My dad used to work as a janitor for a mall when I was younger.  I remember him bringing home books that had been thrown away by bookstores.  I especially loved those big books about jet planes, ships, tanks. I think that’s when I developed my love for learning, especially trivia, which I still have today. For years when bookstores were still open where I live, I spent countless of hours reading computer and psychology books. I had this urge to read every book in those sections, an obsession which was probably not healthy and not financially sound as I regularly spent $150-200 dollars a month for years. A few years ago, I donated more than 100 computer books to Salvation Army.

These days, social media is now the equivalent of those big books that I used to read when I was younger and those books I used to read at bookstores.  Without exaggeration, I probably spend at least 3 to 4 hours every day just learning about topics like social media, mobile web, technology, leadership, social business and higher education. Looking at my twitter favorites, I did not realize I have favorited thousands of tweets, most of them are links to blogs, articles and I can honestly say, I have read the majority of them. There are so many good presentations on slideshare, youtube, prezi and other sites. I  Social media has certainly become my personal learning network.

I work in higher education technology field and given the rapid pace of how technologies are introduced, learning and keeping up with current/future trends really are not options. Learning is part of my  job requirement and that’s why I spend so much time learning. But I think that even without learning as part of my job, there are so much fascinating things to learn and I’m just thankful social media is around to satisfy my curiosity.

How do use social media for learning?