A couple of comments to me this week are prompting this post. Someone in my senior management made a comment that I am very active in social media but I don’t really use it to learn. And someone on twitter asked me the question about EMC|ONE, (EMC’s internal social media site):

Here was my answer to that question:

But both of these questions got me thinking about my personal learning environment. Social media plays a huge role in how I learn these days. I’ve been comparing the way I use social media for learning to fishing. Let me explain what I mean.

Its like fishing

There are a few areas for which I am always looking for information:

• Education (for school and work)
• Management software, networking, SANs, etc (for work)
• Autism in adults (personal reasons)

I put out a line to lots of different places, hoping to get a nibble. If I have a project that creates a need to search for information on one of these topics, I just follow the line and look at all the information that has been gathered.

But sometimes there will be lots of activity on the line, so I will go and check on it to see what is going on in that space.

Here are the social media places I look for info:

Newsgator

I use Newsgator for my RSS aggregator. I follow lots of EMC folks, and lots of people who blog about our industry. I follow lots of edubloggers. I also follow lots of autism and Aspie bloggers.

I try to go check on this line at least once a week. But if I get busy, sometimes I forget to check the line.

Twitter

I use Tweetdeck to organize twitter. I follow a lot of folks, and I have them separated into groups like “work” and “edu”. I also have search columns for specific topics, and that is usually related to what is going on for that day. For instance, if there is a conference, I will have a conference tag column. If it is Thursday or Friday, I will have a #lrnchat column.

I can pay attention to tweetdeck more often than I do newsgator. Sometimes I will notice the people I am following are all talking about the same thing, or using the same tag. If I notice that, I’ll try and figure out what has captured everyone’s attention.

I also seem to come across information I need much quicker using my twitter network.

My Blog

I’ve written before about how I use my blog as reflective practice on what I am learning. I also learn quite a bit from the people who take the time to comment on my posts, or to link back to me.

EMC|ONE

At EMC we have an internal social media site known as EMC|ONE. It rides on the Clearspace platform. One way to manage the experience with Clearspace is to receive email notifications for the different spaces. There are several technical communities I follow. I don’t always interact in the community – sometimes I just watch for activity on the line that would either impact or help my course development efforts. I most always share those tidbits with the folks on my team.

I am sure there are other ways I use social media to learn. I didn’t even mention Facebook, IM, diigo, meebo, or delicious.

The point is that these tools help me keep an eye on the subjects I am interested in, even if these subjects change very rapidly. My goal is to find a way to make this way of learning easy for everyone else.

How about you – do you use social media to learn?