Tech4learning

The Social Media Handbook

A tip off from Amazon.com led me to order a new book from the UK website, based purely on the title and a very brief synopsis.  So when it arrived, not really sure what I was going to get, I was intrigued by The Social Media Handbook.

It's a large book, just over 500 pages and larger than A4 - more like a musical score in size, or one of those popular "games that trainers play" volumes.  Flicking through the book I saw pages and pages of footnotes and references and some interesting "font" discrepancies in places, alongside a variety of graphics in different "house styles".  Was this the result of a student project?  Then I studied the preface and rear cover and realised this was a true collaborative effort.  To quote directly from the text:

Topic relevant selected content from the highest rated Wiki entries, typeset, printed and shipped, combine the advantages of up-to-date and in-depth knowledge with the convenience of printed books.

So the many short and easy to follow chapters, with their frequent references and links to related sources of information, are in fact pieces of content from other digital sources, interpreted and assimilated into a paperback book.

The "handbook" is really a digest of a wide variety of social media tools.  Starting with a series of "articles", the contributors discuss the main themes of social media from "user generated content" through to blogging, wikis and "crowdsourcing", which was a new on on me.

The following sections highlight some of the most popular and not so well known tools in the categories of Communication, Collaboration and Multimedia, Reviews and Opinions and Entertainment.  For each tool, there is a summary table, followed by what can only be described as Wikipedia-like narrative.

You get quick tours and background information to tools such as Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; and Ning, Plaxo and Meetup.com.  You can read up on Wikipedia, Wetpaint and Delicious and learn more about Google Reader and Digg.  Flickr, YouTube and last.fm are also featured, along with Epinions and Yahoo! Answers.  Finally, you can look further into Second Life, The Sims Online and Forterra Systems.

If you're researching social media and their use for learning and development, then this is probably a good starting point.  The contributors have certainly done a lot of the groundwork for you. 

Learning Transfer - More Than A Cameo Role

I've written a few times about my interest in using technology to empower the learning transfer process.  Full-service learning follow-through tools such as Action Plan Mapper and Friday5s offer a powerful solution to the problem of how to ensure that learning is put into practice back in the workplace.

At a more simplistic level, many of us have used e-mail as a way to keep in touch with learners and to either remind them of key points from the training or encourage them to keep plugging away at their action plans.

Last week, I received my first demonstration in the UK of a new e-mail based tool that sends out short single-question scenario-based assessments that encourage each learner to reflect on the learning received and apply that to a specific situation, by responding to say three possible options.

The Cameo tool automatically bounces back an e-mail containing feedback based on the answer given by the learner and within that feedback you can include links to other related resources to provide reinforcement and additional learning opportunities

The easy-to-use interface allows the trainer to set up a series of questions to be automatically sequenced at regular user-defined intervals and sent out to each group based on a trigger date, most usually the date of the classroom course or e-learning module.  The system's database keeps a close eye on the responses received, can chase in a number of ways those that miss a message and reports the overall performance of the group, helping to provide evidence of the levels of participation and learning reinforcement.

A short demonstration helps to show the entire process.

And if, like me, you wondered if an e-mail based system would work given the bulging in-boxes most of us have, apparently one client - with similar concerns - reported an impressive 95% participation rate.

Launched in the US last autumn, a second version of the software is heading our way in a few weeks's time.  Future enhancements, I understand, may include the ability to integrate the tool into your own LMS.

I like the simplicity of the approach, which tackles the issues of retaining knowledge after a training event, the need for application of learning on the job and preparing learners to meet the challenges ahead through scenario-based questioning.  With Blackberries and iPhones in the pockets of some learners, then this platform also provides a form of m-learning.

Notching Up Ning

Ning just got better!

A while ago I posted a review of the new Ning for Dummies book and commented how this book gave lots of useful pointers to using this popular tool to create learning communities.

Well, a few days ago, Ning announced that they had added over 90 app-like widgets to the tool, so-called Ning Apps.  So I thought I'd take a look at some of them to see how they could be used to create further learning opportunities for site members.

In summary, there are five main categories of Ning App:

1. Collaboration
2. Communication
3. E-Commerce
4. Fun and Games
5. Fundraising

I started off by looking at those that concentrated on collaboration.

As well as Google Docs and the many programs that make up the Zoho range, I particularly liked the VoxBox application.  This application produced by a company called Sapplica enables you to:

• Create suggestion topics and solicit suggestions
• Allow community members to add suggestions and rate on suggestions
• Create polls and participate in polls

Staying with polling, there's an app version of PollDaddy, a comprehensive polling and survey tool.

Encouraging community contribution of material found on the web and then appraising it, is facilitated by the NewsShare app, a version of Slinksetwhich allows your network to share and rate what's interesting online. Your members submit, rate and discuss all the new and interesting links they find. The result is a source of all the best news and content from around the web according to your community.

The last app to catch my eye in this category was ClackPoint.  ClackPoint (currently in beta) provides live audio, video and text chat for your social network. Users can call in either directly from the web page, or by using a telephone and entering a PIN (with both US and UK phone numbers).

In the area of communication, there are video-based chat group chat rooms from Zorap and Tokbox, amongst other chat services.

If you run paid-for events for your community, then you might like the EventBee app, which enables you to offer a complete end-to-end event management service.

Now I know that offering games and puzzles on websites can generate a lot of activity, whether or not you regard the games as part of the learning experience.  So if you think the same, there are six pages of apps in this category including both word and number puzzles.  You can even create your own virtual world within your Ning site - SmallWorlds.

Thinking about it, even if you don't have a Ning site, some of these apps and their parent products would offer a good range of e-learning tools.