Today’s markets have splintered into millions of powerful consumer communities— how can businesses adapt? It’s no secret that traditional mass marketing— network television, newspapers, direct mail—is dying. Consumer markets are increasingly fragmented, even as they become more connected, transparent, and global. The future of business is about penetrating selfforming niches, from affinity groups on Facebook to thousands of satellite channels and millions of private online communities. So how can businesses reach new customers, win their trust, and earn their loyalty? Tom Hayes and Michael S. Malone urge an entirely new approach, embracing small, trust-based online groups as powerful vehicles for creating customers and gathering invaluable feedback. But what they call “marketing 3.0” isn’t as simple as setting up a YouTube channel. Drawing on many case studies, the authors offer a new set of tools for a world where attention is harder than ever to capture, but even more lucrative to hold. They explain how to use social media for a new kind of marketing—bottom-up instead of top-down, personal rather than public, subtle rather than full frontal. The payoff is a return to the power of oldfashioned handselling—turbocharged by bleedingedge technology.

"No Size Fits All" is a book whose time has come—a book that offers a proposal that could revolutionize public school policies in the United States at the federal, state and local levels. The book calls upon Congress to require all public school systems that benefit from federal funding to offer parents and children a choice of alternative schools, exempt from the broadly unpopular Common Core testing regime, some of which would use the time-tested Montessori, Waldorf and Sudbury methods to give American students more freedom in determining what they study and when. The politics of federal education policy has devolved into an all-or-nothing fight between defenders of a status quo that its critics condemn as oppressive and proponents of a school choice reform—vouchers, as proposed by Betsy De Vos—that its critics condemn as subversive. No Size Fits All interrupts this all-or-nothing argument with a humane and sensible alternative—one that could lay the groundwork for broad new consensus on federal education policy.

Fact: Wellness programs benefit the bottom line. Motorola, for example, found that each dollar invested in wellness benefits returned $3.93 in health and disability cost savings. Next-Generation Wellness at Work tells how to get in on the action. A nuts-and-bolts, how-to guide for managers, it delivers the latest thinking on how to take full advantage of the benefits that wellness programs can offer both employees and companies. And the effort couldn't be more important. With the soaring cost of medical care and the increase in obesity and lifestyle-related illnesses, there is growing recognition that companies must build a culture of health and enable employees to become better guardians of their own well being. This book illustrates, in detail, exactly how to accomplish those goals. Good health saves in ways that go beyond smaller insurance premiums. It also has a direct relationship with employee productivity, making wellness a matter of high-level strategy. However, many workplace wellness programs are not as effective as they could be. They are not comprehensive, not long-term, and not marketed to the people who could benefit most. Wellness expert Stephenie Overman helps managers take practical steps to overcome these deficiencies and build successful workplace wellness programs that result in tangible, bottom-line benefits for organizations. And the book starts from the ground up, first by explaining how to take a company's temperature, get management buy-in, and design a program that fits a company's unique needs and situation. Building a program is one thing, but will they come? That's where Overman's expertise is essential: She shows how to motivate workers to take advantage of the program and reap its many benefits. And she explains how to partner with local health providers and integrate methods to promote psychological well being, two key ingredients for success. Not many corporate programs benefit both employees and the company equally, but a well-planned wellness initiative will boost the health and productivity of employees, leading to a happier—and more competitive—workplace.

This open access book focuses on making the transition from in-person, classroom education to other feasible alternative modes and methodologies to deliver education at all levels. The book presents and analyzes research questions to explore in this arena, including pedagogical issues relating to technological and infrastructure challenges, teacher professional development, issues of disparity, access and equity, and impact of government policies on education. It also provides unique opportunities and vehicles for generating scholarship that helps explain the varied educational needs, perspectives and solutions that arise during an emergency and the different roles educational institutions and educators may play during this time. Developed from a highly successful Presidential Session at the annual meeting of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), this edited volume presents AECT and its membership as the premier organization focusing on the provision of educational communications and technology leadership. In addition, it functions as a contemporary document of this global crisis as well as a rich resource for possible future emergency scenarios in the educational arena.

In Play=Learning, top experts in child development and learning contend that in over-emphasizing academic achievement, our culture has forgotten about the importance of play for children's development.

Examines the conflict surrounding public land management, revealing how problematic language in public land laws, scarcity of resources, and mistrust cloud the debates, and offering a range of solutions to help move beyond the dysfunctional status quo management.