Where is FriendFeed in eLearning?

2 comments // Jul 28th, 2008 // Blogging, Flicks, Interactive, Items of Interest, Microblogging, Music, Net Pop, Political/Social Commentary, Social Media, Technology, Travel, eLearning

Image representing FriendFeed as depicted in C...

Image via CrunchBase

Over the last few months friendfeed has been making it’s way more and more into my online existence, both as a personal communications tool and an eLearning tool. I’m not as addicted to the service as many bloggers and tech junkies seem to be, but I think it’s a really smart application with a ton of uses.

What I do find slightly confounding, however, is the lack of discussion regarding friendfeed amongst the eLearning and EdTech bloggers. While it’s a very real possibility I’m simply missing the discussion or I’m paying attention to the wrong blogs, I’ve seen fewer than 8 posts mentioning friendfeed and the role it could play in eLearning. With all of the discussion going on elsewhere, I think it’s time we start paying attention and getting creative.

So, here’s my question to you: how are you using friendfeed or why aren’t you?

As for me, you can find my friendfeed here and you can check out how I’m incorporating it into Def Items at Social. For me, friendfeed allows for both aggregation of content and provides a platform for discussion and that’s the value I don’t find at other social bookmarking and content sharing sites. While the primary risk seems to be the migration of discussion out of individual blogs, I find that to be a worthwhile sacrifice when considering the ease of posting new tools and tips that don’t necessarily warrant a standalone blog entry. On the work side, we’re beginning to adapt the tool into our eLearning arsenal in a smattering of creative ways to make life easier and provide new resources for internal use.

So, now for the rest of the community. Where is friendfeed on your radar? Will it become a resource for educators and students or will it fade away as so many other over-hyped web apps?

Brent Schlenker says:

I don’t think you’ve missed the conversation on this. The eLearning community generally lags well behind the techno pundits. There is a small band…maybe not a band, but more of a clump at this point…of eLearning people who do like to ride the bleeding edge of beta apps. FriendFeed is only one of many MANY apps coming DAILY that will have a use in e-Learning. The more burning questions are always the WHY and the HOW.
SO many people still haven’t figured out blogs and wikis. Now that TWITTER is old news the majority have just missed that meme altogether. Maybe FriendFeed helps the masses get involved.
Here is my secret gauge for 2.0 tools. Which ever tool I get an invite to from my parents is the one I put my bet on. So far they are still happy to “get” email.
Cheers!
Brent

Jul 28, 2008, 10:37 am

Krishna De says:

Many thanks for linking to my article.

I think it’s easy to forget that those of us using blogging platforms, Twitter and FriendFeed for creating and sharing content and connections are still amongst the small majority of the population in the US/Europe.

And most people I know in HR/organisational development/talent management/elearning have never considered the applications at all.

So carry on the good work with your articles and share your insights on how these tools can be applied to deliver organisational and learning goals.

Jul 28, 2008, 1:26 pm