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n recent years, there has been explosive growth in students creating, manipulating, and sharing content online (National School Boards Association, 2007). Recognizing the educational value of encouraging such behaviors, many school leaders have shifted their energies from limiting the use of these technologies to limiting their abuse. As with any other behavior, when schools teach and set expectations for appropriate technology use, students rise to meet the expectations. Such conditions allow educators to focus on, in the words of social technology guru Howard Rheingold (n.d.), educating “children about the necessity for critical thinking and [encouraging] them to exercise their own knowledge of how to make moral choices." One process for creating the necessary conditions is reported in From Fear to Facebook, the first-person account of one California principal who endured a series of false starts to finally arrive at a place where students in his school were maximizing their use of laptops and participatory technologies without the constant distractions of misuse (Levinson, 2010). Other similar processes and programs are emerging, and they all share a common theme: an education that fails to account for the use of social media tools prepares students well for the past, but not for their future.

Open digital faculty do more than just share and participate in open resources; they transfer their approaches to the teaching space. Learning becomes a shared activity in which the students also collaborate and participate in shaping the course activities. Student participation takes place in open environments where students might tweet what they learn, share insights on a group blog, create their own website of resources, or participate in a class wiki.

The difference is that today's sharing facilitators leverage technology to reach a much wider audience.

Although the natural inclination toward sharing cannot be altered, the moral responsibility to share can be influenced by the surrounding culture. The sense of obligation to share or not to share may be similar to the decision to be a vegetarian. For some, it is a lifestyle choice that may form slowly over a long period of time after many conversations with friends and colleagues. For others, the change can be sudden: a paradigm shift caused by participation in an unusual event. If an institution places value on faculty participation in open academic communities and social media activities (e.g., academic blogging), that culture can slowly influence faculty to be more open.

Trainers and facilitators need to remember these numbers: 90, 20, 8, 6. 90 minutes is the ideal chunk of time for participants can learn and understand 20 minutes is how long participants can listen and retain information 8 minutes is the length of time you can talk for before before they stop listening. We are trained to focus for just eight minutes due to decades of TV watching, where ad breaks occur approximately every eight to ten minutes. 6 is the ideal number of times to present information to make sure a learner remembers the content.

the challenge for facilitators is to keep things changing so that learners’ RAS keep firing so they stay alert to the learning

short attention span

but with a conscious mindfulness of their strengths and weaknesses.

More than half of the world’s population is now on a social networks, and it's increasing everyday

The Internet, then, is great for spreading awareness and it can be quite powerful in terms of its impact as well.  Where it lacks, though, is the third element -- transformation.

1 – Encourage and support individuals’ and teams’ self-sufficiency to address their own learning and performance problems.

So here are 5 ways that L&D can become involved:

2 – Help develop autonomous workers

Educators say digital tools used both inside classrooms and outside schools in students' personal lives are having a mixed impact on students' academic and social development, according to two surveys released last week.

as there are many creative ways to cut costs, as well as to free resources that can be used with existing infrastructures.  Schools can utilize cost-effective lease purchase programs for computers, investigate the implementation of a Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) program, or promote the use of a plethora of free Web 2.0 tools.

Schools and classrooms do not, and will not, spiral out of control when we allow teachers the flexibility to take calculated risks to innovate with technology or permit students to learn using social media or their own devices.

One of the most powerful means of professional development is through the use of social media where educators can create their own Personal Learning Network (PLN) based entirely on their unique needs and passions.