WomensLearningStudio

Tips for online branding

Tips for rebranding using marketing techniques.

Tips on rebranding

This Harvard Business Review article provides tips for reinventing yourself.

We definitely want to include this in our directory. Stanford just appointed and administrator who deals exclusively with online learning. Over 3,000 Stanford audio and video programs are available on Apple's popular iTunes platform, including course lectures, faculty presentations and campus events. The iTunes U app provides access to additional course content from several Stanford courses.

In looking for words that generate community, I found this informative article on online communities I think we need to remember as we proceed. I also notice the author used "grow" community. I am happy with that if you believe that is the best verb.

Blog post by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner on leadership groups within communities as act of service to lead group process. September 14, 2012 Need to do something like this in setting up Studio leadership roles that could be period specific, event specific, etc. See excerpt: The practice goes like this: everyone at a meeting belongs to a leadership group - and each group stewards one part of the learning process of the whole group. In this way leadership of the community meeting is distributed over the entire event. Leadership here is seen as an act of service, that is, not leadership in terms of telling others what to do, but helping the group develop itself as a learning partnership. We've seen these groups lead to some transformational turn-arounds in group dynamics and the learning potential. (Notwithstanding the times they flopped - which led us to learn a great deal!) We gave playful names to the groups in the spirit of making it a fun and inventive way of leading the process: agenda activists, community keepers, critical friends, social reporters, external messengers, value detectives. Over the years we've come to see that these groups can work well in lots of different contexts including group meetings, conferences, and long-term community development. Anywhere, that is, where there is an intention for collective learning.

blog post by Clark Quinn, September 25, 2012, on transcending experience design "they argued that what was due next was a "transformation economy", where people paid for experiences that change them (in ways that they desire or value).

learning tools identified by Clark Quinn, September 21, 2012

a new MOOC model: uses open source web content as course design. Won't need a traditional instructor or large start-up investment. Known as a mechanical MOOC.

An interesting eportfolio approach to a PLN/PLE by Chan Sook

EdTech wiki with index for PLE diagrams

Slide share program presented by Steve Wheeler at St. James School, Exeter, England, July 14, 2012 as part of the Vital Meet Workshop. Excellent review of where the web started, evolved to, and could be going for learning.

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."

Excellent exploration of a PLE and how it may or may not integrate with a formal institutionally based and managed VLE (through a school or employer perhaps?) and how the learner needs to own his/her PLE for lifelong and portable learning. Acknowledges the eportfolio that a school might provide a learner (but this can be set up and managed by learner as a formative and summative device).

blog on lifelong and personal learning with graphic on a personal learning environment that includes the people (pln) and personal web tools

Examples of personal learning networks Mindmeister mindmaps visible to public

This blog post is for nonprofits to create marketing personas but it has value IMO for WLStudio, too. How would women at different ages--40, 50, 60, 70, and 80+year olds--relate to the "maven" title? We have suggested that maven 1.0 or 2.0 or 3.0 are aspirational levels of knowledge and skill that women would earn by going through different programs. Are these the personas that we wish to present to attract women to the WLStudio in the first place? Or something else?

Open Culture website--lists all kinds of free online courses; should we link to this site or somehow study these to see which ones we might recommend to WLStudio learners?

Two years ago WP Directory had some support issues. It may be OK now. I don't know. this article lists some we may also want to consider. Review list of top WordPress directory plugins and themes that are free or paid. Discusses top 10 plugin and theme to integrate directory for WP blogs.