Social Media for Working & Learning

Social media predictions for 2010

It's getting close to the end of the year, so the prediction postings have already begun.

Joel Postman's posting on Social Media Today (and Socialized) offers the following 5 social media predictions for 2010 - briefly listed below - but read the posting for more detail:

1. Augmented Reality Applications Will Start to Go Mainstream
2. Location-Based Applications Will Dissolve Into General Social Networks
3. Enterprise Social Software Applications Will Become Commonplace
4. More Social Media Regulation Will Follow the FTC’s October Endorsement Guides
5. Social Search Will Shake Out, and the Search Metaphor Will Change

I'll post about more when I find them. 

Anybody want to add their own in the the comments below?

Corporate Social Learning Tools

I am preparing for a session at Online Educa in Berlin next week in the Creating New Era of Corporate Learning stream.  It is called Tools of the Trade and is described as follows:

“In this session Jane will demonstrate some of the best tools for social learning on the site.  The session will provide you with a clear understanding of which social learning tools are available and fit-for-purpose for corporate use. Jane will discuss what tools organisations are using, and will provide practical advice on getting started and setting up informal and social learning tools so they add value to your organisation.”

In this session I will be talking about how the tools can support the 5 different types of learning that takes place whithin an organisation and will be giving examples from the huge range of hosted and self-hosted tools that are available - and will be using parts of this chart to provide examples of tools - and explain the pros and cons of each.

Although I am beginning to build my list of CORPORATES using socal learning tools, if you are able and/or willing to share any experiences of corporate social learning, I would be very interested to hear about them.  You could leave a comment below, email me at jane.hart@c4lpt.co.uk or send me a tweet @c4lpt and include the hashtag for my session #oebjh.

During the session I will be using Twitter as a backchannel for further contributions from the room and from the wider world. 

Thanks in advance

Examples of social learning in the workplace

There are many examples of how enterprises/organisations (profits and non-profits) are using social media for EXTERNAL marketing, customer support, etc, but few documented, real-life case studies of strategic approaches to its use INTERNALLY for social and collaborative learning and/or performance and productivity improvement.

I'm starting to put together some examples of social learning in organisation.  If you have any specific examples to share, please let me know - jane.hart@c4lpt.co.uk - I'm looking for the why? what? and how? Thanks.

Templates at Google Sites

Yesterday, the official Google Blog announced they had just added a stocked gallery of site templates in Google Sites.  Google Sites is becoming an important Google product as they point out ...  (click on links to view some of the templates.

"The rate that businesses are adopting Google Sites has surpassed our expectations, and templates will make Sites even more useful by dramatically reducing the time it takes to set up collaborative workspaces like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites and employee profile pages. Templates let you quickly start a new site with pre-built content, embedded gadgets, page layouts, navigation links, theming and more.

... And because many of you are managing personal projects with Google Sites, we also added templates for family sites, weddings, neighborhood associations, clubs, charitable causes and more to the public gallery. "

Google Sites

Social Media FOR learning - Part 2

Following on from my previous post where I discussed the need for spelling out the use of social media for learning, I have now started to pull together a new resource, which looks at how social media can be used for different types of learning.

Rather than use the broad categories of formal and informal learning - terms which I think are  pretty difficult to grasp, and which are being confused and abused if phrases I have read like "managing informal learning information" are anything to go by! - I have decided to categorise the use of social media in the following 5 different ways:

1. IOL - Intra-Organisational Learning - how social media tools can be used to keep employees up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives
2. FSL - Formal Structured Learning - how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within education and training - for courses, classes, workshops etc
3. GDL - Group Directed Learning - how groups of individuals - teams, projects, study groups etc - can use social media to work and learn together (a "group" could just be two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category)
4. PDL - Personal Directed Learning - how individuals can use social media for their own (self-directed) personal or professional learning
5. ASL - Accidental & Serendipitous Learning - how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

It may well be that these categories will need tweaking or even overhauling completely, but here is my first attempt at how social media can be used in these 5 categories, which will be a work in progress.

Using social media for different types of learning

The next step of course will be to decide which types of learning you or your organisation wants to support/enable - and how (by which I mean, which specif tools should you employ).

UPDATE: See Harold Jarche's posting Social Media and Self-Directed Learning which includes a diagram of how to explain these 5 categories to clients. 

Social Media FOR learning

I've been reading Maish Nichani's elearningpost for a long time now, but on the first day of  DevLearn he made a very perceptive remark ...

"But all of this talk on social media I heard had a lot to say about the media part but very little on the learning part. They are still advocating the creating and access to content with very little attention on why this is being done and how is it going to help learning and improve performance in the long run. The systems view I think is missing here. The mantra seems to be “get social and you’ll learn”. This has a lot to say about the maturity of Learning 2.0."

I know I have been guilty of posting simply about social media tools on many occasions because I anticipated that others would EXTRAPOLATE how they could be used within a "learning" context.  I have released that this is not always that easy, which was one of the reasons I compiled the 100+ ways social media could be used for learning list. So in the future I am going to try and be much more specific about the value of social media tools for teaching and learning.  I certainly don't think it is a case of "get social and you'll learn"  AND YET there IS a lot in that- because learning is not necessarily a conscious process.  AND additionally Social Learning can ALSO be serendipitous - by connecting and conversing with more people there is the likelihood you will LEARN something new ... 

I've introduced a lot of thoughts in that paragraph, so I think they will need some sorting out, which'll have to be the subject of another posting ...

In the meantime, what do you think?  Is it enough to talk about the social media themselves, or demonstrate their APPLICABILITY to learning or improving performance.

Live Prezi recording of Social Media class of Howard Rheingold at Stanford

I just found this video in a posting on Cloud Ave. 

It is a screen recording 10x faster than reality, documenting the Social Media class of Howard Rheingold at Stanford on 13 10 2009 - made by Adam Somlai-Fischer (Prezi Founder)

Examples of social media in learning

I am constantly being asked, by those new to social media, for specific examples of how social media (Web 2.0) tools can be used for learning - whether it be for personal learning, informal learning or formal learning - in education or the workplace. 

So I have now created a list of over 100 ways that different social technologies (and tools) are being used by learning professionals worldwide - compiled from those who have contributed their Top 10 Tools for Learning:

100+ ways to use social media for learning

Challenges and Misconceptions of Collaborative and Social Learning in the Workplace

Xyleme Voices features interviews with today’s top industry analysts, consultants and practitioners in the field of learning

In their latest interview, four of my colleagues in the Internet Time Alliance - an international think tank-  Jay Cross, Harold JArche, Charles Jennings and Clark Quinn  - talk about this initiative and provide their perspectives on collaborative and social learning in the workplace.

Challenges and Misconceptions of Collaborative and Social Learning in the Workplace: Part 1

More articles and postings in the Social Learning Reading List in the C4LPT Library

Grapevine

I've mentioned Grapevine on my Pick of the Day blog before, but Dirk Wood, the CEO has just emailed to tell me about some recent changes:

"We now have a desktop application for even easier access and communication, complete redesign, and a myriad of new features just released to complement our initial web app.
 
Grapevine allows you to be at the center of voice communication flows in the way that is the most effective and customizable for each individual, group, team, or company.  Grapevine is collaboration and communication like no other product available today.

Grapevine's benefits:

• More efficient working
• Discover others who are valuable to your work
• Learning from others who are more skilled
• Communicate in real-time or when you have time
• A Community of conversations
• Prioritize your conversations
• Have access to past exchanges and context

Grapevine