About twice a year, I review my igoogle home page, editing out those blogs that I don't read and adding blogs that I may find myself accessing more often. I decided that others might want to see who I read on a regular basis and perhaps find new sources of information (which I do on a regular basis).
Daily reads
These blogs are ones that I read as soon as they are posted. While the authors may not post on a daily basis, I look for any new posts almost daily. In reviewing these posts, the reason I look for them daily is because I feel a "kindred spirit" with them (as Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables would say).
Karyn Romeis (Karyn's erratic learning journal) : Her blog deals not only with learning issues, but many times she includes cultural observations and family issues that I can connect with (especially as I also have two teens). I like the way she integrates her personal life into the blog and the honesty in which she writes about any issue. I like to think I do the same with my own blog
Andy Coverdale (Phd blog (dot) net) Like me, Andy is working on his Ph.d. In addition, I'm very interested in the visual communication aspect of his research. I connect with many of the academic issues he discusses in his blog including how the university works, the process of research, collaborating with colleagues, and emerging ideas (especially in academia).
Ken Allen (Blogger in middle earth). I have been a fan of Ken's blog for a long time as, like Karyn, there is a high level of integrity in his postings that cover a wide range of topics that he is interested in. Unfortunately, this year he has only posted sporadically ( I am afraid that he is being held hostage in Second Life as when he began to dabble in that program was when he stopped posting regularly). Hopefully, he will pick up the blog posts again this year.
Weekly perusals
The next group of blogs are those that I skim at least once a week (sometimes more often if I have extra time) because of the quality of information in their posts.
Jenny Luca: Lucacept-Intercepting the Web. Although she is half way around the world, it is amazing how relevant her blog is to what happens in k-12 (primary and secondary school) here in the US. Her School's out Friday are must reads for me (although I usually read them on Mondays). Many of her posts deal with integrating technology into primary and secondary education on a practical, practitioner's view point.
Quinn Clark: Learnlet's and Harold Jarche often have related content. Both are educational technology consultants, mostly in professional and/or organizational training. Quinn also has posts dealing with some of the issues for other levels of education. Both of these blogs have theoretical models, research related links, and frameworks for learning that are very educational. I usually skim through and find the most relevant issues to read as just keeping up with their posts would require too much of my time (this is the richness of their posts).
Tom Haskins: growing changing learning creating Tom deals with issues at both the university level and those in the field of business (especially management, marketing, and communication education). Reading his posts helps me stay current with the field in which I am teaching. For a business professor, his posts are remarkably insightful educationally (my experience with business professors is that they are grounded in old fashioned teaching methods, usually in the behaviorist tradition).
Michael Hanley: Elearning Curve As basically a non-techy in the area of computer mediated communication, I find Michael's blog an invaluable source of information. Each post is well thought out, grounded in current research, but also easily accessible to the basic novice. His series study an area in-depth which makes it easy to search past postings when there is a topic I may need help on.
Sahana Chattopadhyay: ID and other reflections. Like Jenny Luca, Sahana's blog (geared towards adult learning) is very relevant, although she lives and works in a totally different culture than my own. There are times when I have gone back to check her location, because the issues she discusses are so relevant to issues in instructional design I face here. Her posts always have good supporting resources. She does more than regurgitates interesting resources, she puts theories into practice with good analyses and examples.
Old Stand-bys
There are some sites that I check in on when I have the time as I know the posts will be interesting (as well as the conversation). I don't have as much time to participate in these blogs as I used to as I work on my dissertation, but I access these blogs, especially if there is a specific area I want to investigate.
Tony Karrer: eLearning Technology A popular elearning blog which allows readers to get a pulse of trends in elearning and organizational training.
Jane Hart: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the day. Still the best site to look for new technolgy.
Nancy White: Nancy White's Full Circle Blog. For anyone doing research on collaboration or communities of practice, this is an invaluable resource. I just wish she would post more frequently than she did this year.
Christine Martell: Exploring with Images Christine repositioned her business and her blog last year. She now includes many of her own original artwork. I love to just sign on and look through her images as it always makes me smile. Her art has such a soothing, happy spirit to it.
New Blogs for me this year
Mark Berthelemy: Learning Conversations Although I had visited his blog sporadically over the past few years, this year I finally added Mark's blog onto my igoogle page. He has a number of interesting insights, especially into learning and learning with technology.
cv harquail: Authentic Organizations This is a hard one to describe. This blog aligns with my dissertation research and addresses organizational behavior, but from a critical literacy perspective. It includes posts on organizational behavior, culture, and a feminist perspective. At the very least, it is always interesting in its perspective; at its best it is very enlightening.
So what are you reading?
I'm always looking for new blogs. What blogs would you recommend?
Showing posts with label Christine Martell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christine Martell. Show all posts
Friday, December 31, 2010
Friday, April 17, 2009
Marketing 101
Christine Martell had an interesting post about market segmenting. As both an educator and a marketing instructor, I felt a post putting marketing concepts into education terminology was warranted.
I find that many of the concepts in education and marketing are similiar. Many educators don't like to hear this and many marketers would like to think their field is more "professional". However, straddling the two worlds, I often borrow concepts from both in my teaching and analysis.
Lesson 1: Know your Audience
Target market is the audience that you want to capture for your business. As educators, we walk into a classroom or learning environment and want to know where are students are at. Image walking into a classroom and basing all of our lessons on the stereotypes in the class (e.g. girls, african americans, low socio economic students, non-native English speakers). While we can make some generalities based on culture and experience, we would really need to know the individuals and then put together a class plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the students, grouping them together based on what they do and know, not on personal characteristics. Those who are visual learners need to have visual cues (as opposed to saying that all girls need visual cues).
This is what Kathie Nelson means by Phycho-graphics. We do this the first part of any course, trainig, or class that we teach. It makes sense to use this when trying to "sell" your service.
Lesson 2: Choose your strategy
In education, most instructors have the choice of standardizing their teaching (assessing with tests, stating standard goals and objectives and hoping to teach the greatest amount to the largest number of students). This is called mass marketing in marketing. As in education, there is an advantage to this as you are able to reach the greatest number of customers with the smallest investment. However, this is not a "deep" approach (the complaint with standardized curriculum is the lack of "deep learning").
In marketing this approach is called "skimming" as you familiarize your audience with the concepts, with the understanding that some will "get it" and others won't.
The other common strategy used in training is individualized curriculum. This is especially effective for complex concepts and a "deep learning" approach. The same is true for "niche" marketing. Products or services that require the customer have a deep understanding in order to make a purchase decision are best marketed using an "individualized" approach. However, this requires a lot of investment in time and effort (as would an individualized learning plan).
So for most marketers, the most effective strategy is a mixed approach. Catagorizing the market into segments that have similiar or overlapping needs so that you can make slight modifications for the specific needs of the segments is similiar to the instructor that incorporates flexibility into the curriculum or instructional design so that the differences can be addressed while still allowing for a basis of core content.
In Christine's case, she can have a portfolio of visuals, from which individuals can pick and choose depending on their needs. This recognizes the differences between clients, but allows her to have some standardized material.
Lesson 3: Don't confuse communication with product
Marketing has 4 parts to it (often call the 4 P's): Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. Education has similiar concepts only using different terms: curriculum, resources (time, instructor, expertise), communication (teaching style, student engagement, student/instructor/content interaction) and place (learning environment, means of delivery-electronic, self paced learning, instructor in a classroom).
New marketers often look at marketing as just the promotion (advertising, sales). But the other parts of the marketing mix are just as important. This would be like assuming a person that can communicate the content is sufficient without resources, the correct mode of delivery, or a poor curriculum.
It is important to have a product that is appropriate for the customer (you wouldn't have a curriculum that did not meet the learning needs of the student because it was too advanced or too basic for the student needs). Price helps to create value, especially in a non-tangible good. Which is better a "cheap" dentist or a dentist that fits in your price range? The image of "cheap" dentist is someone that might not do the work correctly or pain free. In education, learning that requires more time input and effort is perceived as more valuable (as opposed to the "busy work" type of learning a student may need to do to "get the credits"). How a product gets to the customer is usually a negotiation, especially for a service. Services are difficult to "distribute" as they may require the customer to come to a central place or service provides to go to the customer. There is also a question of quality control so that the service provided is the service the customer expected. This might not be possible if the service customer is far away fromt the service provider.
Lesson 4: Marketing is a negotiation process between the customer and the provider
"The customer is always right" is not always true with a service. Rather, the saying should be, "let the customer perceive that they are right." It is important that the customer be satisfied, however, not at the expense of the company. In some cases, a company needs to cut a customer loose if it means the company's reputation or values will be compromised. On the other hand, we are in a different world in which customers are much better informed and have access to more information in the past. Companies can't assume that they "know better" than the customer. It is important that marketing is a dialogue between the customer and provider so that the product meets the needs of the customer, closing the perceived gap between a customer need and the product provided.
I find that many of the concepts in education and marketing are similiar. Many educators don't like to hear this and many marketers would like to think their field is more "professional". However, straddling the two worlds, I often borrow concepts from both in my teaching and analysis.
Lesson 1: Know your Audience
Target market is the audience that you want to capture for your business. As educators, we walk into a classroom or learning environment and want to know where are students are at. Image walking into a classroom and basing all of our lessons on the stereotypes in the class (e.g. girls, african americans, low socio economic students, non-native English speakers). While we can make some generalities based on culture and experience, we would really need to know the individuals and then put together a class plan based on the strengths and weaknesses of the students, grouping them together based on what they do and know, not on personal characteristics. Those who are visual learners need to have visual cues (as opposed to saying that all girls need visual cues).
This is what Kathie Nelson means by Phycho-graphics. We do this the first part of any course, trainig, or class that we teach. It makes sense to use this when trying to "sell" your service.
Lesson 2: Choose your strategy
In education, most instructors have the choice of standardizing their teaching (assessing with tests, stating standard goals and objectives and hoping to teach the greatest amount to the largest number of students). This is called mass marketing in marketing. As in education, there is an advantage to this as you are able to reach the greatest number of customers with the smallest investment. However, this is not a "deep" approach (the complaint with standardized curriculum is the lack of "deep learning").
In marketing this approach is called "skimming" as you familiarize your audience with the concepts, with the understanding that some will "get it" and others won't.
The other common strategy used in training is individualized curriculum. This is especially effective for complex concepts and a "deep learning" approach. The same is true for "niche" marketing. Products or services that require the customer have a deep understanding in order to make a purchase decision are best marketed using an "individualized" approach. However, this requires a lot of investment in time and effort (as would an individualized learning plan).
So for most marketers, the most effective strategy is a mixed approach. Catagorizing the market into segments that have similiar or overlapping needs so that you can make slight modifications for the specific needs of the segments is similiar to the instructor that incorporates flexibility into the curriculum or instructional design so that the differences can be addressed while still allowing for a basis of core content.
In Christine's case, she can have a portfolio of visuals, from which individuals can pick and choose depending on their needs. This recognizes the differences between clients, but allows her to have some standardized material.
Lesson 3: Don't confuse communication with product
Marketing has 4 parts to it (often call the 4 P's): Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. Education has similiar concepts only using different terms: curriculum, resources (time, instructor, expertise), communication (teaching style, student engagement, student/instructor/content interaction) and place (learning environment, means of delivery-electronic, self paced learning, instructor in a classroom).
New marketers often look at marketing as just the promotion (advertising, sales). But the other parts of the marketing mix are just as important. This would be like assuming a person that can communicate the content is sufficient without resources, the correct mode of delivery, or a poor curriculum.
It is important to have a product that is appropriate for the customer (you wouldn't have a curriculum that did not meet the learning needs of the student because it was too advanced or too basic for the student needs). Price helps to create value, especially in a non-tangible good. Which is better a "cheap" dentist or a dentist that fits in your price range? The image of "cheap" dentist is someone that might not do the work correctly or pain free. In education, learning that requires more time input and effort is perceived as more valuable (as opposed to the "busy work" type of learning a student may need to do to "get the credits"). How a product gets to the customer is usually a negotiation, especially for a service. Services are difficult to "distribute" as they may require the customer to come to a central place or service provides to go to the customer. There is also a question of quality control so that the service provided is the service the customer expected. This might not be possible if the service customer is far away fromt the service provider.
Lesson 4: Marketing is a negotiation process between the customer and the provider
"The customer is always right" is not always true with a service. Rather, the saying should be, "let the customer perceive that they are right." It is important that the customer be satisfied, however, not at the expense of the company. In some cases, a company needs to cut a customer loose if it means the company's reputation or values will be compromised. On the other hand, we are in a different world in which customers are much better informed and have access to more information in the past. Companies can't assume that they "know better" than the customer. It is important that marketing is a dialogue between the customer and provider so that the product meets the needs of the customer, closing the perceived gap between a customer need and the product provided.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
What I learned this year blogging
In response to the Big Question for this month, I followed directions, reviewed my posts, and reflected on what I learned.
First of all, I really like my writing style (which is good because I wrote it). Sometimes, as I reread the post, I realized that it was really well-written! (Enough of self promotion). I feel that the best posts, however, were the result of other bloggers pushing me to reflect on and write about an issue I had not thought was really important. Ken Allen, Michele Martin, and Christine Martell especially, asked some questions and entered into dialog that really made me think.
So what did I learn?
About Blogging:
I have been submersed in Academic Research for the last 5 years. This year, through some simple questions from Michele and Ken, (can you give us an example or tell us what you saw in your class), I reconnected with the importance of "quick and dirty" observation and analysis.
In academic writing, you look to the literature to give you theories. Then you set up your research in a well planned systematic way, analyze the data, and then go back to the literature to explain your findings. While this has its place, I feel it also makes academic research (and even corporate market research) outdated. After looking at my posts on the use of wikis in my classroom (Group Communication and Wikis , Lessons learned about wiki use), the lessons learned from my New Communication Technologies in Organizational Life course, and even my observations on my own children's use of facebook, ipods, and cellphones has allowed me to begin to create an emerging portrait of the new knowledge worker and the type of training he or she will need to be successful for the 21st Century workplace. This has taught me that I can begin with my observations in realife circumstances and still come away with some valuable information that would be helpful to others. I wonder if this is a new direction for academic research (and a new battleground in academia as it does not fit the model of "academic rigor").
About technology:
More and more as I write about the Web 2.0, I find that there is less need to know the tool and more importance should be placed on the affordances. It seems that many of the postings came down to what technology could allow us to do rather than the tool itself.
I find that I am also moving away from blogging sites that list tools, and concentrating more on sites that discuss HOW to USE the tool and the impact it will have on instructional design and student learning. Don't get me wrong, I still refer to Jane's E-learning Pick of the Day and Cool Cat Teacher on a regular basis. But I go to these sites when I know what I am looking for, usually a specific tool use. I wonder if this is the natural progression of Web 2.0 users? Do we start with the tools, then see the potential after using the tools, then look for new ways to use the tools and look for advice on more design or instructional uses?
Comments and reader interaction:
I have learned to be content with the few people that comment on my blog. I value them highly. I also like the new google option that identifies followers as it allows me an opportunity to get to them on their blogs. While I think I work best with comments, I took a page from Michael Hanley's blog where he commented that as long as he can see through the viewer stats that people are reading his blog, he is satisfied. He recognizes (as do I) that his posts tend to have a lot of information. As long as he has the feeling that this is helpful to readers, he won't worry about comments. I have adopted this philosophy as well (although I do like people to comment as it takes the guess work out of what your thoughts are). I hope that I am inviting enough for people not to be intimedated to post questions, comments, and even disagree with me. I learn so much from those disagreements (as long as they are civil).
I learned the most in an interaction with Ewa. Her comments have really inspired me to look at alternative ways to assess learning in the workplace.
First of all, I really like my writing style (which is good because I wrote it). Sometimes, as I reread the post, I realized that it was really well-written! (Enough of self promotion). I feel that the best posts, however, were the result of other bloggers pushing me to reflect on and write about an issue I had not thought was really important. Ken Allen, Michele Martin, and Christine Martell especially, asked some questions and entered into dialog that really made me think.
So what did I learn?
About Blogging:
- Comment on others blogs, but when the comment is more than 2 paragraphs, write a post and link it.
- You can vary your voice and tone.
- Tag so you can find links when writing about the same subject in subsequent posts. I can't tell you how many times I had to go searching for a post I was SURE I had written, but had not done a good job of tagging
I have been submersed in Academic Research for the last 5 years. This year, through some simple questions from Michele and Ken, (can you give us an example or tell us what you saw in your class), I reconnected with the importance of "quick and dirty" observation and analysis.
In academic writing, you look to the literature to give you theories. Then you set up your research in a well planned systematic way, analyze the data, and then go back to the literature to explain your findings. While this has its place, I feel it also makes academic research (and even corporate market research) outdated. After looking at my posts on the use of wikis in my classroom (Group Communication and Wikis , Lessons learned about wiki use), the lessons learned from my New Communication Technologies in Organizational Life course, and even my observations on my own children's use of facebook, ipods, and cellphones has allowed me to begin to create an emerging portrait of the new knowledge worker and the type of training he or she will need to be successful for the 21st Century workplace. This has taught me that I can begin with my observations in realife circumstances and still come away with some valuable information that would be helpful to others. I wonder if this is a new direction for academic research (and a new battleground in academia as it does not fit the model of "academic rigor").
About technology:
More and more as I write about the Web 2.0, I find that there is less need to know the tool and more importance should be placed on the affordances. It seems that many of the postings came down to what technology could allow us to do rather than the tool itself.
I find that I am also moving away from blogging sites that list tools, and concentrating more on sites that discuss HOW to USE the tool and the impact it will have on instructional design and student learning. Don't get me wrong, I still refer to Jane's E-learning Pick of the Day and Cool Cat Teacher on a regular basis. But I go to these sites when I know what I am looking for, usually a specific tool use. I wonder if this is the natural progression of Web 2.0 users? Do we start with the tools, then see the potential after using the tools, then look for new ways to use the tools and look for advice on more design or instructional uses?
Comments and reader interaction:
I have learned to be content with the few people that comment on my blog. I value them highly. I also like the new google option that identifies followers as it allows me an opportunity to get to them on their blogs. While I think I work best with comments, I took a page from Michael Hanley's blog where he commented that as long as he can see through the viewer stats that people are reading his blog, he is satisfied. He recognizes (as do I) that his posts tend to have a lot of information. As long as he has the feeling that this is helpful to readers, he won't worry about comments. I have adopted this philosophy as well (although I do like people to comment as it takes the guess work out of what your thoughts are). I hope that I am inviting enough for people not to be intimedated to post questions, comments, and even disagree with me. I learn so much from those disagreements (as long as they are civil).
I learned the most in an interaction with Ewa. Her comments have really inspired me to look at alternative ways to assess learning in the workplace.
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