Older Adult Learners in an E-learning Workforce

So, in my quest to find out how many other organizations are going through the culture shift of creating a learning organization, focused on using e-learning and specifically with older adults , I began my search with thinking about what social media tools might be helpful.
First, I came across some interesting stats from Google Insights:




"E-learning" + Workplace + "older adults" are most popular in BC and Ontario, however the numbers are not too impressive.


I went on to see what others have booked marked using Delicious.com and found that I was one of the few people bookmarking information related to this search term.


Turning my search to micro-blogging, here's what I found using www.search.twitter.com ....nothing sadly...so i refined my search to just adult+e-learning and found that there were 2 posts, one from me and one from http://twitter.com/EFQUEL 


Finally, my social media search took me to www.technorati.com which brought me not much luck on the topic search either.. 


So, partly in my quest to find information, I took a social media world wind tour of venues where i could turn to for information. What a sea to swim through in terms of options for searching! I soon will return to good old Google.ca which I'm sure will yield more than a few results...quality to be determined.


My question is out of this experience--is how in the world do people keep up to date with tweeting, blogging, bookmarking, RSS-following, etc. How much time in the day should we carve out of our already busy schedules to stay on top of the latest info? Me: well I spent about an hour and a half on this experience already today.


My informal learning continues...

Clash of the Info-Sharing Titans: To go online or off

With all the buzz around the use of the social media now at conferences of various topics, sizes, and locations, what is it about the use of these tools that are appealing to conference organizers and how do they determine if this is the right fit for the conference audience, vendors, speakers, participants, etc.?  I ask this because of our recent discussions in class about how our professor Sherida Ryan will be "twittering" at an upcoming conference.  I too attended a conference recently in Toronto at the start of November where conference tweets where a large part of the supposed knowledge sharing.  The way it worked there was that designated "tweeters" had access to computers where they could tweet about happenings at the conference, whether they were attending a particular session, sitting in on a key note speaker or just networking with other conference-goers in general.

The tweets were displayed in a live broadcast using a projector and a laptop on large screens in the main dining hall. While I see the value in knowledge-sharing, what can one really get from a one to two sentence blip about a conference specific?  Well apparently quite a bit!  Little did I know that staff who organized the conference were following the tweets, local news media and even people who were unable to attend were virtually kept abreast of the insightful, well-organized sessions happening.  

Despite this knowledge transfer happening, what I found at as minority gen-X participant at this particular conference in a sea of baby-boomers and pre-baby boomers, was that I understood the concept, was familiar with using Twitter and at times found it a bit distracting to have the live tweet feed happening in the same room at a key note speaker, the other part of the audience were seemingly just uninterested all together.  The majority of the audience aged 50-70 there had never used Twitter or knew of its purpose.  As I spoke with various people at different tables I sat at, I found myself explaining what the scrolling blubs were and where they were coming from on the project screens to many. 

Looks like Twittering is not too popular with certain age groups yet

So I wondered after the whole experience--who really benefits from this online info-sharing? Was it just the in thing to do at the conference...were the conference organizers trying to pull in a new age group into the Web 2.0 scene?  Was it because of media benefits?  Perhaps all of the above, however, I still am scratching my head at what the actual in-house participants got from this social media introduction.  I'm looking forward to some insights after Sherida's Twittering experience at her conference...perhaps that will she some more light on this phenomenon...

In the meantime, feel free to follow me @ http://twitter.com/onaomi 

While some are fans of conference twittering, others are suggesting Google Wave may be the better option for knowledge-sharing to prevent less disconnect: Google Wave vs Twitter.

I think it's great to have options...but this still doesn't help with the digital divide in attendance.

Now having said my opinion...I Googled what others had to say about this:

http://rodeworks.com/learn/twittering-at-conferences-and-workshops/  (similar to my take)

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Paper-Highlights-ProsCons/7178 (twittering @ academic conferences)

http://commetrics.com/articles/forrester-conference-and-twitter-does-live-tweeting-help-engage-conference-delegates/  (perhaps it can be engaging)