norman's website
  • Home
  • Blogs
    • Scraps of life blog
    • Creative Academic >
      • BYOD4L BLOG
    • Garden Notes
  • Books
  • Change
  • Creativity
  • Professional services
  • Contact me
  • NTU
  • creativejam
  • CRC
  • GMIT
  • BNU STUDY VISIT
  • AIT
  • portsmouth
  • DIT
  • TLC
  • BERA
  • ICOLACE4
  • PDP
  • OUC
  • MMUni
  • Derby
  • dmucreatives
  • Chester
  • Brighton
  • Buckinghamshire
  • Hallam
  • St Marys
  • LIMERICK
  • kingston
  • UWL
  • SEDA
  • MACAO
  • Beijing
  • IFIUT
  • CRA seminar
  • FBSEworkshop
  • birmingham
  • Creativity in Higher Education
  • graduatestandardsprogramme
  • MAKING MEANING
  • Untitled
  • Blogs
  • SURVEY

The social age of learning

16/5/2014

0 Comments

 
This week I began in earnest to begin helping to shape the next issue of Lifewide Magazine which is guest edited by Chrissi and Sue. They have organised the most of the content but there are always what I call 'bits and bobs' to be gathered, illustrations to be commissioned, images to be found and above all an identity to be created that is much more than the sum of the collection of articles. As I was googling 'social technologies' - one of the terms that defines the issue I came across Julian Stodd's blog. I immediately recognised a kindred spirit in someone who is thinking and writing about the everyday world of contemporary learning with a particular interest in the role played by technology. I read many of Julian's blogs and loved his simple visualisations. I felt that here was someone I would involve in my learning ecologies. I found one that I thought we might use in the Magazine - Our complex relationship with technology. I emailed him to check it was okay and received a friendly positive response such that it made me want to invite him to connect with our work in a significant way. So who knows what the future will bring?

One of his blogs elaborates his idea of the social age we now live in.. which he describes in these terms..

I use the term ‘The Social Age’ to talk about the environment we inhabit today: it’s a time when the very nature of work is evolving, changing to reflect a revised social contract and the advancement of technology to facilitate sharing and community. In the Manufacturing Age, we used to make stuff: banging together lumps of iron, burning coal, wrestling value from the very earth itself as we wrought iron and carved railways through the landscape, smelting and creating, until we outsourced it all and specialised production in a global network of trade and exchange, bringing us to the Knowledge Age. We convinced ourselves that this was ok: we no longer made stuff, but we had the knowledge, we did the clever bit ourselves and the knowledge was what really mattered. But then the internet evolved and Google was born, phones got smart and small and our relationship with knowledge changed. Finding stuff out is easy. Making sense of it is what counts. Welcome to the Social Age. Power and authority, that used to be gained through knowledge alone, is now based more in effectiveness, in being able to create value and meaning through the effective use of knowledge and resources in agile ways. Simply knowing stuff is not enough............... The Social Age is about high levels of engagement through informal, socially collaborative technology. It supports agility by allowing many and varied connections and the rapid iteration of ideas in communities that are ‘sense making’.

Picture
I have undoubtedly grown up and through the knowledge age. I was (and still am) a knowledge worker so the question for me is to what extent I am also part of the social age. As I look back over the last twenty years I can see that many of the roles I had involved co-creating knowledge in a social way. The basic social technology tools I used (and still use) is email, either in the form of an open mail list or in the form of surveys. More recently I have orchestrated on-line questionnaire surveys or posted questions in LinkedIn Groups. I have a Facebook page but rarely use it but I do use twitter for disseminating ideas and work. I have barely begun to utilise the social technology tools that characterise the social age and perhaps I never will embrace them in the way that people who are now growing up in this age use them as if they are second nature. Perhaps I will always remain a knowledge worker operating in a social age without really making use of the many social technologies that grow day by day - only time will tell.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Purpose

    To develop my understandings of how I learn and develop through all parts of my life by recording and reflecting on my own life as it happens.
    @lifewider1
    @lifewider
    @academiccreator

    I have a rough plan but most of what I do emerges from the circumstances of my life 
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Archive

    January 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories
    these are the tags I've used 

    All
    5C's Of Social Media
    Achieving
    Applying Learning
    Appreciation
    Attention To Detail
    Awareness
    Band
    Beautiful Day
    Being Influenced
    Being Influenced
    Beliefs
    Bonding
    Book
    Bucket List
    Caring
    Climate For Change
    Cocreation
    Co Creativity
    Co-creativity
    Collaboration
    Collective
    Commitment
    Communication
    Compassion
    Conceptualising
    Conference
    Conflict
    Connected
    Connected Learning
    Connections
    Constructionism
    Creativity
    Creativity In Development
    Creativity Nurturing
    Crowdsourcing
    Cultural Exchange
    Culture
    Curriculum
    Dealing With Emotion
    Dealing With Emotions
    Dealing With Setbacks
    Dealing With Situations
    Designing
    Development
    Disruption
    Disruption In Life
    Ecology
    Emergence
    Emergent Need
    Emergent Opportunity
    Emotion
    Emotion (negative)
    Emotion (positive)
    Empathy
    Engagement
    Enthusing Others
    Environment
    Experience
    Experimenting
    Facilitation
    Failure
    Families
    Family
    Feedback
    Fulfilling Our Purposes
    Goals
    Good Ideas
    Great Idea
    Growing Up
    Guilt
    Health And Fitness
    Histrory
    Ideas
    Identity
    Illness
    Inflections In Life
    Influences
    Influencing
    Information Flow
    Insights
    Inspiration
    Interest
    Intergenerational Learning
    Joy
    Juggling
    Knoweldge And Understanding
    Knowledge
    Knowledge And Understanding
    Knowledge Development
    Knowledge Working
    Leadership
    Learning
    Learning Ecologies
    Learning Ecologies
    Learning Ecology
    Learning For Teaching
    Learning Through Experience
    Learning To Cope
    Learningtoday
    Liberation
    Lifedeep
    Lifewide
    Lifewide Learning
    Lifwide Education
    Liminal Space
    Looking Back
    Love
    Making A Difference
    Making Progress
    Making Progress
    Making Something
    Managing Self
    Men's Sheds
    Models
    Motivating Others
    Motivating Self
    Motivation
    Motivational Strategies
    Motivation By The Spirit
    Motivations
    My Fitness
    My Purposes
    Narrative
    Narrative Inquiry
    Narrative Inquiry
    Natural Beauty
    Nature
    Neurological Process
    Opportunities
    Partnership
    Paying Attention
    Performance
    Personal Creativity
    Personal Development
    Personal Development Planning
    Perspective Change
    Planning
    Play
    Procrastination
    Purposes
    Reflection
    Relationships
    Remembering
    Retirement
    Role Model
    Sadness
    Sarendipity
    Seeing Potential
    Seeing Potential
    SEEK SENSE SHARE
    Self Motivation
    Self-Motivation
    Self Regulation
    Self-regulation
    Significant Personal Events
    Slogging
    Social Age
    Social Leadership
    Social Media
    Sorrow
    Spiritual
    Stories
    Survey Monkey
    Symbolism
    Teaching
    Teamwork
    Technology
    Tools
    Tradition
    Trajectories
    Twitter
    Using Technology
    Values
    Vision
    Visualisation
    Wellbeing
    Why?
    Willpower
    Work
    Working Out What You Have To Do
    Workshop
    Writing

    RSS Feed