Triple A Learning IB Blogs

A rewarding time to be a facebook ‘friend’

Paul Clark — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:03:57 +0000

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, while he was attending Harvard University. In one of the biggest ever US stock flotations, the company launched Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market with a starting price of $42 a share under the symbol “FB.” Mark Zuckerberg remotely rang the morning bell on this Initial Public Offering (IPO) at 9:30 EST from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, essentially becoming billions of dollars wealthier in that moment. No American has company has been as so highly valued at its stock market debut.

Frenzied demand, especially from individual investors hoping to buy into an Internet juggernaut that touches hundreds of millions of people every day, drove the shares well above its initial public offering price. In the first five minutes, 100 million shares were traded with their value increasing more than 10% to $42 within minutes, before quickly falling back to end their first day of trading at $38.23, barely above the company’s initial pricing of $38.

It is estimated that Zuckerberg will become the 23rd richest person on the planet according to figures from Forbes magazine. In addition, 1000 present and former employees will be transformed into millionaires. One of Facebook’s founders, Eduardo Saverin, who previously held dual U.S. and Brazilian citizenship has renounced his United States citizenship to take up permanent residence in Singapore which does not have capital gains tax, so saving him millions of dollars.

It’s also a “Beautiful Day” to be Bono. As Facebook goes public, the U2 frontman could stand to make up to $1.5 billion off the widely anticipated IPO. The business-savvy, Irish rocker owns 2.3 percent of the shares of Facebook through his investment group, Elevation Partners. This will make Bono the richest musician in the world, overtaking Paul McCartney.

Facebook didn’t have to go public to raise money, of which it had plenty in the bank. It was pushed into doing so by federal law, which mandates public financial disclosures once shares in a company become distributed to a large enough insider group. Facebook’s 421.2 million shares offered to the public will raise $17.7 billion, bringing its valuation to $116.6 billion. The $104 billion valuation will make the company bigger than online rival Amazon, and far ahead of well-known institutions like Disney and Kraft.

Some analysts doubt whether Facebook is worth its current valuation and argue that the hype is proof of another dotcom bubble. They point to slowing revenue and user growth and its weak spot of advertising on the mobile devices, through which more than half of its users log in. Currently, Facebook’s only source of non-ad revenue is its digital currency, Facebook Credits, which people use to buy virtual goods, such as tractors in FarmVille. Last year Facebook made $3.7 billion in revenues and $1 billion in profits, one tenth the value of Google, whose shares now sell for over $620. Certainly, the flotation is likely to change the future strategic direction of Facebook. It may push the social network to place more advertising on its pages and create more commercial opportunities to take advantage of its nearly one billion active users and increase its revenues. Indeed the launch came only two days after General Motors cancelled its $10 million Facebook advertising budget after discovering that people don’t shop for cars between status updates, pokes, likes, and virtual crop harvests.

As a public company, Facebook will have to balance the demands of its shareholders for a quick profit against the concerns of users and governments about privacy. Facebook has been criticised for its poor privacy practices by US and European regulators and its approach to corporate social responsibility will be a major challenge for Zuckerberg. For example, Facebook owns one of the largest photo repositories in the world, with more than 300 million photos uploaded per day and a store of 60 billion images. The site itself shows as many as 550,000 images per second. This is an area that has upset privacy critics and represents something that Facebook is willing to do that even Google isn’t. Google and Facebook both have sophisticated facial-recognition technology, but Google requires users to opt into its photo-tagging service. Facebook users are included automatically.

“Facebook’s shares were always going to pop at the open, that’s no surprise at all,” said Sam Hamadeh, co-founder of PrivCo, a financial analyst. “After the first couple of weeks, I think it’ll drop back down to the mid-twenties.” Hamadeh believes Facebook was worth $24-$25 a share. “And that’s being generous,” he said.

Whatever the financial future for Facebook, its founders and early investors are certainly celebrating.

Key Facebook facts and figures

901 million monthly active users at the end of March 2012. Approximately 80% are outside the US and Canada.
526 million daily active users on average in March 2012.
488 million monthly active users used Facebook mobile products in March 2012 and more than 500 million mobile monthly active users as of April 20, 2012.
During March 2012, 398 million users were active with Facebook on at least six out of seven days.
More than 125 billion friend connections on Facebook at the end of March 2012.
On average more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day in the three months ended March 31, 2012.
An average of 3.2 billion Likes and Comments generated by Facebook users per day during the first quarter of 2012.
Facebook is available in more than 70 languages.
Facebook accounts for 9 percent of all online visits in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise,

IB-style questions

1. Define the following terms:

Public company
Corporate social responsibility

2. Prepare a SWOT and PEST analysis for Facebook.

3. Analyse the reasons why Facebook may choose a different strategy towards its social responsibility than other technology companies such as Google and Amazon.

4. Using your SWOT and PEST analysis, discuss Facebook’s future strategy and objectives following its flotation.

Sources:

Update on Amber Case

Laura Fulton — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:32:03 +0000

caseorganic.com

From earliest times, humans had tools like hammers that extended our physical self. Today’s technology extends our mental self. It’s changing the way we experience the world. —Amber Case

Each year, National Geographic recognizes visionary individuals who are actively working toward global problem-solving. The recipients do not apply, they are nominated by a panel of experts. This year, Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case tops the list of 15. Read more here.

TED for educators

Stephen — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:04:47 +0000

The TED-Ed team provides an in depth look at the powerful features of the newly-launched TED-ED Beta website. You’ll learn how TED-Ed videos are created, how they are arranged, about the learning materials that surround each video, and how you can create customized or “flipped” lessons based on any TED-Ed video or any video on YouTube.

The Alan Lomex Collection: An Important Resource for the Study of Music Cultures

Sergio Espinosa — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:25:26 +0000

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) was an important ethnomusicologist that over the space of many years created an important collection of recordings, photographs and interviews related to world music. His collection has recently made available at the Association for Cultural Equity. In here you can find important documents such as:

This is a very reliable and useful collection to prepare the IB Music Links Investigation and to prepare for the IB Listening Paper. I encourage you and your students to visit this site.

Sergio Espinosa

Amazing numbers

David — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:54:11 +0000

You can use these numbers when you introduce a ‘Maxwell Boltzman’ distribution curve. Picture a gas (say, air) at 15 ^oC

What is the average (mean) speed of the particles in this gas? I bet you can’t guess….

It is a staggering 450m per second!

That said, what is the average (mean) straight line path that these molecules move without colliding?

An unbelievably small 5 x 10 ^-7 cm! (not even metres!)

So how many times does this mean that these particles collide (on average) per second?

A mind blowing 8,000,000,000 times!

And all this was deduced in 12859 by James Maxwell.

Sourced from my second most favourite book – ‘Science, A History’ by John Gribbin (Published by Allen Lane THe Penguin Press), 1st edition (2002), ISBN 0-140-29741-3

Is it a Plane? Is it a Bird? No! It’s a CLICHÉ (Part 2)

triplea_av — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Hi Greg, I agree – there is usually nothing intrinsically or necessarily wrong with a clichéd image.

When first seen it was (obviously) not the overfamiliar thing is has since become.

A good example of “it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it!” is Yue Minjun’s reworking of various western cliché images – for example the well-known pose (cliché) of Marilyn Monroe in the Seven Year Itch, in which Yue Minjun uses a version of his own face and replaces the figure with his own, but still wearing Monroe’s clothes. The result is an example of ‘Cynical Realism.’

One of the studio assessment descriptors refers to a body of work that “has been reviewed, modified and refined as it has progressed, resulting in an accomplished resolution of ideas and medium” – which is one way of interpreting ‘the way that you do it’.

In terms of Investigation, the Marilyn poster from the Seven Year Itch - or any of the Terminator posters – could (broadly) be seen as “art from different cultures and times” and therefore worthy of consideration for function and significance, and developing a series of creative studies could also demonstrate “effective skills, techniques and processes when making…images”

Links to Yue Minjun & Cynical Realism

http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/yue_minjun.htm

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/yue_minjun.htm

Image

IWB page relating to ‘the Afghan girl’ – discussed in a previous post.

Water stress

Trevor Cole — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:25:50 +0000

Water Use by Farmers Will Rise 19% by 2050, UN Says

By Tara Patel - Mar 12, 2012 1:50 PM GMT

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-11/farmers-to-battle-water-scarcity-as-food-demand-grows-un-says.html

Farmers will need 19 percent more water by 2050 to meet increasing demands for food, much of it in regions already suffering from water scarcity, according to a United Nations report.

“In many countries water availability for agriculture is already limited and uncertain, and is set to worsen,” according to the fourth United Nations World Water Development Report published today. “Concerns about food insecurity are growing across the globe and more water will be needed.”

Enlarge image

A man collects what is left of a dried up reservoir on in Guiyang County, Hunan Province of China. The drought has left 1.82 million people short of drinking water in Guizhou Province and 290,000 people in Hunan Province, following little rainfall in June and July 2011. Many local crops have failed as well. Photographer: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has said food output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9.3 billion from 7 billion now and as increasingly rich consumers in developing economies eat more meat. A quarter of world farmland is “highly degraded” by intensive agriculture that has depleted water resources, reduced soil quality or increased erosion, according to the agency.

The UN’s latest warning about water shortages comes as the World Water Forum begins today in Marseille, where ministers, industry representatives and non-government organizations will discuss resource management, waste, health risks and climate change.

Fillon’s View

Mounting water shortages “are an unacceptable situation,” French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told delegates in Marseille, adding that while means exist to resolve water issues indicators “like gross domestic product don’t reflect existing problems.”

Agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of global freshwater use and as much as 90 percent in some fast-growing economies, according to the UN study. Groundwater can be “mined to exhaustion” and in some areas availability has “reached critical limits.”

“The scale of the problem could worsen,” Olcay Unver, coordinator of the report, said at a press conference in Paris. At least 12 countries in the Middle East and South Asia suffer “absolute water scarcity,” with about two-thirds of freshwater supply in the Middle East already coming from outside the region.

Farming is the biggest cause of water stress in the Middle East, and in Iraq, Oman, Syria and Yemen, it accounts for more than 90 percent of usage, the UN said. The region already imports as much as half its grain consumption and climate change could cut agricultural productivity by a quarter by 2080.

Saudi Water

Saudi Arabia (SABIC) is reducing grain production to reduce unsustainable use of groundwater and encouraging companies to lease tracts of land in Africa for growing, the report said. India is growing maize, sugarcane, lentils and rice in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal andMozambique to feed its domestic market.

“Acquiring rights to use land for growing in other countries implies the right to use their water,” Unver said. “Countries that can afford better technology can put additional water stress where it already exists.”

Without new policies to manage water use, more than 40 percent of the world’s population will live in areas with high water stress by 2050, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which also published a report ahead of the Marseille conference.

Pricing Water

“We need to give water a price,” Xavier Leflaive, the report’s author, said at a press conference in Paris. “Governments have to act and in a strong way.”

The UN and OECD call for more efficient use of wastewater, of which 80 percent is not collected or treated, according to the UN.

“If we don’t take the challenge seriously we are on a collision course with nature and in the end, what needs to be done will take longer and cost more,” Angel Gurria, secretary general of the OECD, said in an interview in Marseille. Simple methods such as lining irrigation canals would stop wastage, he noted.

“Water tariffs are policy instruments that encourage more intelligent use,” Leflaive said. “Industry more often pays for the cost of water it consumes while farmers don’t.”

A new EUR cat 3 service to IA

David — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:00:03 +0000

Did you know that there is a change to the ‘Enquiry Upon Results’ service this year (with regards to Internal Assessment?

Schools can now request that their candidates’ work is re-moderated. Where necessary, a new moderation factor will be applied to all candidates for that school. The result of the re-moderation has implications for all candidates within a school and so (in contrast to the category 1 EUR service) candidates’ grades will not go down as a result of the re-moderation.

When a school requests a category 3 EUR, assessment material is forwarded from the assistant moderator to a senior moderator. Schools can request a re-moderation when there are large mark differences between the teacher’s marks and the original moderator’s marks.

Your schools diploma co-ordinator should be able to give you more information.

We’re all marketers now – engaging with the social media

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:03:53 +0000

According to the Nielsen Community Engine 2011 Social Media Business Benchmarking Study, the majority of organisations surveyed, who already use the social media, claim they will dedicate a greater proportion of the marketing budget to it in 2012. Attitudes are changing towards social media with more businesses embracing it in their marketing plans. Firms are increasingly sensitive to the power of the social media in promoting their products and brands, but are not always confident about how to use its power, or how to direct their budgets to maximise their returns.

Similar to traditional PR activities, it can be difficult to measure the impact of social media investment on revenues and profits. Finance directors when evaluating investment choices want to know what the Return on their Investment (ROI) is likely to be, and expenditure on social media is no different. However, more firms are reporting that social media campaigns are beginning to deliver solid, proven ROI. For instance, the 2011 Social Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa found that the overall average social media ROI was an impressive 95%. That’s a dramatic shift from MarketingSherpa’s first benchmarking report in 2009, when soft marketing objectives, such as building customer awareness, was the key priority and marketers were finding it difficult to demonstrate any ROI from social media.

Three quarters of the companies surveyed by Nielsen last year have set aside more than 10% of their 2012 marketing spend for social media activities and are increasingly shifting from branding to building customer relationships and engagement. Through social media, businesses are able to create an emotive link with consumers and build a two-way relationship with them in a way they have never been able to do before.

The following McKinsey videos identify the role of the social media in purchase decisions and present case studies of companies using social media to tap into the interest in their brands and create communities. The videos outline the ways in which companies can use social media to learn more about their customers and foster brand loyalty.

The following presentation by McKinsey examines the role of the social media in the customer purchase decision by following this link.

Image source: mediaspin.com

Bioethics

Stephen — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:59:05 +0000

We must remember that we are not only biology teachers, we are also English teachers and ToK teachers to boot.

Incorporating ToK for some is a straightforward extension of the syllabus and for others either an uncomfortable add-on or full of time consuming complexity one would rather do without.

So to that end I would like to share this link, explore:

http://www.beep.ac.uk/content/index.php

beep – Bioethics Education Project

Teaching science in the 21st century requires that we ensure students consider associated ethical issues in depth. BEEP is here to support students in learning to discuss these issues and teachers in planning lessons on them.

BEEP is also a research project; we aim to investigate whether online discussion can be used successfully to support school science teachers. Thus use of the website will be evaluated by researchers at the University of Bristol. Data on method of use and user opinion will be collected and documents and presentations may be published concerning the project. However, end user contribution will be anonymised so that no individual or school will be identifiable in such publications.