Buzzmarketing + e-learning = BuzzLearning?

I'm reading Mark Hughes' Buzzmarketing right now. He's the guy who took the number of Half.com users from zero to eight million in just three years, without a huge marketing budget. The secret? Make your company a magnet for media attention and word of mouth, by any means necessary.

I began reading the book out of interest - how do people create massively successful websites? How do producers generate the 'buzz' that gets people talking about their content or product?

Then I started wondering how we can create e-learning with buzz.

Education isn't a field that's expert at marketing. Based on our Industrial model of education, students have to go to school. It's the law. We don't bother 'selling' the idea of school or education to them - we force them to do it. Kids spend an average of 7 hours a day in the classroom, 'learning'.

So what do they talk about in the playground or at home? What's got them buzzing? Strangely enough, it's not the curriculum. It's new music. New games. New technologies. New news. The things they're finding out for themselves in their own time. They're teaching each other how to do stuff. They're trying new things out. They're deciding what's got buzz, and what doesn't.

Ok. So subjects like Irish language or Victorian history just aren't as sexy as Paris Hilton's Jail Saga. But it's not just the content that keeps learning from being as buzzworthy as possible - it's also how it's presented.

In a traditional online learning experience, the learner is asked to log-in. They're either given a linear path to follow through set content, or they can select which modules of content they want to learn. The learning experience can range from the passive consumption of text, graphics, audio and video to truly interactive games that surprise and engage.

At the end, achievement is usually scored, and the learner congratulated. Some websites even personalise a little certificate you can print out and stick up on your fridge.

No-one's buzzing...because not only is there no opportunity to share knowledge or achievement in the ways they share informal knowledge or achievement, the stuff they're studying isn't what they see as relevant to their lives.

We all need to show off a bit. To explore or make things. Try things out and comment. Sure we have learning supported message boards and chatrooms, but I've not seen an e-learning shared space buzz the way youtube does. And we're not giving learners the choice of exploring what they want to learn, when they want to learn it.