Social Media In Learning

Building a social learning environment

I've just completed the third in a series of 3 articles for Inside Learning Technologies magazine.  The first two appeared in the November and December editions, the third will appear in the Conference Edition in January - but you can preview it here.

The series looks at three different ways of creating a social learning environment - for free or at low cost:

• Part 1 - Using free public social media tools, October 2009
• Part 2 - Using Google tools, November 2009
• Part 3 - Using Elgg, an open source social engine, January 2010

I've also created a chart that conmpares the 3 different ways in terms of the social media functionality they offer.

Telstra's Social Media Training Guide

A posting on Mashable yesterday alerted me to how Telstra in Australia is makes social media training mandatory for its 40,000 odd employees.

It has formalized a policy of “3Rs” – responsibility, respect and representation, see the video below:

Telsta has also published its entire social media training guide online. Take a look here - it's quite different from a normal training guide - both in style and format.

The 3 Rs of Social Media Engagement

MemCatch - a social knowledge network

Peter emailed to tell me about Memcatch

MemCatch is the first social knowledge network, allowing individuals to not only collect and manage their knowledge, but to utilize it throughout their social networks. As they put it .. .

"We’re what comes AFTER you Google.."

MemCatch's applications have been optimized for three key things:

1. Collecting your knowledge as easily as possible.
2. Collecting from as many knowledge resources as possible.
3. And most importantly, sharing your knowledge as easily as possible.

Where does the name "MemCatch" come from?

"MemCatch doesn't actually come from "memory catch" as many people have suggested, although that would probably fit as well. Memcatch comes from the concept of being able to catch "memes". Memes are ideas that want to spread far and wide because of the low cost to distribute them, enriching everything they touch."

MemCatch

Group profiles on Posterous

Posterous, a very easy to use blogging tool, ranks 55= on the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list and is one of the 10 tools for 2010 that I think are worth considering.

Yesterday Posterous announced the launch of big upgrades to their group blog system so that now you can setup a group blog to have its own profile AND its own autopost sites.

Posterous

If you are looking for a guide to using Posterous, you'll find some links in our Posterous Reading List.

Socialware

"Socialware provides the industry’s first social middleware platform, allowing you to transform public social networking sites into enterprise-grade channels for communication and collaboration."

I read about Socialware in this ReadWrite Enterprise posting, which explains ...

"The company is offering social middleware products that help companies integrate social networks with a level of control that makes them comfortable that the access is compliant with government regulations and IT policies.   In many ways, companies have set up their own iron curtains to keep social interaction to a minimum.  It's also fair to say that many companies are eager to let their employees engage with the social Web. But they want the risk managed, especially when it comes to interacting with social networks. Socialware believes the missing component for the enterprise is a bridge layer that helps companies connect its people, processes and systems with the open, social Web."

It's an interesting concept, and one that will certainly appeal to many enterprises.

Socialware

Chirp: The Official Twitter Developer Conference 2010

Chirp - the official developer conference will be taking place in San Francisco sometime in 2010.  Leave your email address to find out more when they launch.

Chirp

[via TechCrunch: Twitter crows about Chirp]

P2PU - Peer 2 Peer University

What is P2PU?

"The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well."

Peer 2 Peer University

The pilot phase of P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University) ended in October, after having run for six weeks with seven courses and approximately 90 participants.  A recent review of P2PU by Jane Park on the CreativeCommons blog explains more about P2PU and why CC is involved:

"P2PU is the social wrapper around open educational resources ... P2PU recognizes that content isn’t enough. Accessing OER does not automatically result in learning. There are reasons why traditional education institutions exist, one of these being the social interaction between peers that enables, facilitates, and motivates learning. But what about those that want to learn outside of brick and ivy walls? P2PU is an initiative outside of the traditional institution that aims to provide the social learning structures, the “social wrapper”, around existing open educational resources.  Because P2PU is a true OER project, testing the bounds of what can work when you empower a community of volunteers and peers to learn for free from each other, CC Learn is interested in where it’s going."

The future of Peer 2 Peer University

Google Alerts: Tutorial

Google Alerts is a clever little service from Google to help keep you up to date on any subject. It ranked 88th on the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 list.

Here is a useful two-part tutorial about Google Alerts and how to use the service, by Greg Pincus

1. Why Alerts?
2. How to set up Alerts

Some more (social media) predictions for 2010

Following on from my earlier post, here are some more predictions for 2010:

1. Fresh Networks has a posting about 2010: Community Management predictions: "What will community managers be talking about? What legal changes are bubbling away? We asked some fantastic community managers for their 2010 predictions, and if their thinking comes true, 2010 is going to be a very exciting year."
2. Bersin & Associates have a posting which summarises their 12 Predictions for Corporate Learning & Talent Management in 2010, one of which is "Learning management systems will remain important but evolve rapidly into talent and informal systems.  Collaboration and content management will drive the next major evolution in learning technology".
3. In November 2009 Richard Nantel of Brandon Hall Research listed Reness Robbins' 10 Predictions for How Social Media Will Impact Learning in 2010. More of the same but Google Wave's on the list
4. Michael Stephens has provided his Predictions for Social Technologies & Libraries in 2010, inlcuding "Libraries will become community leaders in teaching social tools".
5. Back in October 2009, Jennifer Leggio, on the ZDNet Social Business blog, provided a list of 40 people's predictions in her posting: 2010 Predictions: Will social media reach ubiquity? For instance Jeffrey Dachis of the Dachis Groups says "As businesses begin to realize the power of becoming more socially calibrated dynamic organizations, cross function/ cross platform social business metrics and analytics will begin to take shape and drive meaningful discussion around creating real value."

Finally, you might also be interested in this video of the Mayan Prediction for 2010:

I'll post more predictions when I come across them. Let me know of any you find.

Google Groups joins Google Apps

Google has just announced the launch of Google Groups to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users. As they say ...

"Google Groups is one of our most widely used applications, enabling everyone from the local hiking club to the family next door to create mailing lists and discussion forums. Now employees within a company can create groups for their departments, their teams or their projects. Employees can use these groups as mailing lists, but they can also share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with groups, instead of many individual recipients. They can choose to receive communications directly to their email inbox, in a digest format, or in the Groups forum view, and can access all the information in the groups archive, without the intervention of an IT administrator."

More information in the Official Google blog posting.