from Jay Cross and Internet Time Group

At DevLearn, many people lamented the difficulty of explaining the benefits of social media to their managers and peers. We talked about building a repository of web 2.0 learning applications. It turns out that my pal Jane Hart has already done it for us!

Jane mined the submissions of her delightful tools database and came up with 100+ ways to use social media for learning. She covers blogs, collaborative calendaring, podcasting, feeds, collaborative mind-mapping, microblogging, photo sharing, screencast sharing, presentation sharing, video sharing, social bookmarking, collaborative editing and working and presentations, social networking, personalized start pages, and integrated social/collaborative environments.

Each entry is tied to a tool and a description of how it’s used.

Don’t go yet: there’s more. Next, Jane details using social media for different types of learning. She describes the learning intervention and then classifies it in one of these categories:

1. IOL – Intra-Organisational Learning – how social media can be used to keep the employees up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives and activities
2. FSL – Formal Structured Learning – how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within formal education and training
3. GDL – Group Directed Learning – how groups of individuals – teams, projects, study groups etc – can use social media to work and learn together (Note: a “group” could be as small as 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)

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

Thanks, Jane, for making life easier. This is awesome.

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