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]]>Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGood.tv
Want to learn a foreign language from the comfort of your home? Want to meet up with fellow students around the world? Or are you a teacher or trainer who wants to share your knowledge for a fee in an online setting with live interaction?
In this 4:50 video interview, founder and CEO Jon Bischke shares details about his new company, eduFire (tagline: “Live video learning”), an online platform that provides learning on subjects from A to Z by teachers around the world. More than 5,000 instructors are teaching more than 30,000 students. About two-thirds of the students are in the United States but word is quickly spreading internationally.
Head to the site to sign up for any course you’d like to take — say, a foreign language. All you need is a broadband connection; you can text in questions to the teacher during the class. Some instructors are making $50-$100 an hour.
The interview was conducted outside a Peet’s in San Francisco with a Flip Ultra recorder. Follow them on Twitter at @edufire.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.
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]]>The post Social by Social: Handbook launched! appeared first on Socialbrite.
]]>NESTA commissioned the work and the Social by Social team was comprised of Andy Gibson, Nigel Courtney, David Wilcox and Professor Clive Holtham and myself.
Why Social by Social?
There have been so many developments in communication technologies over the past few years, affecting so many aspects of our lives and working patterns, that giving shape and meaning to the chaos has become nearly impossible.
‘Social by Social’ is a term we’ve invented to make sense of what we’re talking about.
The word ‘social’ is often used to imply all the various work that goes on in the public and third sector, and by individuals, to improve the world around us, care for each other, create value for communities and tackle the problems and inequalities of the world.
(Social enterprise. Social conscience. Social problems.)
And ‘social’ is also used by technologists and the media to refer to the new two-way communications technologies available via the internet and digital technologies. Communications that create society, strengthen relationships, support social interactions.
(Social media. Social networks. Social infrastructure.)
This book is a map of where these two words meet. It is not limited to the fashionable trends in social media and ‘web 2.0’; nor is it specifically aimed at people in the social sector. It is about how these new tools for social interaction are changing our society, and how those of us with a social conscience can use them to do more good.
‘Social by social’ change is about using new technologies to bring people together to make their world better. This handbook is a starting point for working out how to do it.
New technologies are changing the way we engage communities, run companies, deliver public services, participate in government and campaign for change. These new technologies are available to all of us. And they offer us an amazing opportunity to change our world.
You can read the handbook online for free or order your hard copy today! The online version is completely commentable and we are eager to continue the conversation with you! To dive in, visit:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.
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]]>The post A public RSS reader for you! appeared first on Socialbrite.
]]>So, my response is simple: I want to share my RSS reader with you. What’s in my brain can be in yours!
Amy Sample Ward’s Version of RSS
Why?
This is just a starting place. There are other places you can go to find more blogs and resources as well, like Alltop and even WeAreMedia. So, why did I do this? I want to help support those just starting to investigate the options of social technologies for social change work, as well as give something back to those already invested and contributing to the community. Opening up my RSS reader (well, except for my mom’s blog and that kind of thing!) is something I have wanted to do for a while because it
- provides an opportunity for me to offer a bit of value back to the larger tech+change community that is so valuable to me
- is aligned with my core values of collaboration and sharing
- creates a chance to improve this collection of feeds by and with my community
What?
My public RSS reader is built on Netvibes, which is a free, web-based RSS reader. This is a place to find blogs or RSS feeds from research or organizational websites – all focused on the large intersection of social technologies and social benefit work. This is free to use and publicly accessible. As you’ll see, it has many different tabs to try to help with the information overload of juggling so many great content sources. Check it out!
Join me!
I would love for you to visit the public RSS reader, but even more so, I would love for you to suggest feeds that should be part of it! You can either comment on the News & Resources page, or email me with your suggestions.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.
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