At last week's Brandon Hall Conference, I remixed David Wilcox and Beth Kanter's fabulous Social Media game for my workshop introducing learning professionals to Web 2.0 and learning (Go here to download the game cards if you're interested in using them)

I divided my group of about 25-30 people into 6 teams (it was supposed to be 8, but apparently we had problems counting) and gave each team a deck of cards and a learning scenario. Each team had a budget of 10 points and had to come up with a mix of tools and approaches they could use to address the scenario while coming in at or under budget. (Not every option was a Web 2.0 tool, by the way.)  I also gave them the intro handouts I'd remixed from Tim Davies' one-pagers as additional information for them to use in completing their tasks.

A couple of observations. . .

The teams came up with some good solutions for the different scenarios, but one thing I noticed was an emphasis on more "push" kinds of communications, which was something I observed in several sessions at the conference actually. It seemed like a lot of people were seeing Web 2.0 as being a great way to easily and inexpensively push content to learners (i.e., posting videos of training modules or using blogs to replace newsletters), but it didn't come as easily for people to think about using these tools for more two-way communication. Or more specifically, using the tools for co-creation of content. There still seems to be a lot of concern about what will happen if we give learners too much control. Also questions about whether or not people will want to co-create.

After the workshop was over, a group of Millenials gathered round to discuss how to get Boomers to actually use and embrace social media tools. For Gen Y, it's enough to make the tools available--they seem to know where to go from there. Not so much with Boomers and Gen X (to a lesser extent), at least based on the experiences of these young people. They really don't get how you wouldn't want to immediately start interacting and sharing information and resources. To them, all of that seems pretty self-explanatory.

That conversation made me realize the extent of the generational gulf here. It's like the two groups are speaking two very different languages and having very different expectations about the workplace and how you can use social media to manage knowledge and networks. This is probably a discussion that needs to continue as I think that both groups could learn more from each other.

You can download Social Media Game Cards here from the conference workshop page. Also note that on the conference page I included some examples of ways to use social media specifically for learning.