Old school for new media

One of the things I'm noticing as a wiki community manager is that my role is a lot more like teaching than I thought. That's generally a good thing, since I developed my own set of best practices for the classroom, and these transfer remarkably well to projects like this in the corporate world.

I used to teach high school, and one of the things I was constantly doing was teaching the same concept in different ways to different students -- and then teaching it again after the students came back from a long weekend! Same as the wiki. Different people learn in different ways and bring different points of view to the table. All that enriches the experience of the larger group.

My experience as a teacher also taught me that I have my blind spots. Same as the wiki. Every week one of my colleagues here at the company asks me about something I never anticipated. One good example is why they couldn't see their wiki tasks as a calendar instead of as a list. As a self-proclaimed 'words guy,' the thought of using a calendar to manage my tasks never occurred to me. Agility matters in the business world as much as it matters in education.

There are other similarities between rolling out a wiki (and educating users on the best way to leverage it) and teaching about the best ways to dive deeply into History or Literature. But I wonder if our esteemed readers have had experiences in a previous professional life that they've been able to leverage in the world of social media.

Come on now, don't be shy...