WomensLearningStudio

an interesting free tool for basic screen capture recording on Windows or Mac. A pro version is also available. Found it through Kathy Schrock's web tips on her blog, 2.20.13

Essay written by Heather Kenyon for the Tampa Bay Times, 2.13.13, on the shortage of people with the desired IT skills. Found this via the Encore LinkedIn group. What I find particularly interesting is the employers' desire for critical thinking, communication skills, and "professional curiosity" mentioned below. Nowhere here does it mention the middle aged or older worker; I guess they might have the critical thinking, communication, and curiosity, but not be able to master the IT skills through PD and DIY learning? Excerpt "Topping IT employers' wish lists were candidates who have at least 3-5 years of relevant work experience, bachelor's degrees and capabilities that go beyond the latest technical competencies to show an aptitude for continuous learning and multiple skill acquisition. These include critical thinking and communication skills as well as professional curiosity, which employers seem to find in short supply in the available talent pool. "

Article by Pamela Mitchell for the New York Times Opinion Pages, 2.10.13 on creating employment and career growth opportunities for young and older workers. Excerpt below speaks to what older workers need to do to be more greatly valued. I do not think most middle to late career workers can afford to let go of the golden handcuffs (HI coverage) to take side trips into entrepreneurial ventures though. Nevertheless, the argument supports the need for WLStudio assisted learning online by women. Excerpt: "Conversely, older workers often need to develop the enhanced technology and communications skills necessary in today's marketplace. But the most important skill an older worker can learn from someone younger is that of continuous, conscious reinvention. Rather than fruitlessly searching for a "safe" job in a "safe" industry (neither of which exist), older workers must embrace the younger generation's flexible perspective. This means structuring their remaining working years as a latticework of skill-development opportunities with multiple employers, along with occasional side trips into entrepreneurship. "

Nellie Deutsch is a wonderful educator using the WizIQ platform for helping people learn all kinds of things. This one is focused on the virtual classroom and has a list of learning objectives that might be adapted for our beta test work group as what they will learn while they are helping us with the website/program development issues.

Georgia Tech does a lot of its courses online and is encouraging more courses to go online. Some questions have been raised about the quality that I am still trying to explore. But the excerpt below on FAQ--last question--might be useful to us in describing our courses. Excerpt: "FAQ Will I get a certificate after completing this class? Certificate of Completion will be provided by Georgia Tech C21U What resources will I need for this class? You will a good internet connection as you may be downloading software, installing software and uploading files. What is the coolest thing I'll learn if I take this class? You will learn how to convert your face-to-face class to a robust online course"

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."

Great site for learning html, and a good model because they offer W3Schools certificates. This is the home page, with the topics you can learn listed in the left hand column. It is easy to follow and understand.

Here's one of the html sites I used to construct the table. It is an easy to use site, and they offer certificates.

TechTrax is another good site for learning html. I especially like the clear boxes that show you the code. It has a lot of other html basics as well

Another html site that I used to make a table.

This is another html site that is easy to use. This page is about creating a table border, but there are many other html instructions on this site.

Another good html site

Temple University's site about creating a table. They also have many topics on using html that we can access. It is not as easy to use as the other sites I have bookmarked, but is valuable non the less.

Temple University's site on creating a basic table. Not as easy to use as the other sites, but still valuable. Offers other html building topics as well.

interesting article in NYT on February 24, 2013 on how adults long out of high school in some cases cobbled together learning experiences--formal academic work, open courseware, and experiential--to receive college degrees from Thomas Edison in New Jersey without ever having arrived on campus or borrowed money to pay for their degrees

A community of adjuncts for adjunct teaching at colleges that uses crowdsourcing to collect data for the field, research issues, and get and give advice. Something like this could be adapted to provide value for other part-time workers be they professional or not, such as baby boomers shifting into retirement (what would such a site or community be called?), contractors, etc.

Interesting explanation of business model for how nonprofit and forprofit MOOC partners--edX, Coursera, and Udacity--will make money along with the universities. Implications for other, smaller online learning partnerships? Excerpt on two models (large-scale efforts) According to Mr. Agarwal, edX offers its university affiliates a choice of two partnership models. Both models give universities the opportunity to make money from their edX MOOCs-but only after edX gets paid. Related Content What You Need to Know About MOOCs Document: The Revenue-Sharing Models Between edX and University Partners The first, called the "university self-service model," essentially allows a participating university to use edX's platform as a free learning-management system for a course on the condition that part of any revenue generated by the course flow to edX. The courses developed under that model will be created by "individual faculty members without course-production assistance from edX," and will be branded separately in the edX catalog as "edge" courses until they pass a quality-review process, according to a standard agreement provided to The Chronicle by edX. Once a self-service course goes live on the edX Web site, edX will collect the first $50,000 generated by the course, or $10,000 for each recurring course. The organization and the university partner will each get 50 percent of all revenue beyond that threshold. The second model, called the "edX-supported model," casts the organization in the role of consultant and design partner, offering "production assistance" to universities for their MOOCs. The organization charges a base rate of $250,000 for each new course, plus $50,000 for each time a course is offered for an additional term, according to the standard agreement. Although the edX-supported model requires cash upfront, the potential returns for the university are high if a course ends up making money. The university gets 70 percent of any revenue gen

article on women's career transitions clubs in Forbes, 2.22.13 ID by Bevan Rogel.

Article by Kerry Hannon, Forbes, 1.25.13 This author asserts that older workers will become more valued by employers even though they aren't making special efforts to hire or retain them now and do not want to pay for the cost of training/retraining them. These trends suggest that taking charge of one's own learning with a PLP, PLN, etc. and taking advantage of all the free opportunities will be valuable skills to have. This author only looks to community colleges for retraining and does not reference any of the online options that we know about from the work on the directory. Should we draft a comment back to Kerry Hannon on this website? "1. Who is going to pay for that training? Most labor market experts I have interviewed say the government and private employers need to ramp up more training programs for older workers and create workplaces that make it easier for them to do their jobs. Employers don't want to spend for it. They've already cut to the bone to stay competitive globally in recent years and this kind of spending is a tough sell. Conceivably, as I discussed as a panel member at a recent Federal Reserve Workforce Development conference, one way to provide the needed training is through the community college system. The coursework could be offered at an affordable cost for the worker. Depending on who foots the bill, employers or employeees could receive tax incentives to ease the tuition bill. (Please continue to next page.) "

Newsletter by Ann Mehl, a life coach, 1.26.13. Justifies Studio's raison d'etre. Excerpts: "The workplace has changed enormously in recent years. Gone are the days when some benevolent company would direct and manage your career for you, while you dozed off at the wheel. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon every employee to proactively manage his own career. We have become in essence, a nation of free agents. A company of one. And all successful "companies" must identify and set their priorities in such a way that our goals can be achieved. In the humdrum of work, it's often easy to find yourself adrift, floating aimlessly downstream without clear intent or destination. The days blur into each other, until you have no idea where you are going, or what it was you hoped to achieve. But ask yourself this question: if you're not steering the ship, then who is?" ..."Are there any personal development classes that would make certain parts of my job easier? Should I be speaking with other industry peers in my field so that I remain current? Is there anybody I can identify who might be willing to mentor me while I navigate this tricky next phase of my career?"

Great post by Beth Kanter on infographs, rationale for using them to array and understand data, how to construct them, and tools that can help simplify the process. Feb. 27. 2013

Helpful suggestions for conducting Tweet Chats