As I have been travelling east and west across the UK this week, I’ve been taking a look at Jane Bozarth’s Social Media for Trainers on my Kindle. What motivated me to get on and read the book was a chance encounter with Jane at Learning Technologies last week. Jane’s a likeable character from the deep south of the USA with an infectious enthusiasm, which I felt sure would be reflected in this book. I wasn’t wrong.
Social media for trainers isn’t really aimed at people like me, even though I’m seriously engaged with social media and, at least some of the time, I qualify as being a trainer. It’s primary focus is on the classroom (or virtual classroom) instructor who wants to enrich their offering with social learning techniques but doesn’t know where to begin. This is not a book that spends a lot of time developing a theory of social learning; this is highly practical stuff, and the better for it.
Jane talks about the way in which social media can be deployed to support informal learning, but the focus here is on the course, and the way social media tools can be used before, during and after.
Somewhat riskily, given the rate of change in this field and the inherent slowness of conventional book publishing, Jane deals at length with the opportunities provided by specific tools such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Indeed she admitted to me that she had been caught out by the demise of Google Wave, which she does cover briefly. This may cause some frustrations for readers (particularly a year or so from now), but those who can get past the detail will be more than adequately compensated by the fabulous ideas for learning activities that can be undertaken with each tool. Jane has obviously given a lot of thought to these and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to shamelessly steal a few of these for my own courses. If you’re wavering on whether to part with the money, then I can assure you that one idea successfully applied will pay for the book many times over.
Jane is obviously in vogue as a name for those involved in social media because next on my list will be a look at Jane Hart’s new offering.
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