Star Spangled Geeks: The US Digital Service

he USDS has worked on thirteen major projects involving eleven agencies, and claims to have saved the government many times its $14 million budget. It has charters to place full-blown teams in seven different agencies, with more to come before the end of the year.

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How US Government Workers Collaborate Virtually

From 18F 18F is an office inside the General Services Administration that helps other federal agencies build, buy, and share efficient and easy-to-use digital services. We’re a team of technology experts that work with agencies to diagnose problems and then work alongside agency teams to find the right solutions. Headquartered at 18 and F streets…

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Civic Tech: Movements, Voices and Values

From Lawrence Grodeska: For a community that fashions itself small but mighty, there was much reflection about just how far civic tech has to go to reach mainstream status. At one point when polled, many in the audience considered themselves part of the environmental movement, but how many in the environmental movement would identify with the…

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Video: Let Kids Rule the School

I recently followed a group of eight public high school students, aged 15 to 17, in western Massachusetts as they designed and ran their own school within a school. They represented the usual range: two were close to dropping out before they started the project, while others were honors students. They named their school the…

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Portland Principal Promotes Collaborative Culture

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The genius of this school is not in a program, it’s not in the laptops, it’s in the learning. It’s in teachers designing learning that they know will work for kids … and they have the space and the time and the autonomy to do it.

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Video: The Koh Panyee Football Club: A True Story

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In 1986, in a floating village in the middle of the sea that has not an inch of soil, the kids loved to watch football but had nowhere to play or practice. But they didn’t let that stop them. This film is based on a true story about a little island in the south of…

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Video: How Eric Whitacre conducted his virtual choir of 2,000 voices

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  With an emergent technology, something happens that you’d never imagined. Here, YouTube and Hulu, via WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter — and built upon the Internet — bring something new and wonderful to life.   In a moving, madly viral video last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the…

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Video: Thought of You

“Thought of You” video from YouTube From Open Culture Ryan Woodward has worked on the art direction of many big name Hollywood films – Ironman 2, Spiderman 2 & 3, The Iron Giant, the list goes on. But he had an idea for a short animated film, a love story expressed through dance, and it…

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The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

In Rachel Botsman’s new book, What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, the general theme is that we’re shifting away from a society of hyper-consumption and equating personal self-worth with amount of material good accumulated, and instead to a world where our ability to access and exchange resources, develop a reputation, and build…

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After Social Media by Brian Solis

“2010 will be the year that we save us from ourselves in social media … we will stop drinking from the proverbial fire hose and we will lean on filtering and curation to productively guide our experiences and production and consumption behavior and interaction within each network. “2010 will also be the year that leaders…

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The revolt of China’s Twittering class

From Ethan Zimmerman (2010) Twitter has become a powerful tool for Chinese citizens as they increasingly play a role in reporting local news in their communities. But the social revolution brought by microblogging might be even more important than the communication revolution. Indeed, here Chinese Twitter users lead the world, using it for everything from…

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With Twitter blocked, Chinese Micro-blogging Thrives

China’s 420-million web users have seized on micro-blogging as a new avenue for mass expression in a tightly-controlled information landscape…. Last year … China’s censors added Twitter to their list of blocked foreign services amid government accusations that social media were used to fan deadly ethnic unrest in northwestern China in July 2009. But several…

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Video: Derek Sivers – How to Start a Movement

With help from some surprising footage, Derek Sivers explains how movements really get started. (Hint: it takes two.) “Leadership is overglorified…. It was really the first follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader. So, as we’re all told that we should be leaders, that would be really ineffective. If you really care about…

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How to Grow a Collaborative Learning Community

Imagine your workplace as an award-winning garden — a place where you nurture knowledge and success. A place where people grow and learn from one another by sharing best practices. A place where training content expands and improves through crowdsourcing. A place that’s self-sustaining, dynamic, and always fresh. That place is called collaborative learning. So…

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Henry Jenkins’ USC course on civic media

Civic Media is any use of any technology for the purposes of increasing civic engagement and public participation, enabling the exchange of meaningful information, fostering social connectivity, constructing critical perspectives, insuring transparency and accountability, or strengthening citizen agency. Excerpts from: Civic Media: A Syllabus.

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The Engagement Pyramid

The most effective social change organizations understand how to wield their portfolio of engagement tactics in Zen-like fashion; knowing just what kind of touch is called for to influence the outcomes of a particular decision. They also know how to meet people where they are at, and craft their calls to action appropriately so as…

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Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University

KMi is a diverse and multidisciplinary R&D lab that has been at the forefront of innovation since 1995, conducting research in computing technologies for social and environmental good. Our research spans Semantic Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Educational Media, Social Data Science, Scholarly Data, Blockchain, Citizen Science, Collective Intelligence, Smart Cities, and others. Knowledge Media Institute (The…

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Organizing Genius

In a society as complex and technologically sophisticated as ours, the most urgent projects require the coordinated contributions of many talented people. Whether the task is building a global business or discovering the mysteries of the human brain, one person can’t hope to accomplish it, however gifted or energetic he or she may be. There…

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