Seb Paquet and Lilia Efimova have both noted a good piece by Eva Kaplan-Leiserson called We-Learning: Social Software and E-Learning that discusses how social software is/can be used for learning.

Seb likes the way that Eva pulls together three explanations for the growing popularity of social software, including a reference to our own paper on the subject. In summary, Eva cites three main factors:

• "[the availability of] low-cost tools and ... critical mass ... of people who are now connected to the Internet"
• "workers are relying less on traditional company structures and more on their own personal social networks"
• "people are searching for a feeling of community that�s been lost as many �third places� ... have closed down"

The rest of the piece is a good introduction to the use of social software tools to connect people for learning purposes, and we look forward to part 2 in January.

It is also quite timely, because we enjoyed a thought-provoking lunch yesterday
with somebody who is closely with the modernisation of online knowledge sharing services in a major UK public sector organisation - he also previously worked for an e-learning provider - and we were discussing precisely the ways in which these techniques can improve upon the "shovelware" of yesteryear.