Informal Learning Flow

by Tony Karrer

I've always been a big believer in the value and power of informal learning. Over the past few years, I've written quite a few posts about informal learning.

• Informal Learning - Let's Get Real
• Informal Learning - Let's Get Real - Part II
• Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
• Formalizing and Investing in Informal Learning
• Numbers and Informal Learning
• The Real Challenge around Informal Learning
• More on the Form of Informal

The challenge for me has always been the The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?) - it's defining systems for informal learning that effectively support learners. In many ways, eLearning 2.0 is one part of systematizing support for informal learning. I just saw that Josh Bersin wrote about this issue.

The person I most associate with informal learning is Jay Cross. And I'm happy to announce that he's working with me to help bring together resources via the Informal Learning Flow.

You can find his announcement here. Jay tells us ...

For the past couple of days, I’ve been consuming knowledge from a site that better fits how I learn.Called Informal Learning Flow, the site pulls together the feeds of the people I read and topics that I care about. You’ve got to see this in action to understand its power. Go to the site and click on a concept, say, informal learning. Then click on another concept, say, formal learning. You’ll call up entries that use both terms. Experiment a little; there’s more going on under the hood here than meets the eye.

I'm also looking forward to seeing if this helps make sense of what I feel is a pretty amorphous topic. To me, it's interesting to go look at the Tools for Informal Learning page and look at the best posts to see what comes up. And there are some good ones -

• Innovation and Learning
• I Collect My Knowledge in My Friends: The Distributed "We"
• To Blog or Not to Blog?
• Thoughts (OK Rant) on this Month’s Big Question
• The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On

That's a pretty good list to start from. It was also interesting to see that Tools didn't appear in the titles. I also looked at what were the top posts and terms for the first half of January.

• How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic
• Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles
• What Not To Build
• Participatory Media Literacy: Why it matters
• Using virtual worlds and video games to teach the lessons of reality
• Resources and Tools

Hot Keywords -

• network
  
• learning
• social
  
• customers
• future
• generation
• platforms
  
• responsibility
  
• brain
  
• corporations
  
• Google
  
• Harvard
  
• BBC
• IBM
  
• HP
  

Jay and I have had numerous conversations, debates, etc. over how to support organizations who believe in the power of informal learning but who need help making sense of getting there. I'm really looking forward to continue our conversation around this.

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