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“Historically, the learning community has stayed away from informal learning and social learning, and that is where most of the learning is taking place,” ASTD CEO Tony Bingham said during an interview promoting his new book, The New Social Learning, with co-author Marcia Conner. “We now have the tools, and the catalysts, to engage [employees] with that kind of learning. I think that is going to help the learning community take it to the next level.”  

An ASTD and Institute for Corporate Productivity study made a strong business case for using social media to enhance productivity. Millennials found social media tools more helpful in terms of learning and getting work done than Generation X workers or Baby Boomers. More organizations dabbled in social media during 2010, using shared workspaces, social networks, and wikis to deliver learning and development.   “The next generation of workers coming into organizations will demand the ability to work in ways they’ve already found to enable success,” wrote Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd in a July 2010 T+D article. “If the learning function does not step up to the task, some other department in the organization will, and the learning function will become irrelevant.”

As Daniel Pink wrote in The New Social Learning foreword, social learning will not replace training and employee development, “but it can accomplish what traditional approaches often cannot … [It] can supplement instruction with collaboration and co-creation, and in doing so, blur the boundary between the instructor and the instructed. … It can bring far-flung employees together into new communities in which they can not only learn from one another, but also fashion new offerings for customers. In short, social media can change the way your company works.”  

one component of mobile implementation is lecture podcasts, which allow students to consume much of the information typically delivered in the classroom on their own time and in their own dorm rooms.The idea is to free up teachers during class time for interacting with students and working through problems, a concept known as “flipping the classroom.”

In a pilot project of the book, students preferred the book over their traditional textbooks (no assessments were taken to see if BioBook resulted in deeper understanding). A final version of the book, which will be piloted at four universities starting in September, will include analytics, multimedia, short quizzes and other options for teachers to interact with students.

Such experiences may point the way to how personal learning environments will evolve in the future. The PLE will not be one application running on the desktop or in a web browser. Rather, it will be multiple applications running on may different devices. It is also important to understand that learners will use different devices in different contexts and for different purposes. The PLE will be based on networks of people with whom learners interact, they may adapt a particular tool for communication and interaction in a particular context but then cease to sue that tool when that context has passed. In previous projects linked to mobile learning we have tended to focus on how to transmit standardised learning materials and applications to different platforms and devices. The PLE will be comprised of not only all the software tools, applications and services we use for learning but the different devices we use to communicate and share knowledge.

We focused on providing just-in-time resources, in the context of work situations not easily predicted, rather than longer duration, more tightly targeted and structured instructional programs.

the screen is bigger, which makes a huge difference in how we can display informational and instructional content.

the most important game-changer is that the iPad, and other devices to follow, are designed to be “always on,” or “always connected;” the intent being that you always have access to the Internet (of course this may not be practically true yet, but it certainly is the goal).

Expecting students to write in our classrooms for hit-or-miss praise is criminal. Their nimble fingers can text an entire piece of writing via their mobile device to a relevant audience online at the same time they publish to a worldwide network. For them, the pay is in the joy of publication, in the act of making their work known, and of partaking of the work of others.

Take advantage of over 20 digital tools for students (Sidebar #2 - Digital Tools for Students).

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