Rethinking Learning
conversations about the future of teaching and learning
Barbara Bray
be creative, innovate, take risks, unlearn to learn

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Determining Value of Community

By Barbara Bray      April 27, 2010 -- 08:07 PM
Ning is ditching their free service and according to Jon Dale this is a brilliant move. Educators and non-profits are ranting all over the Internet about how this move is going to destroy all the work they have been doing for so long. Just think of all the free networks set up for educators. Ning is going to provide a paid option for educators and non-profits that is supposed to be affordable. Ning has grown so large that their premium users have suffered.

The economy is affecting everyone plus big and small companies including Web 2.0 and social media. Facebook is under attack for its privacy ...   more...
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My Story with CBAM (Concerns-Based Adoption Model)

By Barbara Bray      November 14, 2009 -- 08:15 AM
I started doing research on adult learners and change in the early 90's for my Masters and am surprised that we still have the same issues today. Have you ever heard of CBAM (Concerns-Based Adoption Model)? Whenever there's an innovation of some kind, people take to it at different levels. This is called Stages of Concern.

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Comments: 12   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  November 18, 2009 -- 02:16 PM

Social Marketing: The Social Media Revolution

By Barbara Bray      November 8, 2009 -- 03:45 PM
I’m using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and My eCoach for connections to family, friends and colleagues. Yet, something is happening about how my connections are working for me and My eCoach. I am noticing that when I post something to Twitter someone might retweet it. That’s when you see RT in front of your @twittername and the information you posted earlier reposted by someone else.

I’ve uploaded a post with a link to Twitter only to have it be retweeted several times and show up on my page again but now associated with someone else. I’ve even seen it appear in my status updates and/or ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  November 9, 2009 -- 07:31 AM

What are people searching for?

By Barbara Bray      October 22, 2009 -- 10:28 PM
One of the cool things we have is a web analytics program to help us determine how many hits, unique visitors, and pages accessed daily and monthly. Our numbers are going way up. Yesterday, there were over 200,000 hits with 4,000 unique visitors. Trying to figure out what people want isn’t always easy. We know we cannot create or find everything just anyone might be looking for. We have sent out surveys and had a pretty good return on respondents. Yet, the results may not always reflect what the mass majority of users really want. So within our analytics program, we can see the search terms ...   more...
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The Web as Acts of Kindness

By Barbara Bray      September 21, 2009 -- 08:28 AM
Jonathan Zittrain suggests the Internet is made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust.

People like to solve problems. Wikipedia is just 45 minutes away from destruction. The readers care about it to create a counter-vandalism unit. I am finding this same thing happen with My eCoach. People are checking links, submitting websites and images, and coming up with new ideas all the time for My eCoach because they care about the community. They are also supporting each other on their teams.

We started My eCoach with the idea we would help eCoaches support their communities. A little different than wikis and blogs. What I am seeing is that more members are contributing, learning from each other, and wanting to support what others are doing. Zittrain's speech gives us hope for the Internet but how can we use this to stop cyberbullying, stalking, and concerns about predatory acts. Rekindling acts of kindness where each of us fight for each other and stop viral acts that harm anyone. Right now, we created My eCoach with the idea of an eCoach supporting, protecting, and facilitating the work of their members; pointing to other members' work and connecting people with similar interests.

The power of many of the social networking tools is how they connect people. The viral manner of the Internet is that if something harmful is posted about you on the Internet, your friends and colleagues will be there to support you. This means that there has to be a feeling of trust that you won't be similarly attacked. I found that to build trust on Facebook or Twitter is not that easy. You probably have people following you that you don't know. You can block them, but if you have alot of people, how do you know what the connections are, what they are saying, unless it comes back to you?

We also are identified by the people we are associated with. If you are part of a larger community and some of the people (you don't know) have completely different interests (be they political or religious), will you be branded one way or another? Are you a lurker and uncomfortable about standing up for your rights? Will you defend someone else and use your name or post anonymously?
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Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Cheryl Vitali  September 21, 2009 -- 06:17 PM

Free Digital Content

By Barbara Bray      July 15, 2009 -- 12:02 PM
The Internet, social networking, and Web 2.0 tools are changing the way we deal with content. In reading Ron Miller’s article on the Free Content Conundrum, I can see that publishers like newspapers and even textbook companies are trying to figure out their new business model.

David Meerman Scott states in his books "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" and "World Wide Rave" that the rules are different on the web. He says that good content does it naturally because when people come to your site, the popularity of this content rises, it raises your search engine ranking. Then, even more ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Teresa Roebuck  July 22, 2009 -- 09:49 PM

Who owns your content?

By Barbara Bray      February 16, 2009 -- 11:44 PM
Have you been reading about Facebook’s new intent to use any of their members’ content as long as they want? [source] What do you think of this? What do you think happens to any of your content on FlickR, Google Sites, or other social networking tools? Looks like Facebook responded to the flood of messages about this. [source] Be aware though that if you made your content public and left Facebook, they can do anything they want with it.

I have joined lots of social networking sites including Facebook. I even created a My eCoach Share Place so eCoach members could share with the world what ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Russ Knopp  March 22, 2009 -- 04:15 PM

What does FREE mean to you?

By Barbara Bray      November 7, 2008 -- 08:28 AM
When you first see the word FREE about a product, you get excited. right? Free - for me? Yeah! Of course, you’re going to jump at the chance of getting something for FREE.

What does that mean to you? Do you value it if it is FREE? Let’s take a look at what that might mean now in these scary economic times.

So you joined Google Groups, use Google Docs, uploaded a video to Google Videos, made a Google Site with Pages. Those are FREE and cool. I agree. Have you read the Terms of Use? Here's an excerpt from Google's Terms.

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Janet Bianchini  January 13, 2009 -- 11:20 AM