In which ways do you use social media for your own learning?

I met Niel van Meeuwen some time ago when we talked about using social media in learning trajectories. He already mentioned his talk in Lissabon during the Eapril conference. His presentation was last Friday and he experimented with a Twitter backchannel. Unfortunately because people there might not have been on Twitter, it worked mainly to get input from outside the conference into the conference. Very curious to hear his reflection on how it went. I'm going to summarize the outsiders input.

Question Niel put on Twitter is: in which way do you use social media in your own learning or the learning of others?

Answers on twitter:

• It mostly helps me to link to new, unexpected thoughts, people, websites.
• Personally I use social media all the time for personal learning- blog, twitter, social bookmarking key
• Learning takes place at the edges social media help me to stretch these
• I'm using twitter to learn practical things for the company I started this yr (zzp). E.g. I ask: do I have to 1/2
• Learning sometimes happens at moments I least expect it
• Those unexpected learning moments appears to be the most valuable ones.
• I use socialmedia to find relevant info and knowledge on my profession and to brand myself in my network
• Insure my business. And if yes: how? Or: how do I do taxes? I have à lot of followers and I ask them to RT
• Social media keep my son away from learning math and grammar. But he learns a lot there (although I'm not allowed to witness that!
• I also use twitter and linkedin to collect and store insights and ideas I have. It is a way of collecting thoughts and ideas
• Usually get good answers. The more practical the question is, the more answers you get frm people. Twitter=HandsOn
• Social media is a way of sharing what my passion and interest is. I get invited for cool projects based on what I share on linkedin
• I learn a lot in groups; not only real life groups but virtual groups as well
• Wonderful things happen on #LinkedIn and #Twitter; people send me wonderful, interesting and valuable info, ideas and so on
• SocialMedia make me learn about things I didn't even know I could learn about
• Social media make learning really fast and individual
• I share knowledge and get a lot of serieus response. Makes we wiser!
• A tweet a day keeps the email away?
• Use social media to find all kinds of blog posts, articles, video's to inspire my learning via friends and colleagues
• We use social media to connect with and get inspired by people who are also into #Talent in #Education

When reading through the list it strikes me that people are very enthousiastic and recognise participation in social media as a learning path, not as a side-something. I also meet people who don't see it as learning but as distracting. This definitely informs whether you want to devote time to it. If you see it as something distracting you from your work, it is costing time. If you see it as part of your own learning trajectory and you value it, it comes naturally to invest time.

Another thing that strikes me is the unexpected learning, the inspiration, the learning about things I didn't know I could learn about. Serendipity?

Looking forward to reading Niel's blogpost about the discussion there!

Update: here's a blogpost about a session on exactly the same topic!