Whether in everyday life or in a corporate environment, learning is an ongoing process. For knowledge workers, much of it happens online; in structured contexts, all of it happens online (or at a computer). Perhaps because so much of our work is done online, “learning” and “productivity” today are closely linked ideas. Many tools can be called learning tools or productivity tools, almost interchangeably.
Most of the popular, non-specialised ones—for example, Twitter, Google Reader—are free. Still, many people haven’t begun to use them only because no-one around them has. Here’s a gentle introduction to software that any knowledge worker should be aware of, along with a good tutorial for each.
The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (c4lpt.co.uk) compiles a list of the top hundred learning tools each year. Among the top hundred for 2009 are Delicious, a social bookmarking tool; Google Reader; Slideshare; Scribd; Wikispaces, for easily creating wikis; Ning, for private social networking; and Jing, a screen capture tool. Of the top 100, these deserve particular mention because of their immediate utility, and because they should be used more often than they are!
Delicious
Powerful, simple social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a powerful idea for anyone who uses the Internet. Here, let’s look at the idea within the context of learning, with Del.icio.us as the example.
Del.icio.us, or just “Delicious”, was the first really popular social bookmarking service. Apart from the “social” aspect, it can also be used for individual bookmarking. This offers the convenience of all bookmarks in one place, accessible online; also, bookmarks can be tagged with keywords, so one can search for topics of interest instead of searching for individual bookmarked sites.
The “social” aspect of Delicious comes from tags, and because one’s set of bookmarks is visible to others. The tags that you use briefly describe the site you’re bookmarking. Here’s roughly what happens:
- You are interested in online learning, and many of your bookmarks have the tags “online,” “learning,” and “education.”
- Someone on the Internet, who you don’t know, is also interested in online learning. His bookmarks have the tags “learning,” “education,” and “open courseware.”
- When you log on to Delicious, you can see his bookmarks, because there are some common tags.
- So you see the tag “open courseware.” This is something you hadn’t heard of. You continue browsing, and you hear about MIT Open Courseware.
- Then you notice that you and the other person have many interests in common, and you look at all of his bookmarks. Quite a few of them turn out to be valuable.
- Similarly, your colleague might look at your bookmarks, and discover new and interesting topics.
Thus, topics of interest become linked on Delicious. As a result, it is easy to expand the scope of your research.
More importantly, this can done as a group activity, which makes social bookmarking a powerful idea in learning. For example, a project team may have some areas of immediate interest, perhaps “using photo editing software,” “applying effects to pictures,” and “archiving digital images.” As and when team members find sites of interest, they bookmark them on Delicious with the appropriate tags; this builds a growing library of shared resources. No instructor is needed; the team, based on current knowledge needs, builds its own library. Since individuals use the library and also actively contribute to it, the knowledge system is dynamic and always current.
As of mid-2010, the most popular social bookmarking tools are Delicious and Diigo, with Diigo having more features.
URLs
Tutorials
http://www.mnstate.edu/instrtech/SCModules/Delicious.com/delicious/index.html
(Delicious)
http://www.mnstate.edu/instrtech/SCModules/Diigo/Diigo.html
(Diigo)
Google Reader
All your Web information sources at one location
Google Reader has been around for many years now. Everyone uses Gmail, but not too many use Reader—preferring to type in the URLs of regularly visited sites.
Think of someone who checks two news sites, three company blogs, and two recreational sites, on a daily basis. The person visits each site more than once a day, either typing in the URL each time, or using bookmarks. Both ways are inefficient and wasteful. Much more than that, the person is limited to a small set of potential information sources.
When you first sign in to Google Reader:
- Based on recommendations from Google, you can find sites similar to the few that are already on your list. Over time, you’re likely to arrive at the “best” sources.
- There’s no need to keep track of which items you’ve read and which need to be looked at; Reader does the job of keeping track.
- For all information needs, you need to go to only one place.
- Updates—from all your favourite sites—are reflected in Reader, so there’s no chance of missing out on an interesting or important development.
- You can see what others have been reading, and vice-versa. This is useful in an organizational context: it’s very likely that something of value to one person will be of value to the others.
Using Reader is simple enough. After signing in to Google and clicking “Reader”, one’s regular sites can be manually added. From that point on, new items from those sites will appear in the Reader page (just like new mail appears in Gmail!)
URL: http://www.google.com/reader/view/
Tips/Tutorial: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/google-softwaretips/google-reader-tutorial/
Slideshare
Sharing presentations related to professional pursuits
Slideshare is primarily a community site for sharing presentations, though various document types can be shared. It calls itself a “business media” site, which indicates the emphasis on the professional community. Slideshare is a free library of presentations on many topics, which any person or organization can add to.
Here are some typical scenarios where using Slideshare makes sense:
- You deliver a presentation, and a few people in your group miss it. After uploading your presentation to Slideshare, you can send them just one URL, and they can watch it. (People from other organizations might end up watching it, too, if it’s good!)
- You want to explain your latest idea to a group. You might conduct a personal session for that purpose, or maybe you find a good online walkthrough. Instead, you could use Slideshare. A Slidecast is a presentation that you create online, where you can include your own audio. (All you need is a microphone!)
- Some presentations are better than others. If you’ve ever said “I attended a good presentation,” then you know how useful it would be if it were available online. At Slideshare, you can search for presentations on a topic; the ones that the community enjoyed most show up on top.
- The site has the now-familiar features of social networks, meaning you can make connections with people, generate leads for your business, and so on.
We know how useful presentations can be, and we also know about the unpleasant overheads: the amount of formatting, too much data, repeated pages, irritating slide transitions, and so on. Think of Slideshare as PowerPoint presentations without the noise.
URL: http://www.slideshare.net/
Help/Tutorial: http://slideshare.zendesk.com/forums/67662-faq-getting-started
Scribd
Sharing documents of all types
What Facebook is to social networking, Scribd is to document sharing. It’s a free library, like Slideshare, but the emphasis is on non-copyrighted e-books on all topics, including original writing. It calls itself a “social reading” site.
The social aspect of Scribd is especially strong because the attention span for reading even a short e-book is much more than that required to read online comments, for example, or to watch a presentation. When one person on Scribd “subscribes” to another, it often means a substantial time investment. For the same reason, the motivation to upload high-quality content on a particular theme is stronger.
The statistics visible for each user can give an idea about the person’s credibility and reputation. You can see how many documents a user has uploaded, how many people have subscribed to that user, and so on.
The immediate utility in learning is obvious. Say you find an e-book on Scribd, and it is 90 pages long. Most of it is interesting. You’d like three friends to read the same e-book, but they don’t have the time. You can give them the URL of the book, and simply say “read pages 61 to 63”! Your friends can read just those three pages, and decide for themselves if they’d like to read more.
Tutorial: http://www.scribd.com/doc/27903838/Scribd-Tutorial
Wikispaces
Keeping group information in sync and visible
The idea of a wiki is just this much: A wiki is a webpage that anyone can edit. This is very useful in the context of social learning. Imagine this scenario: A group is taking a course on language editing. There are some standard course materials, and members have also been encouraged to share online material that they find relevant. So a central location for information would be very nice. Also, people need to keep track of the information that others have found.
With Wikispaces, each person gets to see one main page, which can hold information like the course schedule, current activity, and so on. Each member has a page that they write their own notes to.
Any page can be edited by anyone in the group, so:
- If the course schedule changes, or if there is an update that the group should be aware of, someone can edit the main page. This keeps things current.
- Suppose one team member researches a topic and adds relevant information on his wiki page. Someone else on the team discovers that some of this information needs to be corrected. The corrections can be done directly on the wiki of the first team member. This avoids the problem of back-and-forth e-mailing.
- Whatever a team member wants to add to a page—be it a related topic, a comment, a suggestion, or anything else—it can be done on the same page, without the need for a separate comment list (or a different discussion page). This keeps it clean and simple.
- Wikispaces maintains the history for each page, so you can look at who edited what. Also, you can compare versions. This means there’s no confusion.
There are a whole lot of functionalities, but simply speaking, members of a project group with a Wikispaces account need to go to just one URL for all current information from members, and about members and their activity.
URL: http://www.wikispaces.com/
Help/Tutorial: http://help.wikispaces.com/#Intro
Ning
Your own social network
On its site, Ning says it is “the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create their own social network.”
Almost everyone uses social networking sites like Facebook. They’re much more often associated with Fun than with Serious Collaboration. Bringing these together is Ning, which allows you to create your own social network. An intuitive concept, really. If your team has 25 members, free access to Facebook (for example) might be perceived as a drain on productivity. At the same time, you want your team to stay connected. The answer is Ning. Set up an account, ask team members to join, and you have “your company’s Facebook” in minutes.
Ning is not free, but for up to 150 members, the cost is less than Rs 150 per month.
Looking at the less obvious features:
- You can make your network public (people outside your organisation can view and communicate with your team members), or you can keep it for members only.
- Content and status updates can (optionally) be shared across the Internet, for example, with the Facebook and Twitter networks.
- You can choose what questions members are asked about themselves, what information is mandatory and what is optional, and so on.
- The inbuilt chat feature is convenient for across-the-organisation or across-the-team communication. People don’t need to sign in to various IM clients.
URL: http://www.ning.com/
Help/Tutorial: http://hubpages.com/hub/whatisning
Jing
Use screenshots, don’t explain!
This is more a productivity tool, but it can be explicitly used as a learning tool, too.
People often spend quite some time on IM or on the phone explaining what’s happening on their screen, or how to use a software. Some people do use screenshots for the purpose, but sending a screenshot via e-mail is almost always inefficient. As a side-effect, when something computer-related needs to be explained, people avoid the screenshot method even though it’s the most intuitive. Jing changes this. Here’s how it works:
- You keep Jing running in the background.
- Then, suppose you’re on chat with a friend. You need to show him a part of your screen. You click a button on Jing and a rectangle appears.
- You drag the rectangle to cover the part of the screen that you want to capture.
- You click a Jing button again, and then do a Paste in the IM window. A link gets pasted.
- The person you’re chatting with clicks on the link and sees your screenshot!
It really is as simple as that, even though there are other ways to use Jing for the same purpose. Plus, there’s more you can do with the software. If you haven’t used screenshots in conversations, you’ll know how useful Jing can be only when you try it!
URL: http://www.jingproject.com/
Tutorial: http://www.spcollege.edu/CriticalThinking/documents/2009FallCTI/WestbergGordonHoopesJing.pdf
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