I just finished a draft of the "Why eLearning 2.0?" essay I'm contributing to the eLearning Guild's upcoming 360 report on social media and learning. Working on it got me thinking about one of the key concerns people have about integrating Web 2.0 into the enterprise--privacy and confidentiality concerns. One of the things I hear a lot is that organizations fear that use of social media means that all of... Read more →

In a comment on last week's post, Social Media Apps I've Tried to Love but Can't, Kevin Gamble said: Maybe you should have written a post on what you do use. You've crossed off all the biggies. What's left? On one level, Kevin makes a good point--that is, it makes sense for me to share the social media apps I DO love to use. But on another level, I think... Read more →

Chris Brogan has given me permission to choose the social media tools that work for ME and I have to say it's a relief. I've been feeling guilty about not being able to get into these: Twitter--sorry Britt, Bud and Jeff, you had me convinced to give Twitter a shot, but it never quite did it for me. For one thing, I have online ADD and to get anything from... Read more →

Here in the U.S., tomorrow is the 4th of July, Independence Day, the anniversary commemorating when the 13 American colonies declared their independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. This morning I started thinking about how things might have gone down if the colonists had access to social media. Here's what I'm thinking: Jefferson and Adams would probably have been Twittering about King George--the "bill of particulars" in the Declaration... Read more →

Via Christine Martell at Blog Cascadia comes this learning framework from Ray Jimenez on choosing social media for learning. It's based on Ray's reading of Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. Ray points out that the tendency in using social media for learning is to force creator status on everyone: The tendency in early adoptions of social networking in learning is the over emphasis on learners... Read more →

Massive list posts ("50+ Ways to Use Flickr," "100 Social Media Resources", etc.) seem to be a really popular format. I know that I myself am attracted to them, bookmarking almost every one I see because the sheer quantity of items seems to indicate that it must be useful. But this morning I was thinking that these kinds of posts, while attractive, are not necessarily very helpful, particularly for newbies.... Read more →

Jen of @injenuity is feeling frustrated with Ning: It pains me to say this, but I am no longer a fan of Ning for community building. It has been a year since I created my first site, a network for moms that has grown to 200 plus members, but I have no time to maintain. The network I created for faculty at my campus plugs along, but isn’t functioning the... Read more →

For the past few days I've been deep into thinking and learning about homophily, our tendency to connect to people who share similar backgrounds, experiences, interests and values. I've been excited to see a conversation beginning to occur both here in comments and at other blogs. It's interesting to see the conversations evolve and new pieces being added to the puzzle. As I continue my reading, discussions and thinking, I've... Read more →

I learned a new word this week--"homophily," which is the tendency for people to associate and bond with others who share their interests, values, culture, demographics, class etc. This is the all-too-familiar online behavior I was remarking on earlier this week in my post on 21st century workplace literacy. There I noted that it seems like edubloggers tend to associate online with other edubloggers, while the workplace learning folks are... Read more →

Although I only dabble in Twitter and seem to go through periods of on again/off-again posting to Tumblr, I know that many social media denizens are addicted to several microblogging tools. If you're one of these, then you might want to check out HelloTxt, which allows you to post to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook, Plaxo, Tumblr and several other microblog sites with a single click. But, as Aliza Sherman points... Read more →