Proud of My Community…

I have been in awe of this great community of ours. For the past several weeks, I have seen people drop what they are doing, lend a helping hand, offer up their profits, pass on their treasures, pass on a message, post a word of encouragement and help a complete stranger. Today’s Ottawa 67’s Family Fun Day for Rene Faucher was a real tribute to community – countless people came up to our table and offered up a signature and a donation to the Faucher Douglas trust fund.

Several were friends or former colleagues of Rene, but many were strangers. It felt great …I was completely touched by people’s generosity and outpouring of support. Patti and I wish to thanks the following organizations and people that contributed to its success:

• The Ottawa 67’s – Patrick Whalen, Sherly Hunt and Johanna Elgie and many others from the organization for making the event happen
• The media who help raise awareness and helped put buns in seats (Team 1200, CTV, CBC)
• Mark and Jill Emery at the Paper Sign Man for event signage
• The game volunteers: April Murphy, Tracey Everitt, Dimitri Pantazopoulos and his two daughters, Laurie Murphy-Pytura and Mike Pytura and their kids and finally, Patti Church and our kids. These people were instrumental to having additional funds being contributed to the Faucher Douglas trust fund.

Kaplan Message – It’s your time…to simply remotely listen?

Faculty and students – what is your perspective on the Kaplan message?

The message states educators have failed you and that a new model of learning is in order. The actor and visuals suggest the solution is largely about remote distance learning – on a train, at home and in your jammies. I get that.

From our perspective, this message leaves 2/3 of the required changes off the table.

What changes?

• How about more open learning? Why not let students and faculty learn and share across classes, programs or heaven forbid different schools?
• How about offering students a voice such they can learn new ways to share and collaborate in a semi-private setting across their virtual class?
• Why note give students the means to link industry and external stakeholders to a classroom? This would facilitate alumni mentoring, project exchanges and downstream recruiting for those that reveal their potential in an open, more transparent way.

Many talented teachers are experimenting with all forms of new tools, methods and teaching practices aimed at stimulating creativity, innovation and new forms of learning. Early adopters of WhyHire.me were brave enough to move forward with our learning materials and supporting technology – we are all learning in an open and transparent way. Dave Donaldson, Jim Kyte and Wendy Threader from Algonquin College. Leighann Neilson from Carleton University. David Johnson and Michael Vourakes from Centennial College. Lyle Wetsch from Memorial University. Francis Gunn and David Martin from the Ted Rogers School of Business. All of these people stared down the traditional barriers to changing how students can learn and explore new forms of collaboration and communication using social media. Kudos to you all!

I went back to the Kaplan web site looking for a means to offer feedback on the video. I was fully expecting to read comments and learn other perspectives about learning 2.0. A basic search for the term blog rendered no results. I found all kinds of great looking material and the means to chat online with a recruiter…but no means to share, learn or discuss.

Since there is no venue for such a dialogue, let’s continue it here.

What do you think is missing in education?

How should it change?

What are the barriers to transforming how we learn?

Fun with conventional wisdom

DoGood has been getting some great traction in the blogsphere and press this past couple of weeks. Dogood provides web surfers a way to see selective advertising that is tied to green causes. Half of its profits are funneled back to green, philanthropic, health and wellness related causes.

When Faisal Sethi kicked off the project, I had every belief his story would challenge conventional norms within the online advertising world. What advertisers are going to put up with plummeting click through rates? I suggested he could become a new poster boy for Rupert Murdoch, given his views about free content and today’s online advertising models.

I noted Dogood recently posted a special note to publishers which clearly states DoGood does not strip away or block ads from their sites.

So there you have it – no piracy here. He is simply giving people choice when it comes to advertisers they want to browse while they surf. Does this mean causes are now the central linchpin in advertising buys? Does one pitch placement to the likes of DoGood instead of a media broker? Time will tell – it all depends on the depth and reach of such a movement.

To that end, I thought it best we start designing the t-shirt that started a movement called cause driven online advertising. Here is one I shopped up over the weekend. It is ripe for CafePress

New York Times Ready To Charge Online Readers

If no one clicks, then what? How many adds have you clicked on since Jan 1st? I can’t remember the last time I clicked through. I do recall someone telling me, home delivery newspaper subsriptions are down…so if you do the math and follow the trend of people wanting their news online and no one clicks or we all block ads, the model is broken.

I get your point about something else to pay for….but check out all the papers that folder in 2008 – http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/19/newspaper.decline.layoff/index.html

Papers come and go…but arguably, they are going faster then they are coming. If we value credible reporting, what is that price point? I am suggesting ZERO is not going work…and you will likely move those holdings out of your 401k?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Facebook and peer pressure….your life need not be an open book

I had an interesting chat with Sidney Eve Matrix, a professor of film, media and mass communications at Queen’s University. We got to talking about Facebook in the workplace and the pressure students are under to accept friendships from near strangers, business acquaintances or bosses. She mentioned, many of her students are in an absolute panic over what to do.

The founder of Facebook, has suggested we all lighten up and share with the world our entire digital life. It turns out, some of his pictures are private. Regardless of the trials and tribulations of such a high profile character, let’s explore social norms and the topic of openness and social media peer pressure. Here are some key points to consider and debate, if you start getting friend requests from potential employers, work colleagues or bosses:

1. Was your company recently valued at 8 Billion dollars? If so, then you really don’t care about future employers poking around your party photos and updates. Congratulations – you are loaded and you don’t care what people think. Don’t let celebrities influence your decision. They live on another planet.
2. Social versus professional content. Think about the interview process. Would you bring a photo album of your trips, parties and social outings to a career fair or interview? The answer is no, since this violates an established business norm. As you head into the working world, you will discover there are boundaries in the professional world. Work colleagues can become friends, but in the interim, one does not offer up a photo album to professional colleagues. Its just weird and creepy.
3. Content out of context. If your sarcastic wit is well established, your true online friends will understand the humor behind an update you make. A friend at work would say “I am not taking enough pills and alcohol today” when things were stressful at the office. It was part of his wit. If I came across this post, I could very easily assume the person had a drug problem. Context matters!

We have espoused a simple rule for managing your Facebook privacy and friendships. Consider applying this simple rule before you accept Facebook friends. Friend people you would invite in for dinner, or include in a group invitation for a night of karaoke. Sharing a meal in your home suggests you have a personal connection, and joint karaoke suggests you don’t mind making an ass of yourself in front of this person.

This simple filtering rule will help you create a line between your professional and social lives. It is simple and easy to apply.

What happens if a business associated or boss wants to friend you? If they don’t pass the filter, ignore their request and move on. If need be, drop them a polite note suggesting your Facebook space is an extension of your personal life. I have turned WhyHire.me students down with a polite response along these lines. No harm, no foul.

If you do have a boss that continues to pester you, consider your options carefully. They are in effect asking to enter your personal world. My suspicion is, Facebook social pressure at work will start creeping into lawsuits, since one could argue there is a line an employer should not cross. Pestering someone repeatedly is likely grounds for harassment. Check out this story filed by Erin Geiger. In time, HR departments will start clamping down on bosses who friend employees or prospects being considered for positions.

Your life need not be an open book.

Social Recruiting…you need to be there.

Recruiting practices are evolving very quickly. Kristi Stubbs, a recruiter for Starbucks Canada use all kinds of social media to narrow in on candidates. In her words, it is a better use of her time. The ROI associated with finding like-minded groups of people online, interacting with them, looking for referrals and posting jobs via Twitter is simply higher. The alternative model of posting a position on Monster or Workopolis simply takes much longer to weed through candidates that have relevant education or experience.

Dawn Mullar, from the Helping Friends Career Network, is a huge advocate of using the web and networks of people that share their experience and requirements online.

The two page resume is a nice leave behind…but it won’t help you market your potential, skills you have learned and experiences you have picked up through your education. As future graduates coming to the work force, you need to think about how you can create opportunities or solve business problems for your future employers. Use the web to your advantage and get engaged with people and industry issues (opportunities and threats) around your course of study and future career interests.

For those of you enrolled in WhyHire.me, I hope you will dive into the program feet first and build your brand with our program.

Into Four Digits

We cross into the 1000 user territory this week. Its going to be interesting to watch students learn from each other and start cross-connecting across schools. Into the breach!

Great story telling in action

Be it personal branding or getting people to move on an agenda, a great story can draw in your audience and compel them to act. A story that can draw on emotion, sentiment or critical thinking can have a much greater impact.

Check out this production on the benefits of banking locally. My bet is, George Bailey is someone that 98% of North Americans can identity with. Someone did a great job linking the underlying storyline of Its a Wonderful Life to the merits of community banking.

Social media comes to class at Centennial College

In September of 2009, the WhyHire.me learning resources and software were incorporated into a third term course called Career Explorations at Centennial College in Toronto. In November, I dropped in on David Johnson, Dean of the School of Business, for a post mid-term update. This short video covers the background on why the materials and learning platform were used and it offers David’s views on the feedback from students and faculty.

The most interest part of getting WhyHire.me incorporated into a course or entire program is curriculum mapping. Life-to-date, we have incorporated WhyHire.me materials and software into public relations,  e-commerce, technology in business, transition to professional and business skills courses. Stay tuned for a detailed blog post from Patti Church, our Chief Learning Architect. Patti will layout several alternative ways to leverage the software, offline and online course materials, worksheets and additional learning resources.

eBook Readers in Higher Ed…Counter Evolution?

The StarTribune offered up some future perspective on the growth of e-Book readers – purpose build machines for novels and textbook materials. Despite the rosy growth outlook by the quoted analyst, I am hesitant to think this is going to work in higher education.

Students today are sporting cell phones, netBooks and laptops that are redefining themselves every 6 months. When I visit a campus, it’s not unusual to see someone with an iPhone, switching to a laptop, then back to their phone. This generation of students likes to multi-task between music, Facebook and assignments. The challenge with introducing (or forcing) these students to buy purpose-built machines is they already have considerable computing power that gets cheaper and looks better each time a semester changes. A brand new HP Laptop now costs $650!

Will students want to switch to a purpose specific device they will need to care for, charge and maintain? Their teachers are posting LINKS, Powerpoints and PDFs to Blackboard or WebCT. Students today, are accustom to using industry standard browsers and school supplied desktop software in their labs. Unless Sony (Kindle) is a PC in waiting, then I for one think the likelihood of eBook readers going mainstream in higher ed is very low.

If I were making such decisions at a publishing company, I would consider user/buyer psychographics, the ubiquity of existing consumer devices, support issues and the total cost of equipping a student.

The Apple iPhone was a device that converged several products into one. Imagine if they had produced a purpose built text reader, so consumers or students could have books read to them?