The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner is a good book. It does exactly what it purports to do — provide a comprehensive guide to social learning. It’s one of those books that is going to become a must-have for learning folks — for the next couple years anyways before it all changes again. But by then, perhaps they will have built it into a franchise, bringing out a new book every year.
This book covers: workplace trends, online communities, making the case for social learning, micro-sharing (aka twitter and Facebook), collective intelligence (wikis, blogging), immersive environments, and blended learning.
Good points: it’s easy to read, it has nice tidbits (“Microsharing is an serendipity engine”, p.98). I can easily imagine it as a reference when making a game-plan for social learning in your workplace. A great place to start if you’re learning about social learning.
Downside: It didn’t inspire me. Perhaps it’s just me — I’m familiar with most of the stuff in the book and I’m looking for something else. It talks about nuts and bolts, and it has quotes from people who implement, people who manage it, there are many interesting stories, but not compelling stories. I wanted to hear more about how that small group of guys changed the culture of the CIA, FBI and the rest of the intelligence community and got them to use social media.
If you’re working at the intersection of social media and learning, you need this book in your shelf. End of story. So I’ll make it easy: here is where you can buy it. And don’t worry, I don’t get a cut, not even through Google ads.
But if you’re looking for the in-depth story of how social media creates cultural change in organizations, you won’t find it here.
Check out the New Social Learning website for more info.
Maybe not the shortest book review ever, but close.
I haven’t read this particular book, but recently reading any book about social media makes me feel like Q (or Quinn) from Star Trek. It seems that everything has already been said about Social Media, and it appears that I have read everything. Most books are dull in that it is only possible to experience the SM universe so many times before it gets boring.
I hear you – the social media juggernaut is too much sometimes, especially on twitter. What I liked about these guys is that they were specifically focused on potential benefits for learning, and how to position social media and respond to objections. There’s wasn’t anything *new* — it was just packaged nicely for the ASTD crowd if that makes sense. It’s a good book if you need to get started on social learning.