Whenever I have the opportunity to speak about personal/ professional learning networks (PLNs) one of points that I stress to the skeptical members of the audience is the idea of going beyond Google. By that I mean using social networks to discover ideas and information that you might not find if you were simply Googling for information. In essence this comes down to the idea that “together we are smarter.” When you ask for help or feedback from your PLN you are potentially using the brains of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other educators. In response to your request you may find people are willing to share things they’ve created or things they’ve discovered that you couldn’t have found by Googling.

Applications for Education
Students can use this concept of “going beyond Google with the help of friends.” In fact, I’d argue that they should be using whenever they’re working on group projects. Use a service like Diigo or eduClipper to have students create a groups in which they share materials they’ve found and or created.