How and where does most of our learning happens in our daily work life? The visualization above illustrates how intensively the learning process can be, as it can even happen in ordinary places such as the water cooler or the telephone. At our most common daily places and through our daily used tools is where expertise or experiences (tacit knowledge) are exchanged, and so this is also how and where ideas are raised, e.g. during discussions in places such as coffee houses.
Social media offers some powerful new ways of knowledge sharing, but hence its often asynchronous exchange, it has its limitations with many technical barriers. Everybody using Skype conference calls can tell a story about the technical constraints that this implies. The filter problem is not close to be solved. Services such as paper.li give the impression that we are rather accelerating the information overload.
Social media can reach far more people (e.g. Twitter) and is often the only choice for distance exchange. But can it seriously compensate face-to-face learning? The visualization shall show that knowledge management with social media can support or extend existing practice of sharing. But technology-driven communication has many barriers we need to be aware of. It is these barriers we need to focus on more.
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RT @ckreutz: A provocative post. How and where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://cxed.net/9UfP2t
RT @ckreutz: A provocative post. How and where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://cxed.net/9UfP2t
Where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://bit.ly/bcMw7P via @ckreutz
Chris – While I take your point about the limitations of social media as a means of exchanging tacit knowledge, especially an ephemeral media such as twitter, I’d add that where this gets interesting is in the intersection and combination of this media.
For example I’ve virtually engaged with people on twitter I otherwise might never have met, even in the town where I live. In some cases this has been followed up by meeting up in person, which has then led to a richer exchange and stronger relationship, which then also led to a greater depth of interaction even when we are subsequently using twitter.
So social media can be seen as a way to start knowledge sharing relationships or keep them going between face to face coffee house meetings.
So when are you coming to New York so I can meet you in person?
@Ian yes indeed social media can often only be a start for something more to come. To get inspired and get to know topics you have not heard before. But any level of more intensive learning is often not possible through social media. In contrary in a world with growing complexity social media is often fueling the information overload.
Personally I find Twitter has lost its networking potential, because there is so too much noise. I need way too much time to filter here relevant from irrelevant stuff.
Would be great to see you sometime.
Thank you for your post. Your graph is very useful in underscoring that Twitter, FaceBook and other social media are tools and not in and of themselves knowledge transfer. As tools they will work better for some people than for others. I share Ian’s experience that it has widened my (superficial or “first touch”) networks in ways that would not have been possible without it, but then it is up to me to decide how to deepen relationships from there.
Lost in all of the current focus on social media I believe is the bigger challenge of distance exchange and how we can develop ways for it to “compensate” in some way for face-to-face learning. Since the talk a decade or so that e-mail would replace the need for face-to-face meetings, we have discovered of course that electronic communications do not replace our human need to at some point meet face to face to deepen the relationship. But it will be incumbent on us in a resource limited world to find ways to reduce the carbon footprint that is continuously created and increased by those of us flying around the world to make it “a better place”.
How & where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media @ckreutz
http://cxed.net/9UfP2t via @ithorpe #SM
RT @UNGlobalPulse: Where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://bit.ly/bcMw7P via @ckreutz
RT @UNGlobalPulse: Where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://bit.ly/bcMw7P via @ckreutz
ECDPM: Where do we learn. Visualizing the limitations of social media. Crisscrossed blog. 9 November 2010. http://bit.ly/d6g50W
Where do we learn. Visualizing the limitations of social media. Crisscrossed blog. 9 November 2010.: H… http://cxed.net/9zhnbD #km4dev
Thanks for the provocative post, Christian.
I agree with Ian’s comment as I also have met with people thanks to Twitter and engaged in personal and professional relationships. And there are plenty of other people I have discovered this way and whom I’d like to meet with one day.
You do have a point that this information “tool” easily generates info overload. But then, I find it entertaining to “refine” my network, by making selections, based on people’s post content, frequency or just for the sake of changing randomly in order to leave room for people I would not usually connect to (I guess you could call it “purposely giving serendipity a chance”
Where do we learn – visualizing the limitations of social media http://bit.ly/cdhjvt
Knowledge Transfer. Visualizing socialmedia limitations http://ow.ly/39ZCj @TopsyRT Twitter great for info sharing but not for knowledge.
@ckreutz Was just looking for learning communities & social media. Very happy to come across your post here http://t.co/AHX8TKRw