Topyx

Topyx is a software tool that allows companies to create dedicated online communities for their employees. It works especially well when a company has employees spread across a wide area. Letting you customize your experience to your corporate branding. Also allowing you to extend the discussion and learning not only to your employees but to your customers as well to keep them in the loop on whatever project you may be working on at the time.

http://interactyx.com/

Saba

Saba is a company that makes a suite of software for social learning in the workplace and in education. One of their products is called Learning@work. It is a program that allows companies to implement their software and creates a discussion board type of environment that lets employees experts and students all talk and discuss a topic so they can all learn from each other. Another product they offer called Performance@work is software that constantly gives feedback to employees to tell them about how they are performing giving them social rewards and recognition among their coworkers. These are just two of the products Saba offers.

http://www.saba.com/

Social Networking for what you like

One thing that needs to be addressed in class is how broad social learning can be. All we ever talk about are Facebook, Twitter, or linked-in. The truth is the internet is much larger than this and we need to talk about that. There are sites for every intrest known from Reddit that does topics like memes all the way to Ravelry that is a site for knitting and crocheting. Ravelry is just one example of another community on the internet  that you just dont think about everyday. Proving that social learning reaches everyone whether they know it or not.

Social Learning in business

I have really been focusing a lot lately on the benefits and negatives to social learning in the school and university platform. One section I haven't focused on yet is social learning in business settings. Business do this just as much as everyone else. Companies like Google like to create intranets in their headquarters that connect all employees from all sections on the company so they can collaborate and share ideas with each other. This is very positive because it can give different perspectives from all different people to get to the best possible solution. This system Google put in place is one of those things that you never knew you needed until you saw Google created it. Now however it is one of those things you could never live without.

Negative side of social learning

Social learning is not all rainbows and buttercups there are downsides to everything. In social learning they really focus on group learning and bringing students together to work with one another. There can be downsides to this. As all people know often times when students work in groups one student might take charge and do a lot of the work leaving another student doing almost nothing. That student gets no benefits from this style of learning and could jeopardize his or her future of learning. That student would benefit more from a one on one style of learning so they can make sure they are on the same level as everyone else and can go as slowly as they need to grasp all concepts.

More benefits to learning in groups

As I have been blogging about learning in groups socially is a very helpful in many ways. One way I haven't talked about though is how it helps improve students group skills. When learning socially you get the chance to work with tons of other people from a broad range of backgrounds. Learning from them and them learning from you. Getting your hands dirty in my eyes is really the best way to get the most out of what you are trying to learn rather then just having your head shoved in a book.

Combine Them

The past few blog posts I have made are about the different types of programs that have been surfacing on the market lately and how they integrate into social media. The next step I see coming in the process is combining the online learning we have now with these programs. I think in the very near future we are going to see online classes that are on blackboard or other sites combined with the programs like rabbit that will let classes very simply and cleanly collaborate online as if they were all in the same room together. Let people video chat with other students not just with the teacher. Break out into virtual groups and work on projects together. I think we will see this maybe in the next year or two.