In a Web-based world where people are identified by what they share, social or "participatory" learning is the 21st-century classroom. Industry expert and co-founder of Tagoras, Jeff Cobb, describes social learning as "the idea that we build much of our knowledge through our interactions with other human beings." Social learning gives organizations an advantage by widening the scope of knowledge sharing and idea generation to peers and colleagues within a community.

"Information transfer and learning are not the same thing", says Dave Will, co-founder of Peach New Media. "We believe the actual learning happens when you interact with people. When social learning engages with traditional curriculum, you get an explosion of ideas, creativity, and engagement."

With the Freestone Social LMS™ platform, organizations have the power to integrate a private social community into a learning-management system. The platform provides a personal dashboard for users to access community and learning activities with one profile and login. Similar to popular social media sites, the Freestone community allows users to create relationships through contacts. But unlike other platforms, the Freestone community is centered around building knowledge in a particular skill or industry and exists within a fully configurable learning-management system.

Peach New Media co-founder Johnson Cook says, "People are drawn to communities -- they enjoy being recognized for what they share. Marrying our learning management system with community software was an obvious match and fills a true need."

A sampling of the Freestone Social LMS™ components includes

• private community, profiles, and collaborative groups
• access control, registration, and e-commerce management
• live webcasts and live webinar delivery
• on-demand streaming content and mobile video delivery
• subscription and package management
• continuing-education management