In an age of collaboration, check out these back to school musts à la Web 2.0:

Time to pick your course schedule but undecided on which classes to take? Don’t panic…Do log on to http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/.  This popular forum is well known amongst university students and has well over 10 million peer contributions worldwide. You can search through its database of 1 million professors and browse through the collective ratings of past students who have taken his/her class. Profs are rated on a 5 point scale across four dimensions; Easiness, Helpfulness, Clarity, and Interest. And with an added twist, some profs even have the honour of receiving a red pepper badge when rated “hot” by their students. Now you’ll just have to deal with the trade-off of either getting an awesome prof or waking up early for those 7:30 AM classes.

Desperately needing a tutor for chemistry but not willing to pay the lucrative $20/hour rate? eTutoring.org may be the solution to your problems. The site boasts a network of talented peers who help each other either in real-time through web communication (Webcam, Skype) or offline through back and forth conversations. That knowledge is in turn pooled into the forum and recycled to future students, setting up another cycle for value creation, capture, and distribution.

Skipped one too many classes or just sick of taking notes yourself? No problem, just log on to NoteMesh and let your peers do all the work. NoteMesh self proclaims to be the Wikipedia of class notes, creating ingenious wikis for various classes across campuses. Students can upload their own notes, modify and edit existing notes, or simply log on to take a tour. This certainly puts a new spin on collaborative education but will it get you that A in history class? I guess we’ll have to find out…

I’m interested in hearing what your thoughts are on this school kit and if you have any additions to the list

Also, how do think these collaborative tools will impact education in general? No doubt, there will be a shift from traditional pedagogy, but what about other factors such as quality, costs, and incentives of education?

I rode the escalator up to the third level, only to be greeted by a group of yogis practicing sun salutations in front of Lululemon. And finally, when making my purchase at SportsChek, I was reminded of the 5 cent charge for a plastic bag from the recent city bylaw. It seems that the whole retail industry has been consumed with the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility, encompassing a wide spectrum of causes from fair trade, philanthropy, to labour standards and green solutions.  As an avid shopper and somewhat of an environmentalist, I whole heartedly support this shift in business focus but I also wonder whether these companies are genuinely compassionate or simply leveraging CSR as a marketing gimmick to boost sales? I also ponder at the fact of whether CSR should be paid for by the end consumer? It certainly seems like the case when you check out some of the price tags associated with these branded goods…

Thankfully, there is a place for some objective information: visit Wikichoice.com. WikiChoice seeks to become “the most powerful platform in the world for consumers to align their purchases with their deepest values.” Its database consists of company profiles that highlight key sections on fairness, justice, and sustainability. Here’s a sample page of Lululemon Athletica.

The site is still in its early form and a lot of the information is currently mined from Wikipedia, a practice dubbed as “Wikifarming” by the founders. However, over time and with more contributors, it will host a comprehensive database of global companies enabling a dual verification mechanism between corporate and the consumer.  You may remember Guess? Jeans’ sweatshop litigations in the 90′s, Starbucks’ biodegradable cup and fair trade certified coffee, or even more recently, the suicide of a Foxconn (Apple’s contractor in Asia) worker over an iPhone prototype. Now more than ever, there is transparency in CSR claims and companies are held accountable for their actions, not just measured on their marketing façade.

Thanks to collaboration, we can now buy “good” and hopefully move towards a concerted triple bottom line.

Radio: Teenagers do not listen to traditional radio because they are able to listen to online streaming music that is advertisement free and enables them to choose which songs they want to hear.

TV: Most teenagers still watch television but the consumption varies seasonally with popular programs (i.e. Teenage boys watch more TV when it’s football (soccer) season). Advertisements are a turnoff so many turn to internet channels to watch ad free programming. It’s getting harder for youth to find the time in their busy schedules to watch TV.

Newspapers: “No teenager I know of regularly reads a paper.” Most are reluctant to pay for a newspaper and when they do, prefer those that are compact for easy reading on the go.

Gaming: Girl gamers are becoming more numerous. Consoles that enable chat via internet are popular and negatively impact phone usage. PC gaming has no place in the market as it can be downloaded for free.

Internet: Most teenagers engage heavily in social networking. “Teenagers do not use Twitter”

Music: Teenagers listen to a lot of music but are very reluctant to pay for it. Most do not listen exclusively to music but rather do so while multitasking

Mobile phone: 99% of teenagers have a cell phone, and upgrade it every 2 years.

These revelations are not groundbreaking and if you are familiar with our research or Don’s books (Growing Up Digital and Grown Up Digital), you would find uncanny similarities between Matthew’s anecdotal findings and our 8 Norms of the Net Generation.

However, what IS surprising are the reactions that this paper is getting from the business community. Edward Hill-Wood, Matthew’s supervisor, claims that dozens and dozens of fund managers and CEOs have been e-mailing and calling all day. Others cite that this report has generated 5 to 6 times more feedback than the average Morgan Stanley research report. This goes on to show really how large the generation gap is between baby boomers and today’s digital natives. It seems that the impact of an internet savvy generation can no longer be ignored as executives turn their undivided attention towards understanding the Net Gen.

But before taking Matthew’s views for granted, I’d like to point out a few areas of caution. First, the findings are not supported statistically but rather represent solely the views of Matthew and his friends. Secondly, it’s important to take into account the context in which this research was conducted. Matthew is from London, England and being a 15 year old intern at a bank, must come from a solid educational background. In other words, his views may not be indicative of other teenagers… Net Geners in Japan certainly update their phones more frequently than once every two years and I for one do use Twitter as well as read newspapers on a regular basis…

Such a platform allows for marketers to engage in targeted advertising, government organizations to gain a better understanding of its citizens, and most importantly for people like you and me to surf seamlessly through the web for content that are relevant to our individual needs. It makes use of our digital footprints in the form of a combination of Facebook profiles, e-mails, online transactions, Flickr albums, APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language) and more. It essentially is an exchange of our personal data in reward for tailored web experiences. But is this a fair trade-off?

After all, disclosing more facets of our self identity may compromise our security (see article on how algorithms can now determine social security numbers solely from a birth date and place) and certainly relinquishes personal privacy. However if you live in the US, you may no longer need to fuss over the issue, with the potential introduction of a federal Online Privacy Bill.

If successful, websites will have to give surfers the option to “opt in” to give consensus to third party data collection, behaviour monitoring, and identity tracking with the default being not opting in. If the user accepts, cookies are installed. This is not applicable to first party cookies, those that enable Amazon to remember your favourite searches or YouTube to track your viewing preferences.

Apart from the average online user, the bill will also have a huge impact on corporate stakeholders such as advertising firms, search engines, and manufacturers. Some for the better and others for the worse. Here are a few reactions:

“You see countless targeted ads as you Web-surf each day. This kind of business would face significant challenges should such regulation be enacted, and effects would ripple throughout the Net. Most Web sites [use] a range of ad networks and offer additional behavioural targeting; an opt-in system could cripple the Web as users could be asked for opt-in for every [targeted] ad on a page.” -Fernando Ruarte, co-founder of ad network Glam Media

“If you have no cookies and no data, in many ways it will make search engines more valuable and, potentially, make Google (GOOG) even more valuable,” – Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of the Chicago marketing consultancy Denuo.

“Advantages would accrue to companies that have already amassed much data on their customers and potential customers. This includes both major advertisers like Procter & Gamble (PG) and online giants along the lines of Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT). It would be harder for new market entrants to build, or buy, impressive databases in a cookie-restricted world.”

Do you think this attempt to put control back in the user’s hands is admirable? Or do you think that it’s not worth the hassle; privacy after all is a relative concept and if there’s a will, there must be a way…

Furthermore, is it worth it to stunt the progression of a new web extension that is the Semantic Web?

Now you may wonder how a computer animated Disney film is relevant to your enterprise? More than you think.

Pixar studios may as well be the poster child for internal collaboration. Over the years, its community of artists have collectively generated a series of stories, plots, and unforgettable characters. Do you remember watching Finding Nemo, Monster Inc, or A Bug’s Life? What about Wall-E and more recently, Up? these titles must ring a bell. Most of the studio’s releases have grossed well over $200 Million at the box office and have become household names launching a new revenue stream composed of franchised toys and goods.In an Interview conducted last year, John Lassetter, Chief Creative Officer, emphasized that “talent in the workplace is rare” “[not so much] a lack of good people, but rather a lack of good ideas”

Ed Catmull, President, is proud to note that “Unlike most other studios, we have never bought scripts or movie ideas from the outside. I don’t think our success is largely luck. Rather, I believe our adherence to a set of principles and practices for managing creative talent and risk is responsible.”

Filmmaking, especially CGI (computer generated imagery), is a complex combination of art and science that involves numerous minds from varied disciplines. Within Pixar, it’s an ideagora in the truest sense; millions of ideas are circulated in a shared marketplace and then combined into a unified, innovative end product. The only difference is that Pixar’ ideagora is strictly internal where as most corporations today opt for a more open form of crowdsourcing.

Creativity resonates in each film frame; from every character to every dialogue to the aesthetic setting, lighting, background and technical pace. Thousands of decisions are made to incorporate millions of employee ideas. This is an interesting concept as most people would associate creativity as an individualistic task in which one person, mainly the creative director, would be responsible for all aspects. Collective creativity doesn’t seem all that feasible when the goal is to assemble a coherent product… in other words, how can you complete a puzzle to compose a consistent picture when all pieces are from different sets?

Also with the recent discussion on Dunbar’s number and constraints in the size of collaborative teams, I wonder how Disney Pixar has coordinated its 600 people staff? One possible hypothesis is dividing into several communities of working groups (Dunbar clusters) that are each capped at 150.

Furthermore, I wonder if Pixar’s business model is truly ahead of or behind the times? Is this an antiquated way of generating ideas that hinders upon porous collaboration from outside the corporation? Or is this an organization well aware of the limits of collaboration and so forth sits on the optimal point where maximum efficiency meets minimum resources?

Samsung™ has officially announced the addition of Twitter to its line of Internet@TV services. This will enable early adopters to receive updates from fellow twitters in the form of an expandable widget, all the while watching favourite shows from the comfort of their own sofas. The television set is often thought of as a modem for one way broadcast, Twitter @TV breaks that mould. By allowing viewers to interact with other viewers through their television sets ultimately bridges the gap between cable and the web, in turn linking two devices (TV and Computer) into one.

Think of the possibilities…. Minute by minute peer commentaries during the Superbowl, immediate responses to breaking news, direct spoilers for the season finale of your favourite show, instant audience feedback during commercials, synchronized movie experiences, and much more…

This may well be a starting point for a complete collaborative experience as viewers will likely engage in a more active form of media consumption via microblogging. Social networks will emerge as individuals will be connected through common interests and will have a chance to discuss similar media outputs. Families will be able to share experiences regardless of geographic barriers, not to mention cost savings through this practical means of communication. Most importantly, this application will yield a wealth of information to marketers across a range of industries. With proper analytics, companies can assess the effectiveness of their ads while studios can test the popularity of various shows and movie makers gauge the potential of upcoming releases, instantly. As a result, there is potential for a new breed of prosumers and brand evangelists alike; drawing in more talent from outside the corporation.

However, the future is not entirely rosy… Filtering the useful ideas from the “noise” and then building on those valuable insights takes a combination of factors (see diagram below). Only then will it change the landscape of collaboration beyond a continuous feed of status updates.

One thing is for sure; Twitter @TV will add new meaning to a “couch potato”. Awesome or Annoying? Your call.