What Education Can Learn from Marketing

I recently finished a project that has required me to skim resources that are related to kids, education and digital media skills.  It’s made me ponder our educational situation here in the U.S. I’m also pondering how the generational lag between teachers and students is, in some cases, contributing to a lack of very necessary skills for students graduating and learning in a digital age. It’s not a case of teachers being poorly trained but I think teachers aren’t aware of the potential resources at their disposal to help kids learn in ways that work for them as individuals. Enter Joseph Pine. Pine is a big believer in authentic experiences.  When he spoke at TED,[.....]

Black Lab and Faces of Community

Some of you know I’m a huge fan of black lab and often my tweet contain their lyrics.  I have a million favorite songs so pointing you at one album would be difficult at best. Buy all of them instead and then watch all the videos. Their music along with Matthew Ebel’s make up the vast majority of my music collection. A few months ago, they decided to make a video of their community with photos of the people within it.  They put out a quick call for photos from the community to feature in a video of pictures of people (lyrics are at the bottom of the post).  Of course, I immediately jumped on[.....]

Lessons from an Oil Spill : Green is the new Black

59 days and counting. The video below is a TED talk by Rob Hopkins on “Transition to a world without Oil“, who reminds us that the time period in which we’ve developed and build our lives around oil dependency is very short and will very shortly come to an end.  He touches on how oil production has dwindled as well as the energy we get from oil now vs. the 1930s. “The world isn’t Second Life. We can’t create new land and new energy systems at the click of a mouse.” Rob founded the Transition movement, helping communities take the steps to creatively come up with new ideas on sustainability now, before our world changes[.....]

Acknowledging Accomplishments

One of the things we talk about in the social media space is sharing great things that others are up to versus talking about our own stuff all the time. I strive to share some interesting things that others are doing on Twitter but I felt the need to take the time out and offer some of those things up on my blog tonight.  Very a la Becky McCray’s Brag Basket I wanted to brag on some great stuff I’m reading, listening to, watching, etc. here on my blog. Josiah Boothby, Evan Flory-Barnes and Acknowledgement of a Celebration A very dear friend of mine who has dabbled in social media emailed me recently about a musical[.....]

Podcamp Boston 4 Thoughts and Community

Photo by C.C. Chapman. Wow. Another Podcamp Boston concluded. It’s was an amazing weekend for me for several reasons. In the past we’ve had people talk about not getting the chance to find out what they needed to know. It’s important for everyone who comes to an event like this to get the takeaways that make the entire weekend and the cost of their attendance worthwhile to them. That was the focus of this year. We had roughly (from a hand count) 75% first time Podcampers attending. 75%! People who had come to learn about podcasting and new media from those advanced enough to give some good ways to get started. I hope that each[.....]