The AIM of Social Media & Web 2.0

Yesterday I gave a presentation entitled The AIM of Social Media & Web 2.0: Who? What? How? to a wonderful academic organization, The City University of New York (CUNY) Creative Arts Team (CAT).

Social Media & Web 2.0

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

As an alumnus of Hunter College (part of the CUNY system), I have always had a fondness for public higher education institutions that seek to bring creative and positive change to people here in NYC.

I adjusted the focus that I have seen others do in presenting and promoting social media and Web 2.0, in part because I am an instructional designer obsessed with needs analysis and a management communications adjunct instructor who completely focuses on everybody’s WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?).

Thus, I spent time discussing how important it is to understand your audiences’ WIIFMs, clearly articulating your objectives in reaching them, and then (and only then) considering the social media options that will best help you deliver your message.

I think it is useless for organizations to dive into social media / social networking without doing their pre-work. I wonder if anybody else takes this approach?

Where Is Learning 2.0?

There are some interesting discussions that are occurring around the edublogosphere right now about corporate learning vs. edupunk. I just commented on items that Gina and Tony discussed, with their thoughts partly in response to Jim’s and recent thinking about edupunk ideology. As an aside, all three of their blogs are well worth reading for different perspectives on Learning 2.0 (and if I may, Jane is also doing some interesting work in this area).

In a nutshell, they are all discussing corporate and academic learning using Web 2.0, which is (oversimplified, I know) fundamentally what Learning 2.0 is all about. While we can debate the hows and whys of this, I am more immediately interested in the wheres right now. Where is all this happening? I struggle to get my graduate and undergraduate students to use Twitter, a wiki, del.icio.us, and a host of other technologies, and while some do adopt them, most are not interested in anything other than what they are already using (which, once again in a Nutshell, means YouTube, and to a lesser extent, Facebook). In my corporate work, the issue is similar–many people struggle even using internal podcasts, much less blogs or anything Ajax-based. It would seem short-sited to only use what students already use (somewhat like teaching them only what they are already comfortable doing, which would even more limit education, but I digress).

Where are these teaming populations busting at the seems to use corporate and educational Web 2.0 elements in learning? I live and work and consult primarily in Manhattan, and this is where most of my learners are as well.

I am wondering if the questions we are considering are perhaps too limited. Perhaps we should be asking “where?” these learners are, as I am wondering if these social and networking and learning and sharing technologies out there are not more proliferate in less demographically busy areas, such as New York? Can it be that Web 2.0 is more popular where people are not so concentrated, due to necessity? Thinking pragmatically, why should I take an eLearning class when we have enough people and expertise for face to face instruction? Why should I post to a discussion board when we can discuss it face to face in class (which is how most NYC academic institutions seem to prefer to operate)? Do I really need to post my pictures when I see all of you and can send you a link? Doesn’t RSS work better when I don’t readily have access to what I need?

Thinking about this in another way, how many people do I follow and speak with on Twitter who live near Manhattan? How about the bloggers I follow (as I heavily use RSS to process the information overload I face), are they also here? With exceptions to be counted on less than one hand, the answer is no.

Yes, I am intentionally taking a contrarian position here, and those who know and work with me know I have a passion for integrating technology so thoroughly into learning that they are no longer seen as parts of a whole, but just “learning.” Instead, I am hoping to move this discussion forward by considering another element I think we need to more actively consider.