When you look at the kindle edition of books on Amazon.com, you can now see what other people have highlighted in their editions of the ebook. This means you can now have a fabulous way to share what you’re learning and a socially-generated way to learn from others. It’s sort of like Cliff-notes for the digital era.
While I’ve struggled with becoming an online book reader, this feature shows me possibilities that truly advance publishing into a new more collaborative age. Rather than just look through ratings from other readers, I’m going to scan through the points that leaped out and resonated with previous readers. Cool!
To get a sense of the sorts of things highlighted, here are the popular highlights from Kindle edition of The New Social Learning.
Training often gives people solutions to problems already solved. Collaboration addresses challenges no one has overcome before. 
Highlighted by 33 Kindle users
Social tools leave a digital audit trail, documenting our learning journey—often an unfolding story—and leaving a path for others to follow. Highlighted by 26 Kindle users
In what is known as the 70/20/10 learning concept, Robert Eichinger and Michael Lombardo, in collaboration with Morgan McCall of the Center for Creative Leadership, explain that 70 percent of learning and development takes place from real-life and on-the-job experiences, tasks, and problem solving; 20 percent of the time development comes from other people through informal or formal feedback, mentoring, or coaching; and 10 percent of learning and development comes from formal training. Highlighted by 22 Kindle users
We define learning as the transformative process of taking in information that, when internalized and mixed with what we have experienced, changes what we know and builds on what we can do. It’s based on input, process, and reflection. It is what changes us. Highlighted by 20 Kindle users
Social constructivism is the theory of knowledge that seems to best describe how people learn together, whether in person or online. When you engage with people, you build your own insight into what’s being discussed. Someone else’s understanding complements yours, and together you start to weave an informed interpretation. You tinker until you can move on. Highlighted by 18 Kindle users
By bringing together people who share interests, no matter their location or time zone, social media has the potential to transform the workplace into an environment where learning is as natural as it is powerful. Highlighted by 15 Kindle users
In a world of rapid change, we each need to garner as much useful information as possible, sort through it in a way that meets our unique circumstances, calibrate it with what we already know, and re-circulate it with others who share our goals. Highlighted by 14 Kindle users
Mashups change work’s traditional linear and separate roles into a culture of co-production, co-design, and co-development, mixing responsibilities among everyone involved in a new cyclical process. In the case of the new social learning, it’s not about simply giving people online communities or wikis and getting out of the way. It is about a new iterative and inclusive model where anyone is able to create, use, publish, remix, repurpose, and learn. Highlighted by 12 Kindle users
We see four types of mashups influencing how people learn socially: role, workgroup, content, and management. Highlighted by 10 Kindle users
How, exactly, do you find these notes? From Amazon’s site:
Viewing Popular Highlights
Amazon displays Popular Highlights by combining the highlights of all Kindle customers and identifying the passages with the most highlights. The resulting Popular Highlights help readers focus on passages that are meaningful to the greatest number of people. Some books don’t have enough highlighting in them to have Popular Highlights. Popular Highlights are marked with a gray dashed underline. The number of people who have highlighted the text appears at the beginning of the marked text. You can see Popular Highlights for all books that have them at https://kindle.amazon.com.
To view Popular Highlights:
- Open a book on your Kindle.
- Press the Menu button and select “View Popular Highlights” from the options.
To turn Popular Highlights on and off:
- Navigate to Kindle’s Home screen and press the Menu button.
- Select “Settings.”
- Select the desired option next to “Popular Highlights.”
Managing Popular Highlights
If you have a Kindle device, you can turn off having your highlights in popular highlights by turning off Annotations Backup in Settings on your device. If you have a Kindle App, Amazon.com says they will be adding this capability soon. Annotations BackUp backs up your annotations and last page read and syncs them across devices. You can also remove highlights you made previously from Popular Highlights.