My next paper is an analysis of Millies using MySpace.com within the context of Mode 3 and Mode 4 learning. I know this sounds like code words that they teach in Graduate school, but this is what it means.
Mode 3 learning is teaching yourself, and Mode 4 learning is using that self learning in an environment where everyone is doing this. In Myspace.com, 38 million (as of this writing) Millennials are creating musically and ever other way within networks of literally millions of others.
Here is my MySpace.com page, so you can see what it looks like. I'm still working on the here's and there's, but generally it's easy to use. If you look at some of my friends, you can see how the Millie's love to customize with bright colors. Wired magazine ran the article that started my interest in writing this paper.
The Hit Factory Who needs major labels, marketing, or airplay? A social networking site is getting more hits than Google -- and turning invisible bands into mini entertainment networks. How MySpace became the MTV for the Net generation. By Jeff Howe
Other stuff: Did you know local Mega Star Robyne Robinson has a Jewelry Line? rox minneapolis
Robyne makes beautiful natural stone and sterling bracelets and earrings. How did I find this out? From Tyra ! She gave it a good plug at the end of the show yesterday. The designs are available near Ridgedale and at the Walker gift shop, and some other places, including NYC.
I finally ordered the Sunday NYTimes, with its ready supply of articles for graduate students. We have easy access to archives, so I am attaching copies for my Firefly friends, but for the blogosphere, we are pretty cut off from NYTimes Opinion and archives without paying for the new service. So I'll just summarize the Brook's article:
Psst! 'Human Capital' By DAVID BROOKS
Help! I'm turning into the ''plastics'' guy from ''The Graduate.'' I'm pulling people aside at parties and whispering that if they want to understand the future, it's just two words: ''Human Capital.''
If we want to keep up with the Chinese and the Indians, we've got to develop our Human Capital. If we want to remain a just, fluid society: Human Capital. If we want to head off underclass riots: Human Capital. .......
We now spend more per capita on education than just about any other country on earth, and the results are mediocre. No Child Left Behind treats students as skill-acquiring cogs in an economic wheel, and the results have been disappointing. We pour money into Title 1 and Head Start, but the long-term gains are insignificant.
These programs are not designed for the way people really are. The only things that work are local, human-to-human immersions that transform the students down to their very beings. Extraordinary schools, which create intense cultures of achievement, work. Extraordinary teachers, who inspire students to transform their lives, work. The programs that work touch all the components of human capital.
There's a great future in Human Capital, buddy. Enough said.
The other article was in Sunday Business, still online for a while about inventor James E. West who says Americans need to be more devoted to investing in innovation.
Not Invented Here By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
Inventors have always held a special place in American history and business lore, embodying innovation and economic progress in a country that has long prized individual creativity and the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers and researchers have given society microchips, personal computers, the Internet, balloon catheters, bar codes, fiber optics, e-mail systems, hearing aids, air bags and automated teller machines, among a bevy of other devices.
Mr. West stands firmly in this tradition -- a tradition that he said may soon be upended. He fears that corporate and public nurturing of inventors and scientific research is faltering and that America will pay a serious economic and intellectual penalty for this lapse.
For the Firefly cohort - Has everyone seen Into the Blogosphere? It presents serious academic papers on Blogs, prepared right here at the University of Minnesota.
Final note - Here is the Liberal Skills Firefly blog for more information on the application of Learning Modes.
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