That'll learn ya

Luis Suarez has been writing about the fires on Gran Canaria, including heart-breaking pictures of the island before and after the fires. Luis writes about the application of social media

instead of just focusing on the corporate world, we would have KM and social
software focusing on what really matters: the day to day stuff that can affect
your own life (And that of your loved ones) and the environment for many years
to come

As always, Luis has a point. And for me the point is about awareness and action. People do something about an issue when it is real to them, when they are connected to it by images, words, sounds, conversations & relationships.

Which brings me to MentorNet. ABB gave us a demo of this today. Part of a program aimed at offering support for Australian businesswomen, it's a collaborative / personalised learning environment built on Atlassian's Confluence wiki product . The technology is wikis/blogs/tags/RSS (mashed up with Flickr & other stuff). But what's impressive is the simplicity with which it allows participants to collaborate with each other & to share images, words, sounds, conversations & relationships.

MentorNet is an example of a Learning Support Platform. There are surprisingly few of these around. Most Learning Management Systems are in fact Training Management Systems. Nothing wrong with this but they are about dispensing training courses rather than the individual & collective learning of people. That will change. It has to.