LinkedIn to education

Social networking is a must do for job seekers, but for the educator working with adults who are unsure of which future path to take, LinkedIn is a wonderful jumping off tool for collaborative visualization exercises.


At its core, LinkedIn is a social networking tool to connect employees with employers.  On a grander scale, it is a networking communication tool that provides insider information on career paths, industry happenings and a connection to workplace skills training opportunities. 

How I envision using LinkedIn in the classroom is create a platform for technical application learning that allows learners to tap into ideas and concepts well beyond the classroom setting.  For example, when working with a group of college students an educator might use LinkedIn for a collaborative learning experience that starts with mind mapping career destinations based upon certain type of college degrees.

One group might map out a variety of career paths that veterinary science could lead to.  From there, the group might create a set of questions to ask professionals in the selected fields from the mind mapping activity.  The next step would be to create their LinkedIn profile.  This first step is important to adults that are in the midst of career exploration.  Too often people wait until they are ready to start interviewing to set up their profile.  The earlier the tool is used, the more proficient they will be in using it for career prospecting. 

The next step is networked learning.  Networked learning is a methodology that encourages teamwork, interactivity, and social engagement that benefits all participants (Richardson, 2010).  Group members could join LinkedIn networking forums to try to source out answers to their questions. 

Another method could be to seek out connections to specific small veterinary business owners and ask them to complete a survey that will answer the questions the students are researching.  A third method the students could try is to connect with other students in the same field to see what web sites, books or articles that they would recommend to review to complete the project. 

The goal of this particular learning exercise is to use LinkedIn as a collaboration tool to develop connectivism skills.  Connectivism is the capacity for individuals to view links between professional areas, philosophies and theories that is encountered through the use of technology in learning (Davis, Edmunds & Kelly-Bateman, 2008).

Reference

Davis, C., Edmunds, E., & Kelly-Bateman, V. (2008). Connectivism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Connectivism 

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.