We take a look at Flockpod, a new social interaction and informal learning tool from Harbinger, the people behind Raptivity.

What is it?
Flockpod’s a little hard to categorise. We usually do reviews of rapid authoring tools here, which enable the user to develop finished e-learning modules. Flockpod’s a little different, so we’ve put our usual scoring card to one site to give a broader view of this tool.

What’s it for?
It’s probably easiest to describe Flockpod as a stand-alone informal learning tool that you can drop onto a web page.

Why do you need it?
The claim for its purpose is that sometimes websites lack stickiness; you may want visitors to stick around on a site to provide feedback, or to encourage debate between them, poll them on their views, get them to share their experiences, and so on. The elevator pitch is that Flockpod enables you to plug all of this interactivity into any web page, packaged into a standalone widget that floats on the page.

How does it feel?
The application itself looks like a bit like winAmp. It’s got the feel of a little player, developed in flash. You scroll through the features of polling, debates, feedback and add whatever comments you want to. It’s developed in Flash, and maybe a little over-engineered for our liking, but you get used to it quite quickly.

Ease of use?
One of the key advantages is that it’s easy to plug it into a page – just a line of html, so it’s very straightforward.

What’s in it for learning
Potentially a lot. We think its intention is absolutely right: in web 2.0, you do want users to engage, generate their own content and help to move content forward and keep it current. Its role in extending the relevance of stand-alone e-learning could be valuable. You can imagine publishing a course and adding a flockpod as a tool to gather feedback and stimulate debate.

So we certainly approve of the concept --We do have a few questions about its execution and model, though:

· Lots of social networking software and community tools/sites have many of these features built in: blogs have a means of gathering feedback, there are many plug-ins for discussion boards and forums, and tools like Joomla and Mambo allow polling. So why use Flockpod? How does it compare to social networking software like elgg or some of the features in moodle that enable discussions, polls etc to be embedded?

· Why is it not open source? Harbinger has talked about a commercial subscription model, which seems to go against the grain and the general open source nature of social networking/collaboration tools.

· The fact that it floats around, rather than being properly integrated into the site, is a conscious design choice – is it the right one? Is there a risk that learners will miss it, or dismiss it like a pop-up?

Rather than muse to ourselves on these questions, we had the chance to put them to the chairman of Harbinger, Vikas Johsi, to hear what he had to say about Flockpod. You can listen to the interview here.

Worth a go? 
Absolutely - we recommend you give it a try, and see if it’s the kind of social networking tool that would help you and your learners to interact and collaborate better.

You can learn more about Flockpod here.

Kineo has accepted no reward or payment for this independent review.