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Social learning has taken on a kind of religious fervor among learning practitioners during the past couple of years—and not without good reason. It often creates more powerful and enduring learning experiences; it helps people establish and leverage social connections to accelerate the distribution and sharing of experiences, content, and guidance; and it allows learners to be more productive, learn faster, and work smarter.

it’s easy to lose focus on what matters, and to assume the end game is the technology

A social learning strategy should paint a compelling picture of the future state, clearly articulate the business case for change, and outline the roadmap for how you will get from “here” to “there” (including what must change, stop, and continue)

as a learning tool, the iPad’s single-screen interface reduces elements of interruption and potentially enhances user orientation to a specific task. An abundance of features can be a disturbance to the cognitive process, and educators often prefer mobile devices without distractive features like messaging and phone calls.

Modern educators are voicing the need for learning to be more contextual and engaging. Mobile phones and digital whiteboards add a level of interactivity, but not a lot of computing power, and a laptop is not always convenient.

The iPad fills this gap by enabling a host of activities such as referencing, collaborating, and creating content. In an August 2010 Wired.com article, “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet,” the transformation from open Web browsing to specialized apps was a change driven by the Apple model of mobile computing. The iPad leverages this trend by providing personalized choice of content, a big plus for student users.

The reality is that developing mobile solutions, whether for learning or another purpose, requires a significant investment in technology and skills, either or both of which the current HR or learning department may not possess.

Given the ties mobile will have to the organization’s Web infrastructure, IT will want to have input to issues such as security, the devices involved, sharing of data, bandwidth, and customer support (who gets called when there is a problem), as well as a myriad of other issues.

First, be aware of the many groups that have a stake or interest in mobile development in general, not just mobile learning

In the industry right now – as we see in the Social Media for Learning report research data – there is considerable use of social media tools in instruction delivery efforts. But there’s less evidence that people are using the tools to support social learning. Often, people use social media tools as another means of delivering content. For example: Publishing the training department newsletter on a blog uto-scheduling tweets about class assignments from a Twitter account that does not otherwise engage with the learners or ask them to engage with each other Hosting a software application development course, in tutorial format, on a wiki By contrast, using social media to support and extend social learning invites learners to contribute, engage, and participate with one another online. For instance, when: Setting up a wiki for those in a new-hire induction program to work together to edit a FAQs page for use by the next group coming to the program Having managers-in-training use a microblogging tool for a leadership book-club discussion Helping to support and participating in a community of the organization’s customer service reps, to give them a place to share war stories and strategies for dealing with challenges           So just using the online tools to deliver content doesn’t support “social learning;” that happens when you use the tools to invite interaction from and between the learners. It’s about social, not media, and it’s about shared learning, not just pushing content.

Metadata is searchable by anyone, even in private mode Anyone who gets to it can download a video You may not be able to use the files as streamed by YouTube as they’re usually in an MP4 format Possibly not great for streaming to a tablet or phone