Linkedin

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 175 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking.  As of June 2012, LinkedIn reports more than 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories.^[4]
The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Korean, Indonesian, and Malay. Quantcast reports LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. In June 2011, LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, up 63 percent from a year earlier and surpassing MySpace. LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the NYSE symbol "LNKD".

One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections. Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection. However, if the invitee selects "I don't know" or "Spam", this counts against the inviter. If the inviter gets too many of such responses, the account may be restricted or closed.

This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:

• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.
• Users can upload their resume or design their own profile in order to showcase work and community experiences.
• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
• Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
• Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
• Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new joining and offers available.
• Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply for.

The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional requires either an existing relationship, or the intervention of a contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users. LinkedIn participates in the EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.^[42]
The feature LinkedIn Answers,^[43] similar to Yahoo! Answers, allows users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is free, and the main difference from the latter is that questions are potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people asking and answering questions is known.

Another LinkedIn feature is LinkedIn Polls. In December 2011, LinkedIn announced that they are rolling out polls to their one million groups.

In mid-2008, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.
In October 2008, LinkedIn revealed plans to opening its social network of 30 million professionals globally as a potential sample for business-to-business research. It is testing a potential social-network revenue model-research that to some appears more promising than advertising.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVlUwwgOfKw&feature=player_embedded

Virtual Learning Environments - Moodle

Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites for their students.  There are many of these CMS-cum-LMS-cum-VLE such as Blackboard, WebCT and Sakai. You can find out more about Moodle, how to get it and use it, on the Moodle community site moodle.org.

Many TAFE courses use the Moodle system as a supplementary course delivery platform. Teachers use Moodle to store course information, such as assessment dates and instructions, as well as Student Assessment Guides*. Teachers may also upload resources for students on the  Moodle, such as readings, links, videos and photos. Students are often required to upload their assignments to the course Moodle.

Creating a skype account

An introduction to creating a skype account

Skype is a provider for connecting people through audio, audio-visual and/or online chat.

Skype-to-skype is free, but for skype-to-mobile and skype-to-landline you need to have an account with credit in it.  You can also SMS from a skype account to mobile phone or 'chat'.

The options for audio and audio-visual communication in Skype are flexible as you can choose between them at the begining of your Skype contact or switch between the audio and audio-visual facility during a call.

To create a Skype account, go to skype.com

Select 'create an account'

Enter your details (email and username), password and personal details.

Wikispaces

Hi all!

From what I've been able to glean, Wikispaces is an incredible online resource for creating and running a learning resource where everybody can contribute ... something like an old-style tutorial where we can sit around and 'chew the fat' on an issue or theme, and learn something new in the process.

So, following the instructions of Roie, below is a brief introduction to setting up a wikispace:

First, an administrator will create a wikispace, and will then invite people to become members via an email.

In this email, there will be a link which they can then follow to create a username and password.

And then you are set to contribute to your wiki.

Dismantling of TAFE

Hi all,

I'm not sure if you are interested but our future as students is under threat.

This morning on the radio (702 AM) there was a discussion about how state governments are radically reducing funding for TAFEs.  In Victoria, the process is well under way with most TAFEs having been closed.  In NSW and QLD, it seems that, among other things, the educational opportunities for people with disabilities and the Outreach programs have been slashed or radically restricted.

For me, all forms of education are an investment in our future - the skills, the knowledge, the awareness that we need to have to live to our potential and to be responsible citizens in our society.  These funding cuts are, in effect, a reflection of a government attitude of not caring for our future, and, at worst, a part of a cynical exercise to dumb down society - in any event, funding cuts represent a non-investment in our future - a sad reflection on those who have been elected to care for and lead our society forward.

I would like to hear your thoughts.

Cheers, Robert

Disengaged senior high school students and leaving age

In Friday 1/11/12 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, there was an article entitled 'More students disengaged since rise in leaving age' by Anna Patty.

My reaction to this article was a mixture of sadness and bemusement.  As an ex-high school teacher in NSW and having visited high schools overseas, the impact of the state government's decision in 2010 was predictable and predicted.  The reasons centre on the chronic lack of resources focussed on the diversity of students - their needs, expectations and aspirations - and a bureacracy divorced from the day-to-day experience of school life.  Also, teachers are increasingly burdened with a workload that is unrealistic for  established but narrowly-defined outcomes.

My sadness at this article stems from what this situation of disengagement means for the youth who have had a negative experience of school - a supposedly learning environment where knowledge and skills are developed as the students' perceptions, attitudes and values are brought into relief and negiotated, abused and/or established in an environment where care and nurturing are difficult to establish, let alone a semblance of the same.

These are just some thoughts.  Maybe I'll develop them and others later.  But I would love to hear of your reactions on this article.