Live Interview Thursday October 13th - Gina Bianchini on Mightybell

Join me Thursday, October 13th, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Gina Bianchini, co-founder and former CEO of Ning, and now creator of the new Web-based service Mightybell. Mightybell is based on the idea that "success comes from thinking big, but acting incrementally," and so the platform allows you to create and share an "experience." An experience is an organized series of step-by-step “actions” users can follow--however, in true Gina B. style, participants in a Mightybell experience are not alone and they become a community, able to comment, communicate, and support each other at every step. Now, if you're beginning to see the connection to education (social learning!), you're going to really enjoy this conversation with Gina as we explore Mightybell, her plans for the service, and its possible uses in the education world. If you want to explore Mightybell in advance, you can join over 650 fellow "travelers" in the experience I created called "Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth."

Date: Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-10-13.1657.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/ginab2011.mp3.

From Wikipedia: Gina Bianchini was CEO of Ning, which she co-founded with Marc Andreessen. Since leaving Ning in March 2010, she has been an executive in residence at the Andreesen Horowitz venture firm.

Bianchini re-emerged in September of 2011 as head of a privately-funded Palo Alto start-up called MightyBell, which is offering a social networking app designed for creators of "experiences" to offer step-by-step directions to those who might want to accomplish goals such as running marathons or going on survival expeditions.

Prior to Ning, Bianchini was co-founder and president of Harmonic Communications which was acquired by Dentsu. She has also held positions at CKS Group and Goldman Sachs.

Bianchini holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Stanford Business School.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  I consulted for Ning in 2007-2008, and visibly represented the product in the education market during that time.

Live Interview Tuesday October 11th - Timothy Wilson on Psychological Change

Join me Tuesday, October 11th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Timothy D. Wilson on his new book, Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change. The book is not only a fascinating look at the inner workings of personal change (often with regard to self-perceptions in an academic environment), but it is also a clarion call to actually test and measure the results of social change programs--programs which often receive significant financial and cultural support while not actually producing the results they promise, and sometimes even making things worse. We'll talk with Professor Wilson about his book, his experiences in education, and what the implications of his work might be as we think about the current education reform movements.

Date: Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-10-11.1654.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/redirect.mp3.

From Wikipedia:  "Timothy D. Wilson is the Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and a researcher of self-knowledge and affective forecasting.

"Wilson has published a trade book, Strangers to Ourselves and co-authored Social Psychology an introductory textbook on social psychology. The textbook has been translated into Italian, Polish, Chinese, German, Russian, and Serbian, and Strangers to Ourselves has been translated into Dutch and Japanese, with Chinese and German editions forthcoming.

"Wilson is best known for his research on self-knowledge, including affective forecasting. Along with Richard Nisbett, Wilson authored one of Psychology's most cited papers 'Telling more than we can know - Verbal reports on mental processes' that demonstrated the difficulty humans have in introspecting on their own mental processes (Psychological Review, 1977, cited 2731 times as of May 22, 2007 according to ISI Web of Knowledge). His longtime collaborator is Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University.

"His research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2001 he received an All-University Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Virginia. In 2009, he was named as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

"He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, Deirdre Smith. He has two children, Christopher and Leigh."

Publisher Description:  "What if there were a magic pill that could make you happier, turn you into a better parent, solve a number of your teenager's behavior problems, reduce racial prejudice, and close the achievement gap in education? Well, there is no such magic pill-but there is a new scientifically based approach called story editing that can accomplish all of this. It works by redirecting the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us, with subtle prompts, in ways that lead to lasting change. In Redirect, world-renowned psychologist Timothy Wilson shows how story-editing works and how you can use it in your everyday life.

"The other surprising news is that many existing approaches-from the multi-billion dollar self-help industry to programs that discourage drug use and drinking-don't work at all. In fact, some even have the opposite effect. Most programs are not adequately tested, many do not work, and some even do harm. For example, there are programs that have inadvertently made people unhappy, raised the crime rate, increased teen pregnancy, and even hastened people's deaths-in part by failing to redirect people's stories in healthy ways.

"In short, Wilson shows us what works, what doesn't, and why. Fascinating, groundbreaking, and practical, Redirect demonstrates the remarkable power small changes can have on the ways we see ourselves and the world around us, and how we can use this in our everyday lives. In the words of David G. Myers, 'With wit and wisdom, Wilson shows us how to spare ourselves worthless (or worse) interventions, think smarter, and live well.'"