My First Thoughts/Impressions:
Thank you Facebook. Now every time an organization hears ‘social learning’ they think Facebook, or Social Media – then panic. Social learning was the centre of learning culture in Ancient Greece – the Socratic method was born from social learning! It is about collaboration and the sharing of knowledge (for the learning theory, I like Albert Bandura http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html.) However, love it or hate it, I have to accept that social learning is (or has already) become synonymous with social media. Joining Twitter and Pinterest (my new addiction!), was an eye opener – the amount of social and informal learning is incredible.
My Pinterest page on Social Learning:
https://www.pinterest.com/schouten2075/social-learning/
The Big Aha!
“We have already seen that social media is a very different beast from normal enterprise tools, particularly because it is being used at the grass roots rather than being implemented top-down by the organization” Jane Hart
source: http://c4lpt.co.uk/learning-resources/social-learning-handbook/social-learning-strategies/.
This is a wonderful article with many salient points, however my biggest aha! this module centred around her use of the word ‘grass roots’. This is a dangerous word for many organizations – especially in 2017. Grass roots is from the bottom up – NOT the top down, difficult for business leadership to accept in my mind Grass roots politics led to the Brexit’s and Trumps of the world. Dangerous things can happen on Social Media – so for many, dangerous things can happen with allowing social learning on Social Media.
However, at this point, you might as well try to hold back a Tsunami with a wall built of sand.
My Most Favourite New Things:
And…
Also a nice tidbit on Social Learning trends for 2017
https://elearningindustry.com/7-trends-expect-social-learning-in-2017