Here we go (again)

I didn't think I would ever be doing this again. Certainly not after, what, five years? Six?

I'm going to keep this post simple. Partly because I'm out of practice, and partly because of other demands on my time. I have, or had in the past, a lot of things to say about blogging, social learning, Web 2.0, and etc. In fact, these things occupied a very large portion of my professional attention for a year or so back in 2008-9. Feel free to read my old posts to find out what I was doing and thinking about back then.

My thoughts on these subjects haven't evolved much since those days. Watching Will Richardson's TED talk on the subject (and Seth Godin's brief thoughts, as well), while interesting, does not alter or enhance my point of view. I agree with what they have to say, but I already agreed with them six years ago.

That doesn't leave me with much to talk about, does it? Or, alternatively, it leaves me with a very great deal that I could say on the subject, having been down this road before. So rather than rehash the content of 30+ earlier posts from several years ago, let me try to sum up a few key things that I probably wrote about back then:

1. Without the use of social learning techniques, modern T&D and our education system will never be able to keep up with the pace at which our collective knowledge is advancing. It is said that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than Thomas Jefferson would have encountered in his entire lifetime. Collective human knowledge now doubles on an almost weekly basis. How can we possibly think that an educational system developed in the time of Thomas Jefferson is still the right solution?
2. The ability for anyone to create and share content on the web is not new, and we should not act like it is. I created my first web page, using raw HTML, 20 years ago this month. I was, at that time, an active participant in a community of shared content creators taking advantage of what the advent of the visual internet allowed us to do. An entire generation of human beings has grown up since that time, and yet we are just within the past few years finally latching onto the idea that anyone can do this. It isn't new, it is only easier, and therefore more accessible, than it used to be. 
3. Blogging is not for everyone. Not everyone has the desire to create content, the desire to interact with the world in that way. The same is true of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all the rest. Part of the beauty of the internet (which, incidentally, used to be a proper noun and so I still have a hard time using a lower case i when typing it out) is that all of these options exist and that people can mix and match them in the way that works best for them. 

So that's a sampling of my thoughts on the topic of blogging for learning. It is useful. It is not going away anytime soon. It is not for everyone. Contemporary thought leaders on this and related subjects have had a lot to say about the use and implementation of social learning both within institutionalized education and corporate learning. I would invite you to take a look at some of the blogs on my blogroll, which will take you to what were, several years ago, my favorite social learning blogs. No doubt some of them have died out over the years, but their archives contain some really great stuff.