Inspiring peaceful actions

“Think of someone you need to resolve a conflict with, and invite them to dinner.” It’s an ancient tradition; get together over a meal is the first step to resolving conflict.

Recipeace is a social movement that brings people together over food. The intent is to build awareness for Peace Day on a global scale, while inspiring peaceful action on an individual level.

The campaign, rolled out on September 21 (Peace Day) by Leo Burnett Chicago, is asking chefs, restaurants, food ambassadors and foodies around the world to join the Recipeace movement by cooking a meal inspired by recipes that have resolved conflict in history.

Nice concept, simple and effective as you can see from the visuals below.

Salamworld, the halal social network

Salamworld is a global social network based on the Islamic idea of ''collaboration'' and it hopes to make it easier to connect Muslims around the world.

With a potential market of 350 millions+ users Salamworld aims to create a clean space for Muslims; free from things such as pornography, gambling and anything else that may be against Islamic principles.

Headquartered in Istanbul, the company is currently testing the software in Malaysia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia, with the launch planned for November. A tough task if you think that Facebook is the most popular site in all the countries where Salamworld is conducting its trials.

Each country will have its own guidelines based on different interpretations of Islam; for example, a picture of a Muslim woman who is not wearing a hijab may be fine in Indonesia but not acceptable in Saudi Arabia.

Similar to Facebook Salamworld has a blue and white layout as well as a wall to post comments, photos and videos. It will also provide many applications such as books on Islamic heritage, certified distance learning programs, a multilingual online Islamic encyclopedia and probably many more.

The question is...will Salamworld beat big brother Facebook at its own game (I really doubt it)? Previous attempts failed; Finland-based Muxlim.com came out in 2006 and shut down, while Egypt's Ikhwanbook.com, launched in 2010, is currently offline.

The good things in life...

We’re too busy with our devices and gadgets, always on Facebook or Twitter.

A simple but nice campaign, from Stihl, to remind us that good things in life are offline.

 

 

Social media for schools – advantages

We have seen the first part of social media for schools here. But does more technology equate to more learning? Do the advantages of social media outweigh the risks? 
For instance, teachers using online tools are empowering students take part in their education in an interactive way but they may also expose them to inappropriate material, sexual predators, bullying, etc.

In my opinion the advantages outnumber the disadvantages however in social media one size does not fit all and each school is truly unique. Before going through the positive aspects I think it is imperative for a school, before embracing social media, to fully research and understand all aspects of social media as well as how to implement it regularly and effectively.

Let’s look at the most important pros:

Better communication and increase interaction: if conducted within a controlled environment, then social media can be a great opportunity for students, teachers and parents to communicate and interact effectively. Let’s take Facebook for example; it is equipped with bulletin boards, instant messaging, email, and the ability to post videos and pictures. Anyone can post information and collaborate within the ‘school community’ in real time.

Share learning material: social media can help sharing class work and materials at any time and giving students the ability to more easily develop positive homework and study habits. Google Docs, for instance, is perfect for this; teachers and students can create, store and share instantly and securely, and collaborate online in real time.
From a school’s perspective this also means the elimination of paper and other hard materials in favor of electronic creation, storage and delivery, as well as creating a greener environment.

Different learning styles: People have different learning styles and different ways of consuming information so whether a learner naturally prefers kinetic, audio or visual learning, the varied types of media and information found on several social media sites can appeal to a wide range of learner styles.

Digital citizenship: telling children to just stay offline is NOT an option therefore they have to learn about how to conduct themselves appropriately online. This of cyber bullying could be a topic on its own but to make it short the straightforward solutions would be:

• Educate; kids must understand what cyber bullying is and why it’s dangerous. It is also necessary for children to understand privacy policies and the transfer of data online.
• Prevent; use filtering software, block inappropriate web sites, know your children’s login information.
• Listen; if a child casually mentions an incidence of cyber bullying, or other disturbing Internet activities, make the time to listen and give him openings to share what he’s thinking and feeling.

Resource availability: there is an endless range of free resources available through social media; from current news feeds or learning a new language, to improving software skills or a video based on a recent news report, Facebook and Twitter's search functions make them a valuable and free set of tools.

Familiar tools: most students are on social networking platforms, and these services are already tools that students are generally comfortable with, in fact, they can probably  show us a thing or two in return.

Feel free to share your views J. Next post will be dedicated to the disadvantages of social media for schools.

Social media is dead. We're back in 1911

The expression "Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words" appeared for the first time in a 1911 newspaper article discussing journalism and publicity. A similar phrase, "One Look Is Worth A Thousand Words", appeared in a 1913 newspaper advertisement.

If we look at some online stats we can see that every minute people share/upload/retweet/etc. the following number of images:

• Facebook: 136,000
• Twitter: 1,475
• Flickr: 3,500
• Instagram: 1,350

According to other stats I found 64% of people says they are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures rather than any other media. Focusing on the visual element has become more and more important to grab people’s attention, no doubts about that.

The evolution is pretty simple; it all started with blogs, where bloggers would write a 500 words post, then Facebook made it shorter, and Twitter made even shorter with its 140 characters. Nowadays Pinterest, the image based network, is the fastest growing, and so far 1 billion+ photos have been uploaded on Instagram. Another very good example is the growth of infographics (graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge).

This trend toward the visual is very much influenced by technology. More people engage with social media via smartphones; taking a picture “on the go” is easier and faster than typing a status update on a tiny keyboard.

The conclusion is that visuals lead to increased engagement and generate more referral traffic. So, especially for brands, it’s a wise decision to invest in visuals which can show the brand’s “personality” as well as giving “power to the people” who can share their visual content.

A few years ago marketers were saying that “content is king,” but now, it seems we're back in 1911 where “a picture really is worth a thousand words.”

Facebook to wipe out fake 'Likes'

As early as next week you might notice a small fan decrease on your Facebook page, nothing to worry about, that’s FB doing some cleaning and removing fraudulent "likes" on fan pages created by malware, deceived users, compromised or fake accounts.

Facebook's newly improved automated efforts have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious likes; the FB security team says that the clean-up will benefit both users and businesses alike, with clearer analytics on trends and statistics, and that less than 1% of likes on pages will be affected on average.

If in the past years you’ve been working hard to build a genuine fan base then this cleaning process will not affect you or will affect you in a very minimal way.

If instead you’re one of those who cheated by buying fans then you need to rethink your strategy.