These guys keep crankin' 'em out. I love it! Social Networking is also Social Learning. I think deepest learning comes from human connections and Social Networking tools make it easier than ever to connect to the people you want to learn something from, or with whom you are willing to learn with, together, collaboratively. Before there was online social networking I remember reading business books about the power of the "rollodex": Important successful people ALWAYS had a massive rollodex. At the time I remember thinking about the dozen or so people that I had on a piece ...

I wrote this article back in November for Learning Technologies magazine. I'm placing it here as a matter of record and to note that social networking tools are clearly important to accelerating the (effective) learning process. --------------------------------- We are social animals by nature, so any technology that allows us to connect more efficiently and effectively with others will ...

The more and more I get into the OpenSource Learning project with the Masie Consortium, the more I see the incredible possibilities. XplanaZine has taken the social networking idea in the world of quiz creation . Cool! I hadn't thought of that yet. Multiple people helping to craft the perfect assessments instead of random content experts writing their own and trying to be tricky...or worse funny. I'm sure you all have taken a quiz where the last choice is always something completely off-the-wall, or goofy...Yikes, I've even written a few of those in my past. "According ...

... great social networking features that make it easy to share your knowledge and establish connections with others in your ... company but I am always looking for opportunities to gain more experience and LinkedIn is a great tool for this.

Jon Chase from Popular Science recently wrote an article on the etiquette of social networking sites . Ultimately, he is still pro-social networking sites, but he raises a lot of good points about the etiquette on these sites. Excerpt from the article... Once you've joined a social-network site and built up a profile, it becomes a free-for-all. Too many of us think it's perfectly reasonable to spam complete strangers into joining their network of "friends," with no ... with different social networking sites (plus receiving all of the "Great Saving" emails from any number of ...

I know there's a lot of social networking tools out there, but looking purely at the educational possibilities, I quite like the look of Infodit .  Intodit allows you to establish a group site with a combination of wiki and forum functionality. It does this without undue complication and I can see it being a great way of focusing attention on an educational topic or project. By the way, I joined the Coldplay fan group!

Last week I spoke at the Triangle OD Network's Annual Meeting. We were fortunate to have close to 100 folks show ... how OD professionals need to revisit their own practices and tools in order to keep pace with changes within the ... represented as nodes in a pervasive and persistent network that is aware of who they are; what they are capable of doing; and ... pouring content into people’s heads. It’s more practical to think of learning as optimizing our networks.” Optimized human intuition networks create a meaningful context within which content can be consumed and ...

Quenchmark is a user-generated website with topics, questions, and answers. Quenchmark is the new social networking tool for opinion polls, surveys, and data validation." ...

UMapper is the first universal web-based map authoring application. With UMapper you can create interactive flash maps and display them on your website or social network ...

Yammer is Twitter for businesses!  This is what they say about themselves: Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: "What ... accessed and referenced. Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never ... networks.

Power every page, blog or site with Tell-a-Friend and let your visitors reach their friends on email, IM  or social networks without leaving your site. Take a look at the video: Free, customisable widget - ...

I've just come across TwitKit , a Firefox extension to twitter in a sidebar.  I have BeTwittered installed on iGoogle, but this seems another great way to keep in touch and manage your network of friends. TwitKit also includes configuration options including refresh interval and colour schemes.  Here is a list of its features .

Questler is an informal learning network that enables you to reflect on your everyday learning with individuals that share your interests and quests. Quests in Questler are mini-blogs of information categorized into 6 types, Query, Observation, Discovery, Research, Media and Story. Each of those types represents an informal aspect to everyday learning.

FireStatus is a Firefox 3 extension that allows you to send status updates, notes and URL links simultaneously to multiple social networks and services, like Twitter, FaceBook and FriendFeed. It also displays updates from these services in notification popups, for a more "live" communication with your friends.

LinkedIn just launched a platform and SlideShare is one of the first apps to go live! With the SlideShare app you can display presentations on your LinkedIn profile, browse presentations from your network and find out what's going on with your connections For more information about the Slideshare app on LinkedIn and the others currently available, see the LInkedIn Learning ...

Million in Series A Funding . In case you've not seen introNetworks before, they provide tools that allow membership groups to network with each other based on common interests. You may have seen them before and will likely remember their scatter plot: There are other applications aimed at helping you to network at conferences: CMC Central - Tradeshow Appointments , Eveni Meeting Matching ExpoMATCH , eXtreme Networking , Introplus , Leverage Software , NetworkingMatch , and PowerMingle.com . I've both used some of these tools with different membership groups I belong to and ...

Nimbuzz offers a social interaction service combining presence, Instant Messaging, and VoIP. The  free application is available on the mobile, PC and Web, for (group)calling, instant messaging, location sharing, (group)chat, file sharing across popular IM communities, including Skype, MSN, GTalk, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GaduGadu, Jabber and Twitter, plus 23 social networks including Facebook and MySpace. Its vision is to promise complete connectivity via an all-in-one connection, from any device, from anywhere, to anyone for free.

... fringâ„¢ is a mobile internet service & community that enables you to access & interact with your social networks on-the-go, make free calls and live chat with all your fring, Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talkâ„¢, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!â„¢ and AIM®* friends using your handset's internet connection. fring will automatically log you into your favorite WiFi hotspots without you having to configure your WiFi access points each time. Easy to download and install.  All you need is a supported handset with internet connectivity and an internet data package or ...

Brightstorm is an online learning network for high school students. Each of the courses covers the core topics commonly taught in college high school subjects (e.g. Geometry, Algebra, Writing, etc) and are designed to support  students in classes where they need additional help in order reach their full potentiall. The courses are therefore inteded to complement in-school learning. Each course is broken into 10- to 20- minute video lessons divided by topic. A coursealso includes interactive quizzes, facts as well as materials like practice problems and study ...

A new version of ProProfs QuizSchool is available.  New features include: Brand new user interface, completely revamped for ease of use. Social sharing through customizable widgets which allow YouTube-style quiz embedding on any blog, e-learning system, and social networks like Facebook. Yahoo Flick r integration for a limitless image library for quizzes. Interesting aggregate analytics & trends reports, with precision down to a stored snapshot of each attempt. Google Maps integration for visualization of where quiz takers are located ...

Social Networks, the Next Educational Tool? : “At last year's Educause conference, in Seattle, educators pondered what to do about students' technology habits. Should they try to change them? Accept that they're here to stay? Try to co-opt them? A lot can change in a year. Many colleges seem to have moved on from the question of whether to follow students' lead on technologies they prefer, from Web-based e-mail to Facebook to text messaging. Now, the dilemma they ... management systems. We’re adding blogs, wikis, social networking, virtual worlds, and numerous other technologies ...

... agree with George around blogs being a great learning and networking tool. But, its quite a different thing from social networking tools. ... - Scaling the Social Web . The article tells us that various players are adding social networking features to their sites: A ... networking features to their online destinations, letting users create detailed Web identities, connect with people over ... networking features for a long time? Granted they are being enhanced, but still. And doesn't Flickr (images), ...

... networking tool meant that you somewhat had to get some feel for using a social network. And the messiness is somewhat ... and tools brought this home. And I think it's very interesting to see a formal learning experience using a social network ... Networks. Here are some thoughts on this topic, especially thoughts around social networks for learning. Starting with Social Networking was a blessing and a curse. Social networks have a tendency to be a bit messy. Virginia Yonkers told us - I would like to know how to manage the information flows in social networks. I have been part of Ning groups ...

Yesterday, the Top 10 Tools lists closed, so that I can finalise the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 - available shortly.  Here are the final contributors to the list: Karyn Romeis   - Karyn is an independent learning and development consultant operating under the name Learning Anorak.  Gabriela Grosseck -  Gabriela is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Social Informatics at the ... is a f ormer Primary School Deputy Headteacher, and now manages the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Network ...

... offices, social networking-style technologies are quickly becoming a very real possibility for even the most conservative ... occuring across the internet and how Communities of Practice are fast becoming the tool of choice for enhancing/improving DEEP learning within and across job business functions. There are many online technologies and tools that can begin ...

... linking and commenting on other folks content. This forms a big network of people linked first through content and eventually directly (in person or via social networking). Nancy raises the question of the fact that traditional online communities were bounded by the tool and the new big network is not contained within the tool. In re-reading the article, I ... most important, these Web 2.0 tools form an incredibly important part of how we'll establish our network in the future. ... me think about the new landscape created by Web 2.0 tools. Traditional online community mechanisms (email lists, ...

The guru is dead, long live the network - Inside Knowledge There are networks out there that are extremely influential, that do not have a single thought leader behind them. Performance support tool - Allison Rossett & Lisa Schafer A free web based performance support tool to help you determine if performance support is right for your project ... they may seem - can be wonderful, simple tools for presenting your ideas or recording the ideas of others. Quote of the week "Innovation takes place, when many normal people get access to the required tools and resources." ...

Operating Systems is interesting: The issue, and what social operating systems will resolve, is that today's tools do not recognize the "social graph"-the network of relationships a person has, independent of any given networking system or ... that we face right now that I described in Social Networking Entrepreneurial Opportunities on my SoCal CTO Blog ... with was the statement that: The essential ingredient of next generation social networking, social operating systems, is that they will base the organization of the network around people, rather than around content. First, I don't ...

... dull to know it. So please explain. I've tried out several social network tools and have had a similar reaction. I ... I just read David Warlicks' post - I Just Don't Get it Yet â€" Social Networks where he discusses his recent experience with several Ning generated social networks including: I've joined Library 2.0 , School 2.0 , and Classroom 2.0 ... people joined the network, I would join to be able to participate - but - that's not really going to happen. If you watched the Brandon Hall network fail or have participated in Elgg then it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise ...