Yesterday Stuart Parker and I spent some time doing a little bit of social media training with the media course at Grapevine, a project in Coventry. As part of We Share Stuff, we are trying out our idea that the tools are not what needs to be learnt – it’s more the skills to be able to experiment, the knowledge that there’s something useful and exciting in social media, and the confidence to try it.

The session, with a group of adults with various learning disabilities went well, and it only took a short time to find something everyone was interested to try.

It really brought home to me that desire-based training  has the edge over any task-based system — even if all you think you really desire is to complete the one task. Even if you think you just want to compelete your job and get out, the real understanding comes from a wider engaement with the tools. For example, it’s not enough to learn how to put text up on a blog — you won’t get the best out of it unless you desire to get out amongst other blogs and converse.

I’m looking forward to doing more training with people that are supposedly on the other side of the ‘digital divide’, and hope that every group is as enthused at the end of the session.