Yes I know this is a bit off topic, but then, not really. It’s about learning in a creative and encouraging environment, something we hope to achieve for our students here at The Learning Center. So can we take a lesson from this?

Yesterday my kids and I went to the City’s annual Exhibition, you know the rides, the games, the shows, etc. In the kid’s section of the park was a stage for shows done by a company that does science shows for kids. They travel to schools and special events with their ‘magic show’ of science tricks. A great concept and being The Science Mom to a group of kids that my son hangs out with, I’m of course a big supporter of this.

Until I see the show. It’s an audience full of 4-7 year olds mainly and it’s the experiment of a hair dryer air stream holding up a ping pong ball. Here’s what they’re saying: “Based on Bernoulli’s Principle, the mass and dimensions of the object, in this case the ping pong ball in relation to the upward pressure of the fluid or air column of the hair dryer…” blah blah blah. They were actually talking about Bernoulli’s Principle. Seriously. Oh *yawn* and they wonder why their audience was small and got smaller as the act went on?

They had cool tricks - floating bowling balls, why colas sink in water and diet colas don’t, stuff kids could relate to, but then blew it with the blah blah blah. I’ve seen this with other science shows, and with some grade school teachers. Then they wonder why it’s hard to get kids interested in science?

When kids are in grade school is the best time to get them intrigued by the wonders of science. Interest in science leads to interest in math, reading, even physical education if done right. It all ties together but these instructors continually kill it for the kids.

How does this relate to The Learning Centre? Well, hopefully we’ll be able to make it creative and interesting and motivating for you to learn the skills you want. It is an important focus because all learning should be interesting, whether in grade school, adult learning or seniors going back to University. At least as adults we can speak up when things are dull and I encourage you to do so with course feedback.

Bernoulli’s Principle: A rise (fall) in pressure in a flowing fluid must always be accompanied by a decrease (increase) in the speed, and conversely, if an increase (decrease) in , the speed of the fluid results in a decrease (increase) in the pressure. In other words, this is why shower curtains get sucked into the tub and get chummy with you while having a shower.

Hallooo? Anybody there? Kinda feels like that around here I know. Empty winds, wolves howling in the distance, creepy staircases, deserted sites.

Well, that’s not true of course. I’ve been very busy with the technical side of the site and within a week to 10 days I’ll have the Beta site launched with incredible features and functionality. More importantly will be stuff that finally you’ll be able to take advantage of, sign up for and start participating in.

It’s a big site with several planned stepwise releases along the way. This Beta release is the last major change before the grand opening launch in September.

So what does this mean to you? Well, as an early follower of The Learning Centre I encourage you to register as a Beta Member when it comes available in the next few days. In return for your feedback & comments on the site and contents, you’ll receive special membership privileges and access that the others who sign up later won’t get.

So thanks for sticking around during these quiet development days. Stay tuned for the next big release.

If you’ve been following along, you’ll have noticed some changes over the past week & a bit. It’s why I haven’t posted or sent out a newsletter of late. Lots of content getting adding, new look and talking to people about their expertise. This is fun!

If you haven’t been through the site recently, I’ve started adding courses, the Teachers section is up and a form to apply as an expert/instructor. If you think you’d like to be a part of this - fill out the form and let me know. If you know someone who you think should be here, use the Tell A Friend service or send them an email with the link to the site. This is intended to be a community of participants and learning so the more people we get, the better.

This site will be a membership based one and I’m not going to tell anyone what the deal is yet, but suffice to say that those getting in on the action before the formal launch will get some very nice offers to take advantage of.

Speaking of bonuses, the next section I’ll be developing is the mastermind area. This area I’m particularly excited about because this is where real empowerment happens. It’s a physical, visceral reaction and wow does it knock a punch to you & your business. If you’ve never experienced this kind of interaction before, you’ll definitely want to take a look at this. This is a variation of masterminding, something I’m calling PowerCircles. Watch for more details on this because you’re going to want to be a part of it.

I just finished playing with a Squidoo lens, http://www.squidoo.com/LearningEntrepreneurs and am off to play in Twitter.com now. I have a Ryze page but that seems to be less popular than it used to be, so I’m looking to get set up in MySpace and Facebook. Found another new one called ning.com which may be an interesting possibility for The Learning Center to have a an active discussion area.

Do you have any experiences in promoting your business in any of these or other social media sites? What is your favourite one and why? Post your comments with your social site page URL.

It’s Tuesday, April 22 and it’s Earth Day. And it’s been snowing here for 5 days straight in a late spring snowstorm. We’ve had close to 30cm of snow (close to 12″) and still expecting another 5cm today. So in celebration of earth day I am not going to drive my car all day. Mostly because it would mean a whole lot of shovelling.

Here’s my poor corner garden & firepit. What you can’t see in the picture of course is the howling winds that are gusting to 40km/hr (almost 25 mi/hr).

In anticipation of spring I had started to put away the winter gear: the snow pants, boots, gloves, toques, scarves. The front hall was looking empty with only spring jackets, but we’re back to full winter gear laying everywhere again. The snow has piled against the front door so I have to shovel to get out. Yep, celebrating Earth Day inside.

Do you have a specific promotion or event planned for today? Is your business green and eco-friendly? Post a comment with your earth friendly tips & events or tell us how your business is green.

My office is home based and online which means my main footprint is in power consumption from the computer & peripherals. I try to reduce the amount of documents I actually print, and I recycle paper by printing on the back of scrapped documents.

What’s your earth day solution?

Do you exercise, eat right, take vitamin supplements, read food labels, recycle, look for eco-friendly products and services? There’s so many things that have crept into our lives as ‘good habits’ that maintain our personal health, the health of our family and the health of our community.

Like so many other areas of our lives, our businesses also have to be regularly maintained with good habits for optimal health. As entrepreneurs we wear so many hats and for a business to run successfully we need to be at the very least proficient under each of the hats. But really, unless you’re already an accountant or bookkeeper, who really likes doing the day to day bookkeeping? Okay make that twice a year bookkeeping.

Like so many other areas of our lives, once things are identified as a healthy habit we make the effort to make it a regular habit. We can do the same with our businesses by creating small manageable bits done regularly. This is preventative medicine and allows us to stay ahead of many of our business challenges.

In this week’s Learning List, there’s a great little article about taking your ‘business vitamins’. Be sure to read it and see how you can incorporate business vitamins into your daily routine.

Now, I’m off for my morning walk with my baby and get my day’s events organized in my head. How about you?

I am always on the lookout for new sources of expertise. Even within areas where I’ve found one, to have two or more is even better. If you are an expert and have informational products, ezines, ebooks, courses, etc., contact me with your information and let’s chat some more. I have lots of ideas for using expert information that I will be building into this Learning Center over the next couple of years (yes my business plan goes that far ahead at the moment). So let’s connect - use the contact me form found here.

I think I’ll just continue this thread by numbering as I share them with you. Should make it a bit easier to find all the posts in the archives, etc. as the list multiplies.

Ezine Marketing - I have been a long time subscriber (3 years at least) to this lady’s ezine as I have always learned something from her. She is known as ‘The Ezine Queen’, Alexandria Brown. She has very recently decided to move on from doing just ezines into more marketing information. However like me, she shares only what she has already experienced as being productive or useful. For that, I’d strongly recommend you sign onto her ezine list which she mails out about once a week. She is also promoting a new business product, called 2008 Online Success Blueprint-in-a-Box - which I have NOT yet gone through, but I intend to buy in the near future when I have a bit of time to attend to it (kinda busy at the moment with getting this built for you). Based on her other products that I have tried, I’m confident this one will be full of value as well, which is why I’m bending my rule a bit. She already has a solid track record for quality products in my view so I have no problems recommending this new one.

Media & Publicity - Another lady with great information is Joan Stewart and likewise I’ve been on her ezine list for a number of years. She is known as The Publicity Hound and always has great advice on working with the media and getting into the media. I have used her advice in my earlier businesses and they never failed to generate results. She also has free articles you can use in your business communications as well as compiled reports on a variety of topics. Lots of resources at her site, PublicityHound.com.

Here’s a couple of excellent sites that provide some base fundamentals and reference information on a couple of areas. I’ve used both of these myself, and even if you consider yourself an expert in these areas, it never hurts to take a quick peek in case there’s something that triggers a thought or idea, or even reminds you of something you once knew but had buried in the dusty recesses of your brain.

Website Design - HTML, CSS, XHTML code basics by W3Schools.com They also offer a slate of other internet & website coding lessons. Their explanations are clear with excellent examples and they also provide little working windows where you can play with parameters to see what it does to the presentation. Highly recommended for those trying to get a handle on the basics and a good reference site.

Mailing Lists - Shawn Casey, a long time internet marketing guru has launched an interesting site called ListBuilding.com with another fellow that outlines how to build mailing lists. They’ve recorded a couple of teleconference calls with real people who built their lists into substantial sizes and generated income from them. They detail exactly what they did to build their list and business. While not all their techniques may work for you, they will certainly get you thinking about what you’re doing or not doing with your list. And hey, it’s free so check it out.

Speaking of list building, have you subscribed to the Learning Center’s list yet? Don’t forget to do that before you go if you haven’t.

For those of you who have been with me over the past couple of weeks, you’re starting to notice some changes. A new template - a freebie I downloaded (see Site Credits) and I updated the Wordpress template too, a little nicer than the plain default one. Is this the final look? Nope, but it’s a quickie interim one to make things look a little less bare bones. Besides I kinda like the sheep - how I feel some days.

The freebie mailing list I’m using as a temporary measure has some down sides, like no access to archives as I thought it did. You get what you pay for, though so I’m not really complaining, just whining a teensy bit. So critical info stuff from the mailings I’ll post here for now until I get my permanent service up and running. It will have all the nice features, but then I’ll be paying for it too *smile*.

I found some great resources this week that have some decent basic training. I did send them out in the mailer, but I’ll post them here in a separate entry. I’m still learning all about Wordpress, the service I chose for the blog so you’ll see some weird template things happening from time to time as I play with it. I’ll have it all nailed down before the official launch.

If you’re visiting - please feel free to leave comments on any blog entry or send me an email about what you’re looking to learn or where your business is at. I welcome all feedback.