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Education Globalization Reading

Globalization: Lessons learned?

China has been taking quite a justified beating in the global press for their product safety crisis. From toys to medicine China is stumbling over its global reputation. Today’s article in the New York Times proves Europe has learned from the mistakes of American toy companies.

Mattel is probably the biggest American company to also take such a beating in the press. They probably deserve it in making the choice to shift production outside the US where they easily have manpower to inspect factories. In China it has proved to be a huge disaster. Where was Mattel’s Quality Assurance on this one?

Mattel is really guilty of not working hard enough to grow their business relationship in China. After all, at some point Mattel executives felt comfortable enough to shift business overseas yet clearly failed to ensure their new relationship was running smoothly. Mattel’s public statement.

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Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest read: Made to Stick

What book would be a perfect follow up to The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? To prove timing is everything I read Dan and Chip Heath’s new release: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book’s authors acknowledge that their book complements Gladwell’s The Tipping Point by identifying “traits” necessary to make your ideas ‘sticky’ with your intended audience.
Made to StickWritten by brothers Chip and Dan Heath they share experiences and research in finding ideas that stick. Chip is professor of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Dan is a consultant to Duke University’s Corporate Education program.

Made to Stick provides wonderful insight to learn how powerful ideas succeed in the face of big obstacles (and people) especially in a stale environment. Take Subway’s series of commercials featuring Jared for example.

Originally passed by PR firms, Jared’s story was brought to life by the Subway store manager where Jared ate while attending Indiana University. The ad campaign was eventually created pro-bono by a firm thinking they would fail. Even Subway’s PR firm did not support this idea. Chip and Dan prove not only how wrong they were, but how powerful the idea has turned out to be for Subway.

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Education Globalization Internet2 Network Technology Virtual Reality WiscNet

Tech futures in higher education

internet2 k20Today’s Live Discussion at the Chronicle of Higher Education points to the growth of new technologies that will change the college campus. Gartner’s “Hype Cycle for Higher Education” focused on technologies that will transform colleges in the next 10 years: global library digitization projects, personal devices with campus network access, Internet2, e-learning repositories, quantum computing and virtual worlds.
I am very glad to see Internet2 getting more press as a key, defining technology for the future of colleges.

Tags: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Internet2, future technologies,trends

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Education Globalization Milwaukee Reading Technology

Latest read: Blink

Following the successful read of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learning of discussions underway on the internet regarding his follow up book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking it was clear Blink had to be the next book I picked up the night I finished The Tipping Point. And its another success for Gladwell.
blinkSo what is the truth about instantly making a decision in the blink of an eye? We have the ability for rapid cognition…but do we use it in our daily lives? It should tell you a lot about the situation at hand regardless of the outcome:

For instance Gladwell shares these situations: Can you tell the forgery of an ancient piece of art or can you tell the difference between two musicians playing behind a curtain during an audition with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra?

And can you instantly recognize when a professional tennis player will fault on serve even before the ball is struck by the player’s racket? Gladwell shares how rapid cognition can work to your advantage and how we have unfortunately conditioned ourselves to look beyond the ‘gut’ feeling because our eyes can play visual tricks … often for the worse.

I was impressed to learn of police organizations who study facial recognition patterns to develop rapid cognition between a frighten citizen and a hardened criminal … all in the blink of any eye, when life or death can hang in the balance.

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Design Education Globalization Technology

Firefox: 400 million downloads

In less than three years Firefox has turned a movement into a crusade. A open source web browser written by a programmer in Australia and a undergrad at Stanford and distributed via the internet for all for free.  The staggering numbers clearly indicate the worldwide desire by many to use an alternative browser. And it looks like the ripples keep coming….

firefox download

Firefox is the best story demonstrating the power of the open source software movement. Just imagine if Dell, HP and others began shipping Firefox pre-installed on new systems … Wait a minute … wouldn’t Microsoft alter their software distribution arrangements with these companies? Think Netscape. Remember them?

Seems that times have changed.  Imagine that two people across the world (who never met one another before the launch) can collaborate and create such a powerful program.  Are you ready for our future?

Tags: Firefox, Open Source, web browser, download, trends