Archive for the ‘Social Learning’ Category

Leap Year Lesson #69: Twitter is the Most Important Learning Resource on the Planet

Posted: March 10, 2012 in Learning, Social Learning, Social Media & Learning
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For the past year I have been telling people that I learn more from Twitter than from any other resource. The reason is because of the insightful comments and the host of links to other resources like articles, blogs, reports, videos, research, etc. Most of the learning isn’t in the 140 characters themselves, but in what they point to.

For this to work, you need to follow insightful people who can point you to resources you would never discover on your own. Start with a few key people and gradually increase the number of people you follow. Follow some of the people they follow. Create lists of followers grouped by some topic area that binds them together, and focus on reading the tweets on a list if time doesn’t allow for reading everything.

What brings me to the lesson for today is my experience the past two days at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. The most valuable thing in the goodie bag given us at registration was a little pocket guide of all the sessions scheduled. Every session has printed in the guide the twitter hashtag for the session. For example, the hashtag for the session “Your Brain on Multitasking” was #SXmultitask. With dozens of sessions going on simultaneously, it is impossible to attend all you want to attend. So what do you do? Search Twitter after the session for the hashtag of the sessions you missed. I promise you will still get the main takeaways by doing this, although you certainly miss out on the detail and conversation around the topic. Still, it’s a way to attend without attending.

That is incredibly powerful, and it is fortunately becoming the norm around the globe at gatherings large and small.

If you do not yet use Twitter in this way (or at all), then you are missing out on the most powerful learning tool/resource/environment anywhere. It’s a game changer for learning and I hope so-called learning professionals “get it” and embrace it before the rest of the world passes them by as irrelevant.

Leap year lesson #69 is Twitter is the most important learning resource on the planet.

2012 – New Beginnings

Posted: January 1, 2012 in Learning, Online Communities, Social Learning, Social Media
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Like much of the rest of the world on January 1, I can’t help but reflect on the past and look forward to the future. When I think of this blog and where I’d like for it to go, there are two major things I can do to improve.

  1. Be more consistent. 16 posts in 2011 was a poor start. I can do better.
  2. Be brief. Just because I like writing a lot doesn’t mean readers always want to read long posts.

When I think about the blog I read more than any other – Rich Millington’s “The Online Community Guide” – consistency and brevity are major factors in my growing admiration of what he does there, in addition, of course, to the excellent content.

Since part of my plan for organizing my life this year involves more intentional time daily to reflect, and since it’s a leap year, I thought I would embark on 366 days of capturing brief lessons learned and documenting them here. They will most often relate to some aspect of my professional life as an online community moderator/manager and social media/social learning enthusiast. But I reserve the right to interject a few personal lessons along the way as well. So consistency this year means 366 daily posts, and just to put a number on brevity, each of the lessons will be stated in no more than 366 words (hopefully far fewer).

Join me for the adventure. Maybe we’ll learn from each other.

Happy new year!

The Social Media & Learning Daily

Posted: July 7, 2011 in Learning, Social Learning, Social Media, Social Media & Learning
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Social Media & Learning DailyEach day about 3pm Eastern Time a new edition of my “Social Media & Learning Daily” comes out online at http://paper.li/jeffkross/smlearning. As is the case with all “papers” at http://paper.li, it’s automatically generated from links in tweets of selected people I follow on Twitter and who I have listed on a social media and learning list at https://twitter.com/JeffKRoss/smlearning. I keep the list of contributors fairly small (currently at 37) and focused on social learning and very closely related topics.

You are welcome to visit the paper and check it out. You’ll find a subscribe button near the top right if you’d like to be notified via email daily when the new edition is available. There is also a calendar icon on the right where you can select any prior date and view a previous edition from the archives.

And don’t think that the articles initially visible are all that each edition has to offer any more than the front page of a printed newspaper contains everything it has available. A “See all articles” link near the top right will provide a full list of all articles in that day’s edition.

Time is a precious commodity for all of us. We can’t spend all the time we might like perusing tweets of trusted sources. A paper like “The Social Media & Learning Daily” can help you glean from some of the best in the field of social learning.

So check it out at http://paper.li/jeffkross/smlearning and look over the names of the people who make up the list of possible contributors at https://twitter.com/JeffKRoss/smlearning. If you want to suggest other worthy contributors, then add a comment with their name and Twitter handle and I will check them out and consider the recommendation.

Enjoy!

Worth Retweeting (week ending 5/7/2011)

Posted: May 15, 2011 in Collaboration, Community Management, Learning, Professionalism, Social Learning, Social Media, Social Media & Learning
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Twitter logoI continue to be amazed at how much I learn each and every week from following key people related to the subjects of social learning, collaboration and community management. By taking the time to read the articles linked in their many posts, I am getting a better and more relevant education now on these subjects than by any other means past or present. Below are my 71 tweets I retweeted for the week ending 5/7/2011 plus one or two of my own. Enjoy!

2011-05-07 23:53:35
daily list of articles from links by people followed by @JaneHart of @C4LPT at http://paper.li/c4lpt

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Worth Retweeting (week ending 4/30/2011)

Posted: May 7, 2011 in Collaboration, Community Management, Learning, Social Learning, Social Media, Social Media & Learning
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Most of what I learn these days I learn via Twitter – not because of what is in the 140 characters themselves but mostly because of the articles and other content found in the links provided. If someone ever says to you “You can’t teach or learn something in 140 characters,” they are dead wrong. Follow the links. Feast on the filling, satisfying substance found there.

Below are 100 tweets I deemed worthy of retweeting from among the thousands perused for the week. I actually retweeted more than 100 for the week, but I’ll limit these blog summaries to 100. To see them all, you’ll need to go to my Twitter stream at http://twitter.com/jeffkross.  Enjoy.

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