schmidt posited that someday people would need to be able to change their names on reaching adulthood, in order to avoid embarassing information about them recorded on their friends' social-networking sites: "I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time … I mean we really have to think about these things as a society." 5. Speaking on a panel at the Techonomy conference in August 2010, Mr. Schmidt touted how Google image-search technology could be used to identify people: "If you have 14 pictures on the Internet, within a 95% confidence interval we can predict who you are. You say you don't have 14 pictures? You have Facebook pictures, so there."

Austin Kleon's blog, January 27, 2014, via Mashable on Twitter. Wonderful attribution matrix--what it is, who made it, and when, why we should care, how you found it, where we can find more things like it. These are all good notes to put in our Diigo description of bookmarks, I believe.

Linda Stone's blog, April 20, 2012. Runs something called The Attention Project. New terms: conscious computing, email and screen apnea, continuous partial attention Excerpt: "Thirty years ago, personal computing technologies created a revolution in personal productivity, supporting a value on self-expression, output and efficiency. The personal communications technology era that followed the era of personal productivity amplified accessibility and responsiveness. Personal technologies have served us well as prosthetics for the mind, in service of thinking and doing. Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it's right where we left it - with our ability to breathe fully. We can use personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings, to enhance our lives. I call this Conscious Computing. We can use technology to help enable Conscious Computing, or we can find it on our own, through attending to how we feel. For advice from a musician on how to do Conscious Computing, I interviewed the organist, Cameron Carpenter. Conscious Computing with the help of passive, ambient, non-invasive Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technology is poised to take off over the next few years. It has the potential to help all of us learn the skills that musicians, athletes and dancers have, that immunizes them from email apnea."

Great article by Susan Weinschenk, Brain Wise: Work better, work smarter, September 11, 2012, and why dopamine keeps us "seeking" when we already have enough information. excerpt: Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Do you think that if you could ignore your incoming email or messages you might actually be able to get something done at work? You are right!" ... "Instead of dopamine causing you to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. It's not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Research shows that it is the opioid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure." Turn off the cues - One of the most important things you can do to prevent or stop a dopamine loop, and be more productive is to turn off the cues. Adjust the settings on your cell phone and on your laptop, desktop or tablet so that you don't receive the automatic notifications. Automatic notifications are touted as wonderful features of hardware, software, and apps. But they are actually causing you to be like a rat in a cage. If you want to get work done you need to turn off as many auditory and visual cues as possible. It's the best way to prevent and break the dopamine loops. What do you think? How do you deal with dopamine loops? Are you willing to turn off your cues?