Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/50188
IMPLEMENTING A SOCIAL LEARNING COMMUNITY have to be. Don't be afraid to try something new. Keep it simple and experiment. Start small, but start. If you aren't ready to go to your SharePoint development team and build a new learning portal, consider using one of the available free social media tools. Within your own training group start with these activities: • Practice adding status updates (two per day for 30 days). • Send links to articles you find interesting (like this one!). • Use polls to get consensus on how the group might use the social technology for learning. • Send a picture of your remote office (working from a bus, plane or at home). • Use hashtags to tag information for easy searching later ( , #SocLearn, #Off2010 or #Win7). Create tags that will make sense, and share them with others so everyone is using the same tags. • Praise colleagues for their daily contributions. Once you have worked with a social media tool within your training group, it's time to get your learners on board and start building that social learning community. BUILD A COMMUNITY A great starting place is to create a group within your social learning site of learners for your next training class. Add the learners to the group, and then introduce the learning objectives for the class. Ask them to reply back with a "like" or a comment. Encourage the group to share their experiences with the topic prior to the class. Send a link to any handouts or other relevant materials that will be helpful to them. During the class, thank the learners for their participation in the discussion group. Explain how they will be able to continue to connect with you and the other learners after the class. Take time to show the learners how to work with the social networking tool. Be sure to include instructions on how to create groups, share links and documents and upload pictures. The goal is to get them comfortable with the tool. Also, during the class, you should have the learners complete an action plan on how they will apply what they learned from the classroom topic in their work. Committing learners to learn more and use what they've learned is an important step in user adoption of technology. After the class, send an update to the group with a link to e-learning content that they can use to reinforce the skill. Once you know that someone has completed the e-learning, reinforce the behavior by providing praise. Others in the group will see that positive feedback, which could serve as a reminder that they need to review the e-learning as well. Consider sending the group extra practice exercises on the classroom topic. Challenge them to practice the exercise every day for a week. Give praise when they complete it. Ask the learners where they are on the action plans they committed to in class. You'll find that the participants will start to hold each other www.iltanet.org Tech Potpourri 31 e.g.