The Role of the Blog in Learning - Is great Knowledge Management great Learning?

Today I am at the Masie Center in Saratoga Springs, NY at a very engaging seminar on "Extreme Learning". One of the key topics we are covering is around blogs and the role of blogs in learning. With some very cursory understanding of this and its potential, its clear how this capability can enable team/organizational knowledge mining and sharing (and all of the beneifts of that). We'll leave the discussion around content validity and quality for another day and assume that is a given for the purposes of today.

One question that I want to pursue in the remainder of this seminar, and follow up with with colleagues in the learning and knowledge management area of practice is "does great knowledge management make great learning"? If effective learning - learning that builds true capability in the learner resulting in business outcomes (which, in the learning environment, requires the learner to apply the content/knowledge in a realistic context, have opportunities to fail and learn from that failure in a risk free environment as part of that experience, etc), that I would say that Blogs represent a great way to provide ENABLING knowledge and content, but that it isnt learning on its own.

Having the right content/information at the right time is absolutely critical to workforce effectiveness. At the same time, only having that content without the capability, confidence and context to apply that content effectively will not acheive desired business outcomes. Blogs clearly have a potential role in the overall equation that drive individual and org effectiveness, but we need to be careful that we don't point to Blogs as a tool, on their own, that can build capability in an individual. Based on what I have seen, it is a great tool that can enable individual and organzizational learning at an awareness level, but real learning provides the learner with the capability to do the right thing with that information once they have it.

What do you think?