Dangers of social groupthink: A case study in Enterprise 2.0, Social CRM and Social Business For sure, there’s a lot of Goodness in social media—in our personal lives and business. But also a lot of issues to be worked out. That’s why two years ago I established a Social Business category on CustomerThink, and last year launched SocialBusinessOne, a community dedicated to the topic. One of the downsides of social media is that it can accelerate getting locked into a point of view. This is counter intuitive, because you might expect that social media would make it easier to get multiple points of view. It can, but it depends on the group dynamics and the willingness of each of us as individuals to consider alternate ideas. Image Credit: philipcarter These days it’s all too easy to find and join a group that supports a certain mindset. Groupthink means members of a group try to avoid conflict and reach consensus without critical analysis. This is fine if your group is cheering for a sports team or maybe a political party. Trends in social thinking Dr. Source: Social Radar
The Power of Crowd and Place: A Conversation with Jeff Kirchick from SCVNGR Jeff Kirchick is the Universities and Schools Specialist for SCVNGR, a gaming platform about doing challenges at places. I first met Jeff at the CASE Social Media Conference in San Francisco where he was organizing a “trek” for the conference. It was the most fun I’d had participating in extra-curricular activities at a conference. What is SCVNGR? SCVNGR is a mobile game about going places, doing challenges, earning points, and unlocking rewards. SCVNGR exists in two major ways: as a casual game, and as a themed experience. You could also take part in a SCVNGR trek – some type of themed experience that guides you to a set of places where you have to complete specific challenges as part of the game. What makes SCVNGR different from other geo-location applications like Foursquare or Facebook Places? That being said, SCVNGR’s core unit is the challenge, not the check-in. How do you see SCVNGR impacting businesses? What are some of the cool things a business can do with SCVNGR?
How to Adopt a Social Media Lifestyle While most small business owners are starting to realize that social media is a necessary part of any marketing strategy, as a social media coach, the question I get most often is how to add social media to a day that is already way too full. For those of us working as solopreneurs or small business owners, it may, at times, feel like we are working virtually around the clock so when are we really supposed to tweet, post or blog? I’ll admit creating a social media plan that will stick is like starting an exercise program. You just have to take that leap and do it. You need to look at it, not as a series of social media tasks that need to be done during the day, but more of a lifestyle change that you need to incorporate into your entire way of thinking. 5 tips to make the social media lifestyle change Coffee and Twitter: For most of us, a morning cup of coffee is sacred. Connect: Authored by: Ali Goldfield See complete profile
New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies', Ariadne Issue 56 In this article I want to reflect on the rhetoric of 'Web 2.0' and its potential versus actual impact. I want to suggest that we need to do more than look at how social networking technologies are being used generally as an indicator of their potential impact on education, arguing instead that we need to rethink what are the fundamental characteristics of learning and then see how social networking can be harnessed to maximise these characteristics to best effect. I will further argue that the current complexity of the digital environment requires us to develop 'schema' or approaches to thinking about how we can best harness the benefits these new technologies confer. The Tension between Web 2.0 and Education So my primary interest is to focus on the educational aspects of new technologies and in particular what might be appropriate 'schema' for describing the ways in which technologies are being used. Realigning New Technologies to Pedagogy A Pedagogical Framework for Mapping Tools in Use
Engelbart: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962) These hypotheses imply great richness in the new evolutionary spaces opened by progressing from Stage 3 to Stage 4. We would like to study the hypotheses further, examining their possible manifestations in our experience, ways of demonstrating their validity, and possible deductions relative to going to Stage 4. In search of some simple ways to determine what the Neo-Whorfian hypothesis might imply, we could imagine some relatively straightforward means of increasing our external symbol-manipulation capability and try to picture the consequent changes that could evolve in our language and methods of thinking. Brains of power equal to ours could have evolved in an environment where the combination of artifact materials and muscle strengths were so scaled that the neatest scribing tool (equivalent to a pencil, possible had a shape and mass as manageable as a brick would be to us-assuming that our muscles were not specially conditioned to deal with it. 5. a. b Structure Types 1) General
An Introduction to Networks in the Global Village NetLab is an interdisciplinary scholarly network studying the intersection of social networks, communication networks, and computer networks. Centered at the University of Toronto, NetLab members have come from across Canada and the United States as well as from Chile, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Where to find NetLab: NetLab43.665016, -79.399325NetLabUniversity of TorontoiSchool140 St. Sherry Turkle - Interviews and Profiles Sherry Turkle received her Bachelors of Arts summa cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Sociology and Personality Psychology from Harvard University. Media appearances in which Sherry Turkle discusses her new book, Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other (NY: Basic Books, January 2011), as well as her research in general : The Atlantic Magazine – “Saving the Lost Art of Conversation: In a fast-paced digital age, an MIT psychologist tries to slow us down” (January/February 2014). A profile by Megan Garber. Moyers & Company (PBS) – "Sherry Turkle on Being Alone Together" (October 18, 2013). On Point with Ted Ashbrook (NPR) – “The Programmable World” (June 4, 2013). CBS This Morning, with Charlie Rose and Gayle King – “More Wired, Less Connected: Is Your Smart Phone Making You Lonely?” CBS News -- "Texting: Can we pull the plug on our obsession?"
Mindful Infotention: Dashboards, Radars, Filters | City Brights: Howard Rheingold Infotention is a word I came up with to describe the psycho-social-techno skill/tools we all need to find our way online today, a mind-machine combination of brain-powered attention skills with computer-powered information filters. The inside and outside of infotention work best together: Honing the mental ability to deploy the form of attention appropriate for each moment is an essential internal skill for people who want to find, direct, and manage streams of relevant information by using online media knowledgeably.Knowing how to put together intelligence dashboards, news radars, and information filters from online tools like persistent search and RSS is the external technical component of information literacy. Knowing what to pay attention to is a cognitive skill that steers and focuses the technical knowledge of how to find information worth your attention. The overall system I’m seeking to understand is one of mindful infotention. Infotention Filters
Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) | City Brights: Howard Rheingold Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It’s not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We’re beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn’t have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. One of my students asked me online why I use Twitter. Openness – anyone can join, and anyone can follow anyone else (unless they restrict access to friends who request access). Immediacy – it is a rolling present. Variety – political or technical argument, gossip, scientific info, news flashes, poetry, social arrangements, classrooms, repartee, scholarly references, bantering with friends. You have to tune who you follow.
U Rheingold U. is a totally online learning community, offering courses that usually run for five weeks, with five live sessions and ongoing asynchronous discussions through forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, and social bookmarks. In my thirty years of experience online and my eight years teaching students face to face and online at University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, I've learned that magic can happen when a skilled facilitator works collaboratively with a group of motivated students. Live sessions include streaming audio and video from me and from students, shared text chat and whiteboard, and my ability to push slides and lead tours of websites. Future classes will cover advanced use of personal knowledge tools, social media for educators, participatory media/collective action, social media issues, introduction to cooperation studies, network and social network literacy, social media literacies, attention skills in an always-on world.
Jan05_01 Editor’s Note: This is a milestone article that deserves careful study. Connectivism should not be con fused with constructivism. George Siemens advances a theory of learning that is consistent with the needs of the twenty first century. George Siemens Introduction Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. Some significant trends in learning: Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. Background Driscoll (2000) defines learning as “a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world” (p.11). Connectivism
Society for New Communications Research 8 Ways to Sculpt Your Personal Brand Using Social Media 8 Ways to Sculpt Your Personal Brand Using Social Media Perhaps one day the traditional resume will disappear as we know it today. Maybe LinkedIn or Google will replace it. Engage – Engagement is a two-way street. Although the steps above are well known personal branding best practices, there are others left to be discovered.