The London School of Business and Finance Offers Everyone Free MBA Classes Online Through Facebook

Copy Paste from MarketWire via Facebook's note of Nick ONeill shared by Renata McGriff

The Revolutionary Approach to Education Will Change the Way People Teach, Learn and Gain MBAs Forever - This is Just the First Step

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire - Oct. 27, 2010) - The London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) today announced its new course which will make accessing high quality MBA course material just a mouse click away. At no cost, students with a computer anywhere in the world can sign up to the lessons. Accredited by the University of Wales, they only pay once they decide go forward for formal accreditation (examination).

LSBF founder, Aaron Etingen said: "Earlier this year Bill Gates claimed: 'Five years from now on the web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world…'. He was partly right – our announcement today has fast tracked his vision. The LSBF Global MBA™ starts today."

With the LSBF Global MBA™, people will, for free, be able to access lectures online from its faculty and panel discussion groups including industry highflyers such as Partners at Accenture Management Consulting and Deloitte, the Head of Royal Navy Leadership Academy and the Director of Marketing at Viagogo.

This revolutionary "try before you buy" approach offers two unique advantages: Firstly it means that those interested in learning business skills can now do so from some of the best business lecturers, through an innovative and familiar delivery channel at no cost; and secondly those considering going for formal MBA qualification can test both the quality of the programme and their aptitude and interest before any financial commitment.

"Even if people do not decide to go for formal accreditation, the LSBF Global MBA™ will, at no cost, better equip business students to deal with the global job market" said Etingen.

Three studios in the LSBF's London campus continuously record constantly updated study material to keep in line with business events.

"Historically there are real barriers for people to take the time to do an MBA. Our new product uses the Facebook platform. We expect to get over 500,000 users in the first year but that is a conservative estimate. Seven years ago we had four students in Hyde Park Corner, this year we have a group turnover of £100m with 12,000 students in campuses around the world. The online world makes it hard to predict but what we do know, is that this is going to change education forever!" said Etingen.

"Recognising that the traditional business school platform is decades old and academically stale, Facebook was chosen as the largest growing social network" Etingen continued.

Etingen said: "There is immense potential in the market for online education. Facebook is a real part of people's lives and, owning a sense of social responsibility, we want to promote accessibility to knowledge.

The LSBF Global MBA™ application, which has been developed for us by former Google employees, delivers an MBA awarded by the University of Wales. It is the first online MBA which will be free to all until the optional point of assessment for qualification."

While qualifications are still necessary to complete the accredited LSBF Global MBA™ – a BSc/BA or five years professional experience – there will be 100s hours of free study resources available to all users, including 80 hours of high definition video content. Unlike all other MBAs, no fees will be required up front allowing students to save for exams or to pay when it suits them financially.

Media materials

A video demonstration, screen shots, photographs and full biographies of spokespeople, student case studies, and industry comment are available at:

http://www.lsbf.org.uk/globalmba

The LSBF Global MBA™ application is available at:

http://www.facebook.com/LSBFGlobalMBA

Wim Wenders: Film is a language that can be taught

I have spent the last 4 years working on a system that could bring films in school on a equal position with mathematics and grammar. I am happy to share the same vision with the legendary german film director Wim Wenders.

Wenders argues for teaching children “slow but good film food”
from http://www.cineuropa.org/

The public hearing on Cinema and European identities, which took place on October 27 in the Brussels’ headquarters of the European Parliament, launched the four-week screening cycle of the three films competing for the 2010 LUX Prize
At his speech, German director Wim Wenders warned that many EU citizens perceive Europe as a mere economic and bureaucratic structure. "The administration of Europe has become the image of Europe", he said. Films are "the secret weapon" that can transform this "sagging" image.
"Movies practically invented the American dream. They can do the same for Europe," added Wenders. He explained that European films tell European stories and reflect the values, history and diversity of the continent and, as such, nurture its European identity.
Wenders was particularly worried that children were equating cinema with blockbusters. Children are abandoning books for television and the Internet. This is their focus, he said, yet schools do little to help them understand what they are watching or educate them so that they can make more diverse choices in what they see.
The filmmaker argues that schools can teach children visual language. It has its own grammar and vocabulary and should be part of school curricula throughout Europe, he said. He suggested that the new MEDIA Programme could fund film education in schools. Once children learn the language of moving pictures, they can then choose to see "fast food" movies or the "slow but good film food" of Europe.

See photos of Wim Wenders in Cineuropa’s facebook profile.
© Pietro Naj-Oleari
http://www.flickr.com/photos/european_parliament

CONQUERING FEAR WITH KNOWLEDGE

27 minutes of GROWING UP DIGITAL.

Don Tapscott talks about how the New Generation is changing the world by developing new ways of thinking and interacting.



CONQUERING FEAR WITH KNOWLEDGE

Excerpt from "Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World" By Don Tapscott

Why the apparent hostility toward the youth culture and its media? People become defensive when threatened by something new and which they don’t understand. Historic innovations and shifts in thinking are often received with coolness, even mockery. Vested interests fight change. Just as the proponents of Newtonian physics argued against Einstein’s general theory of relativity, so the leaders of traditional media are typically skeptical, at best, toward the new. Both film and print media showed considerable unease with television. Baby boomers set a precedent of being a major generational threat to their elders. Previous generations didn’t have the luxury of a prolonged adolescence; after a brief childhood, kids went straight into the workforce. But babyboomers grew up in a time of relative prosperity and attended school for manymore years than did their parents. They had time to develop their own youth culture. Rock ’n’ roll, long hair, protest movements, weird clothes, and newlifestyles made their parents uneasy. They also had a new medium through which to communicate their culture—television.

Now it’s the boomers’ turn to feel uneasy. A new generation has emerged, with new values, and it understands the new media much better than the boomers do. The situation that has developed is a classic generation gap. No wonder you see so much confusion and insecurity being shown by the boomers, not to mention all the nasty books, articles, and TV shows targeting today’s youth and the Net Generation’s culture and new media. I think that, overall, the Internet has been good for them, and they will be good for us. Of all my concerns, one big one stands out. Net Geners are making a serious mistake, and most of them don’t realize it. They’re giving away their personal information on social networks and elsewhere and in doing so are undermining their future privacy. They tell me they don’t care; it’s all about sharing. But here I must speak with the voice of experience. Some day that party picture is going to bite them when they seek a senior corporate job or public office. I think they should wake up, now, and become aware of the extent to which they’re sharing parts of themselves that one day they may wish they had kept private. You will also read that other concerns are more complicated and require a thoughtful response on our part, rather than the cynical and popular sport of attacking and ridiculing youth.

Most of the criticisms are founded on suspicion and fear, usually on the part of older people. Those fears are perhaps understandable. The New Web, in the hands of a technologically savvy and community-minded Net Generation, has the power to shake up society and topple authorities in many walks of life. Once information flows freely and the people have the tools to share it effectively anduse it to organize themselves, life as we know it will be different. Schools, universities, stores, businesses, even politics will have to adapt to this generation’s style of doing things , and in my view, that will be good. Families will have new challenges too, as their kids explore the world out there online. Life, in other words, will change, and many people find change hard. It’s only natural to fear what we don’t understand.

THE FUTURE OF TALENT

Here is an excerpt from "Democratizing Talent: Guy Oseary, Greyson Chance, NowMov, IndieGoGo and the Future of Talent"
The post was written by SGN founder and Executive Chairman Shervin Pishevar. Pishevar served as SGN’s CEO until January, when he handed off the role to former EA and LucasArts exec Randy Breen. Prior to founding SGN, Pishevar was the founding president and COO of Webs and cofounder of Hotprints and Hyperoffice. He is also an active angel investor.

" As an angel investor, I have learned that investing in people always trumps everything else. So a future where people and talent are ever more discoverable is exciting time to be alive. There are countless others in so many fields who are waiting to be discovered. He might be coding away in a tiny apartment in Moscow. She might be writing the next great novel in Buenos Aires. He’s composing the next great classical sonata in Karachi. He might be designing the next great wave of architecture in Tehran. She might be painting her way to the next Picasso. He’s discovering a cure for a cancer in Kenya.
The better we can incubate the world’s talent and the better we can broadcast those talents to each other the faster we can progress and inspire each other forward. Or as the lyrics to the Paparazzi song say:
We are the crowd
We’re a co-coming
Ready for those flashing lights
Baby, there’s no other superstar…"

I dream of school where nothing is taught ....

“I dream of a school where nothing is taught…. A school where nobody teaches anyone something specific…. A school where the disciple has nothing to get and he is rather advised to be an authentic weed than to become an ivy, to contaminate his magister; such a school can transmit you states of spirit, not contents, or advice, or education”.

Constantin Noica “Philosophic Journal” (1940)

The idea of school having walls disappears.

Excellent !

LEARNING IS A PHILOSOPHY, IT IS A STATE OF MIND.



"JP Rangaswami is chairman of the social enterprise School of Everything. In 2020 - Shaping Ideas he talks about how the educational institutions of the past have overlooked our human urge to feel free and to participate. In social networks and the open source movement he sees the potential for a whole new approach to learning."

Read more of JP Rangaswami at http://confusedofcalcutta.com/



An ERICSSON campaign
http://www.ericsson.com/campaign/20about2020/00.jpg

OLPC XO and XOXO Laptop

Here is a wonderful design project made by FuseProject

" Education means a chance for a better life. But for the majority of the children in the developing world, access to education remains difficult. Nicholas Negroponte created the One Laptop Per Child foundation and worked with fuseproject to create a low-cost laptop specifically adapted to children and their environment. We provided strategic solutions to the making of the XO (also dubbed the $100 laptop), which led to the unique configuration and innovations that make the XO a true industry game changer. The design intent was to make the XO immediately recognizable as a child's product, but not like a toy: the XO's look and feel is of a high-quality tool for education. Specific friendly design elements such as the soft edges, rubber keyboard, or turning the burdensome collaborative Wi-Fi antennas into whimsical rabbit ears, adds a childlike feel to the laptop. We also designed the XO icon with it's color permutations that allows for 400 easily recognizable versions of the product, and permeated both product and user interface. The shared vision between fuseproject and OLPC resulted in close to a million laptops ordered and headed for the hands of children worldwide"



The OLPC program is currently in Argentina, Brazil,Cambodia, China, Ethiopia, Libya, Mexico, Mongolia,Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Romania, Rwanda,Thailand and Uruguay and it continues to grow.







READ THE CASE STUDY to understand better how FuseProject invented an acceptable alternative. Contains: Overview, Strategy, Design Solution, Business Impact
DOWNLOAD PDF

Recognition:
•Awards from: IDSA (Product) (Strategy), red dot, INDEX, London Design Museum, Wallpaper, ID Magazine, iF, Chicago Athenaeum, Spark, International Design Awards
•Collections: Accessioned in the MoMA, San Francisco, Musee National D'Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou, Fond National d'Art Contemporain, The Art Institute of Chicago, Cooper Hewitt

Also if you are in LONDON:



Design Museum, Sunday 24 October, 4pm
For the first PUMA.Safe Annual Sustainability Lecture, Yves Béhar, founder of design studio fuseproject and winner of Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2008 for One Laptop Per Child, will be giving an insight into his design practice. Béhar has attained international recognition and acclaim for a diverse range of clean-lined and consumer-aware products. Recent clients include: Herman Miller, Issey Miyake, Google, PACT, Mission Motors, Swarovski, MINI and PUMA

More details

http://www.facebook.com/notes/design-museum/new-event-yves-behar-pumasafe-sustainability-lecture/481720852628



XO 3



XO-3 is a stunning touchscreen tablet device that has been scheduled to release on 2010 for the One Laptop Per Child project by Yves Behar. This innovative $75 tablet features an all plastic, extremely durable and semi-flexible body that eliminates the possibility of being cracked upon impact like the traditional glass screens. Like previous XO, the screen of XO-3 can also be optimized in both reflective and transmissive modes depending on indoor and outdoor lighting situations. To make it serve its purpose effectively, the XO-3 is packed with kid’s learning tools such as horizontal book mode and portrait reading mode for convenient reading, multi-touch feature allows play and learn by using bare hands, a full-touch keyboard, a back facing camera, and many more.

THE SMARTEST GENERATION EVER

That is how Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, describes today's young people. He claims that adolescents, who have grown up with the Internet, are not only more used to handling digital technology, but their brains are actually different.

Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music

Jose Antonio Abreu is the charismatic founder of a youth orchestra system that has transformed thousands of kids' lives in Venezuela. Here he shares his amazing story and unveils a TED Prize wish that could have a big impact in the US and beyond

A personal hero for me.



The gulf between the rich and the poor in Venezuela is one of the worst in the world. Jose Antonio Abreu, an economist, musician, and reformer, founded El Sistema ("the system") in 1975 to help Venezuelan kids take part in classical music. After 30 years (and 10 political administrations), El Sistema is a nationwide organization of 102 youth orchestras, 55 children's orchestras, and 270 music centers -- and close to 250,000 young musicians.

El Sistema uses music education to help kids from impoverished circumstances achieve their full potential and learn values that favor their growth. The talented musicians have become a source of national pride. Several El Sistema students have gone on to major international careers, including Gustavo Dudamel, soon to be the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the bassist Edicson Ruiz, who at 17 became the youngest musician ever to join the Berlin Philharmonic.

There is a simple concept behind Abreu's work: for him an orchestra is first and foremost about together­ness, a place where children learn to listen to each other and to respect one another.

"Music has to be recognized as an ... agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values -- solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community and to express sublime feelings."

José Antonio Abreu

Father and son launch an iPhone and HD camera into space, take amazing video

" This puts any science project you have been a part of to shame, period. " Alex Wilhelm



Read more at http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/10/17/father-and-son-launch-an-iphone-and-hd-camera-into-space-take-amazing-video/

What can street children teach you about Management, Leadership, Innovation, Creativity, Communication, Teaming and Sales?

Kudos for Dutch social entrepreneur Arnoud Raskin who has had the idea of starting a mobile school for homeless children.



Building on an academic background in industrial design and cultural studies, Arnoud Raskin took his inspiration from the time he was a social worker in Columbia to think about an educational project that could help homeless children. Because the classical learning methods were obviously not working for socially challenged groups of people, particularly youngsters, Arnoud Raskin thought about a school that is tailored to meet their needs. So he invented a telescopic blackboard, over 250 educational games and a mobile means of transporting all these. Then he reinvented a teacher who is able to use them properly. Now, the mobile school is present in over 30 places all over Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Changing Education Paradigms

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

Education 10.5

This is my new 10 blog. Why 10.5 ? First answer is simple, today we are on the 5th of October and 10.5 is the name and the birthday of this virtual land.
Also since since 1994, 10.5 commemorates the anniversary of the signing in 1966 of the UNESCO/ILO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers.
Here we are, on 10.5, my blog about EDUCATION and FUTURE OF EDUCATION.

I believe that EDUCATION is facing one of the most dramatical transformation in the last hundreds of years and I am sure that this process will lead to a wonderful era of the human race.
It is not an easy moment, for everyone it looks like a major crisis but crisis is a powerful point of transformation. We must embrace the change, we must accept the challenge, we must be responsible for our dreams but most of all for our children and grandchldren's dreams.

So let's start the journey in our future selves.

" If I look into the hearts of people, sometimes I can sense what they dream of. If I talk to them I can understand their needs. Their need for surprise, for security, for contribution and growth, for individuality and familiarity. Humanity creates an endless flow of illusions and hope.
So many girls want to be beautiful princesses or flying elves, so many boys want to feel cunning knights or wise kings. Why don't we make it our goal to realize those dreams, contribute deeply to the lives of others and ourselves in the meantime.
It is our responsibility to be magicians, to be jesters, to be alchemists, to create hope where there is only illusion, to create reality where there are only dreams."

MARCEL WANDERS
The contemporary renaissance of humanism, Marcel Wanders
Foreword in: Marcus Fairs ed. Twenty-First-Century Design, London: Carlton Book, 2006.