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The Angry Birds Community: Social Learning Utopia?

The Angry Birds Community: Social Learning Utopia?

by on October 3, 2011 in Collaboration Tools, feedback, Game Mechanics, Informal Learning, Motivation, social learning, Video, YouTube

I’m not sure what it is about Angry Birds that made it so popular, but it works for me.  The game was introduced to me by my 10-year-old daughter, and we both seem to have the same (huge) amount of fun with it.

Angry Birds – the game – can certainly be used as a model for eLearning; it has all the attributes that make for effective game-based learning:  immediate rewards and feedback, increasingly challenging tasks, focus on action and decision-making.  Of course, actually creating effective eLearning with the same level of fun and excitement as Angry Birds would be a tall order, but it’s a worthy goal.

I’m interested in something more than Angry Birds’ gaming dynamics, though; I’m interested in the Angry Birds community.  We play Angry Birds on an Android phone – when we get stuck and click Hint, we are are transported to YouTube, where …

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Unearthing Diamonds in Twitter

Unearthing Diamonds in Twitter

by on September 23, 2011 in Collaboration Tools, Informal Learning, mobile learning, performance support, social learning, Social Media

First, I have to confess that I am not a Twitter pro. It was only about six months ago that I set up a “business” Twitter account, and I have only a few tweets and followers to my name. My monthly Twitter stats are embarrasing, at best. I’ve had several conversations with colleagues about Twitter that end in “I just don’t get it.”

I am starting to get it, though. Partly because I haven’t given up (I skim my Twitter feed almost daily). Partly because of a few Twitter users that I’ve been following.

My Twitter breakthrough came about a month ago — along with a surprising social learning lesson. As I was preparing a talk on the trends in social learning, I promptly turned to Twitter. It was at that point that I realized Twitter was my primary source for social learning and social media news. Within few daily tweets, I was beginning to understand the impact social learning and …

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The Key to Adoption of Collaboration Tools: Process Integration

The Key to Adoption of Collaboration Tools: Process Integration

by on September 15, 2011 in Collaboration Tools, social learning, Social Media, user adoption

Plenty has been written about why employees are slow to adopt enterprise collaboration tools.  Most opinions on the matter, however, don’t provide satisfying conclusions about why collaboration tools are so slow to gain traction in large organizations.  As with more traditional IT initiatives, the old “senior executive support” mantra is frequently cited as a key to successful user adoption.

For example, in a Klint Finley interview called Five Principles for Improving Social Enterprise Adoption, Yakabod CEO Scott Ryser cites the importance of “political juice.”  Ryser says:

You need a champion with clout, supported by a cross-functional team of people with a good mix of experience, credentials and authority.

While executive sponsorship may be important, it’s not enough.  In fact, executive support is a good example of what a logician might call necessary but not sufficient.

Certainly, it’s true that guidance like this from Ryser is valuable, along with …

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