S. Pike Hall: Weblogging

Web 2.0 - Learning Resulting from Inquiring about Nuuvo

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:50:28 GMT

A hello to Savvica staff who are replacing nuuvo with Savvica

I've done quite a bit of Web 1.0 instruction online. It's time to move on to work
at the Web 2.0 level --- I would like to encourage DEEPER involvement of students in knowledge building, group learning, knowledge structuring and organization.

Here's a partial list of Web 2.0-inclined newcomers, (thanks to ReadWriteWeb):
<ul>
<li>elgg.net a Social networking, open source, application. While it is not set up
so much for education... it can serve a distributed network as it talks over and collaboratively develops knowledge. The following from the University of Brighton:
<blockquote>
Elgg is now being used formally within course and modules and less formally to bring together people with similar interests - enabling people to share information, reflections and comment across course boundaries and develop something very different to anything we've had before. I firmly believe we're taking the first steps from a Virtual Learning Environment to a Shared Learning Environment."</blockquote>
<li>nuuvo -- now savvica (evidently in beta). Here <a href="http://support.nuvvo.com/documentation">documentation</a> for nuuvo. Presumably there will be resemblance; though that's not guaranteed. Nuuvo became Savvica via a purchase (Often the purchase can sever originator vision from the product. Would "repurposing" be an appropriate description of what often takes place?)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.digication.com/about/company">Digication</a>
<li><a href="http://www.chalksite.com/learn/">Chalksite</a> a system for teacher communication with students and families. Can include a web site.
<li><a href="www.haikuls.com/php/features.php">Haiku LMS</a> Includes teacher and class website creators, gradebook, assessment, dropbox for online submission of homework, and much more. The only classroom feature that is not obvious is a testing module.
<li> <a href="www.hawaii.edu/its/sakai">Sakai</a> Is like Blackboard, WebCT (now owned by Blackboard) and Moodle [to a lesser extent, I would arguw] in its relatively traditional organization of instruction from the teacher out. They're teacher centric, if you like. A student centric , or at least a more balanced approach, would start with an individual student, or group of students and the voluntary choice of a knowledge or competence target. The teacher would serve as an advisor on the learning path, the method and the recognition of sufficient competence.
</ul>

To be honest, given my comments on Sakai, you might not be surprised to know that I'm not sure that there is a student-centric knowledge acquisition system out there. Bits and pieces but not yet the whole system. Once its constructed it will resemble a generic research application with a strong focus on verifying that knowledge
acquired satisfactorily matches all specifications initially given by the student.
Perhaps the teacher could serve as a honest reflector upon the accomplishments. It can be easy to rationalize the product as 'just right' , even when it is short of or different from the original goal, because of fatigue or even an honest change of mind
that has come because of engagement with new knowledge bits and engaging knowledge-making processes.

PS. After above thoughts I think I should dig into the definition of Web 2.0 Learning systems. Distributed ownership is terrific but is not the same as, is not necessarily accompanied by, learner centric instruction.

Team Knowledge Development(2): Years ago, a vision, now a free reality.

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:43:40 GMT

Summary: I praise the free knowledge-making possibilities now available on the web. Some would have said, did, in fact say, that team knowledge development could be strongly advanced by the combination of weblogs and wikis. It's now a free reality.(draft 3/19/07).

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety than I'd like. At the very least it's a place-marker for what I consider to be a worthwhile "philosophy, technology and the times" entry. While keeping my original title for the sake of continuity I find "Team Knowledge Development" to be too obscure. The phrase conjures up sports and hi-tech think tanks... that is too small a venue. The possibilities are far huger than that!!

Why? Think: do we need more knowledge (def. that which allows you to satisfy basic needs in a constantly changing, always demanding environment)? Yes. Where can it come from: any one of the 6 billion entities that call themselves human. So anything that advances the ability to adjust and adapt and shape for humanity is needed. Sure. No argument, one might say! But, I am also arguing that computers linked via the internet and these free knowledge-making venues , if generally and broadly available and applied, offer us the chance to accelerate the development of useful individual and social behavior. Individual and group and community, for that matter, knowledge construction is becoming accessible to those who access to the internet via the 100 dollar computer, the internet, and, of course, some kick-off training to develop the taste for it (there is always a need) and a starter set of skills. The taste and the starter set may be more of a challenge than the technology. But, once developed, will have I think, HUGE potential repercussions.

Take 1 group blog on blogger.com and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provider (see, for example, www.siteground.com - 4.95 per month) and you have either a free or very inexpensive group knowledge-making environment.

Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-heeled think tanks or online classrooms like Blackboard and Moodle. This was utilization in one --even unrecognized as a "knowledge-making venue" because doing so in the guise of traditional teaching-- of a far broader list of potential individual and social knowledge-making activities. Research as a general knowledge-making activity was by-and-large untouched. This year, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry and has developers and forward-looking venture capitalists recognizing the possibilities.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.

The following is a connectivity weblog entry from early December of 2003.

Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.
In my above-referenced entry I noted:
…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.
Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.
At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.
Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.
There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).
For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]
[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]
[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

Team Knowledge Development: Years ago, a vision, now a free reality.

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:29:54 GMT

This will be the first draft.. less subtlety more like a placemarker.

Take a group blog on blogger and a wiki from wikispaces or from an inexpensive open-source provide and you have a low cost/no cost group knowledge-making environment. Three years ago it was an operational reality in well-healed think tanks.. but not that well disseminated. Now, while it isn't commonplace, it is possible for all and sundry.

Now we have to create the social processing that allows us to do what the tools now allow.

The < a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106698/2003/12/05.html#a202">following from early December of 2003.

Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case --well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)-- is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I've left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.
In my above-referenced entry I noted:
…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a "surface" process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group's acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard's blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.
Those notes led to my construction of this entry's diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.
At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.
Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.
There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).
For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]
[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]
[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

Connected Learning: More Completely via Siemen's In Depth Multimedia Presentation

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:57:43 GMT

Summary: A multimedia and in depth learning ecology lesson is available. Slides and Audio. Whether you are after content learning or metalearning, George Siemens offers understanding and advice on how you creates a learning ecology -- and supports the subsequent evolution of quality . His ideas will apply online or off.

PS. You can navigate in nonlinear fashion --attending to voice, or slides or graphics, as you like.

His graphic above (slide 19 in his audio and video sequence), captures important segments of the depth complexity of a learning ecology.

PPS. Nota bene. This delivery demonstrates what can be done with powerpoint. Further, because he has used "Articulate" - a Windows-friendly powerpoint-augmenting software -- you get more features and don't have to worry about downloading, compressing or decompressing. :o]

[George's Material came to me via Will Richardson's Weblogg-Ed ]

Weblogged Learning, Weblogged Teaching

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 22:27:21 GMT

Summary: The resources abound for technically inclined teachers and motivated and technically inclined learners.

The picture makes sense when you've read the Jan 25 entry on Bee-Coming A Webhead. It's all really happening.

Michael Coghlan is now presenting Hearing Online Voices in EFL/ESL on Yahoo Messenger for the BaW 06 Evo Session. 30 people present, among whom 3 Brazilians (Carla Arena, Erika Cruvinel from Brasilia and myself in Sao Paulo). Aiden is explaining how she participated in an audio exchange with Michael and how the students became the main protagonists in the chat. Michael describes how Chris Jones (Arizona), Anne Fox (Denmark) conducted exchanges online with their classes. Buthaina (Kuwait) had webheads listen to students' oral presentations and ask questions. Aiden and Michael have recorded wonderful messages for my blogging workshop on the Summer School Podomatic.

It's almost to the point where people are "taking it for granted". Scary -- cause we still have to pay attention to whether we are teaching!!

[technorati: weblogging, edublogging, onlinelearning]

Weblogs for Higher Educators: Deuterolearning for Professors Too!

Thu, 21 Jul 2005 19:35:18 GMT

Summary: It would be a complicated proof, at this point in our [proven] understanding of weblogs, but wouldn't we start with the "Goose to Gander" inference?

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander!" is intpreted to mean , "What is good for a man is equally good for a woman; or, what a man can have or do, so can a woman have or do." This comes from an earlier proverb, "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
From Bartleby's New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy

That is, if weblogging enhances deuterolearning for students then don't we at least make the initial assumption that it enhances learning for teachers, too?

Thus, given that a significant fraction of professorial behavior involves teaching, don't we also assume that weblogging would be good for the learning of professors too?

Therefore, I offer the following hypothesis:
Intensive, consistent and persistent professorial weblogging significantly accelerates meaningful professorial learning* **.

Let's get on with specific research efforts on professorial weblogging! Let's find out what aspects of weblog form, structure and/or process ~~separates~~ translates this speculative logic into a comprehensive set of real findings which verify the utility of weblogs in the job-related practice of professors !

*Where meaningful professorial learning is defined as documented changes in behavior, i.e., real and significant change in content of knowledge shown in relevant instructional, research and service domains.
**"Meaningful" is meant to distinguish job-relevant learning from learning that does not relate to the professors role or competence with her/his specific discipline. No disrespect is intended towards other learning that may also occur. However, those learnings that enhance the income and prestige for the institution, the advancement and known disciplinary competence of the professor and the quality of education for the student are seen to be centrally important in the higher education context.

Weblogging In Higher Education Wise or Foolish?

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 03:12:51 GMT

Summary: Earlier his month the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on faculty weblogs in higher education, it was Bloggers Need Not Apply by Ivan Tribble (a pseudonym). The apparent message of this entry: "Don't write a weblog if you want to get be hired as a faculty member; the risks far outweigh the gains" [or words to that effect]. Stephen Downes' reaction to the entry: "[In a nutshell you've said :] Let's keep our lives secret before we take a new position; that will make it much more certain the job will be a good fit. [And I say, ] "Rubbish". More reactions below.

Given that I'd just written about multiuserweblog set ups in university settings this counter-response to "rubbish" seemed apt. More, , possibly, later.****

A respected University of California Philosophy Professor, J. Searle, in a public service appearance. His purpose, in this case, was to make his ideas accessible to the broader San Francisco Bay Area community. (details on all professorial duties immediately below). Professors have multiple public functions to fill.

---------------------------

Background on being a professor, i.e., teaching faculty member in a college or university: The professorial position is not paid by the hour but, rather, in return for carrying out of certain functions. The are three central functions are generally seen as:

make new knowledge (=scholarship),
transmit knowledge to students (undergraduate and graduate), and
help the institution carry out its functions now and in the future (=teaching), within the institution or within the community within which the institution functions (=service).

The quality of a professor's efforts in each of these areas depends on the quality of her or his written/spoken/or-otherwise-communicated knowledge or thoughts.* In short, the professor is a public knowledge resource in her or his specialty area and is expected to be a good, thoughtful and reasoned thinker in the general sense communicating effectively to a fairly wide audience in a considerable variety of situations. In the classroom the professor is expected to be an effective communicator and to be a just grader. She/he is expected to use her or his influence and power in an ethical fashion.

The principle of academic freedom affords the professor (at whatever level) the room to pursue knowledge development in her or his field as he or she sees fit. The methods of research must be both legal and moral. The degree to which the topic(s) of those investigations are popular or acceptable to a general public, even to Deans or to Board of Trustee members is, at least in theory, out of bounds.

First criticism of Tribble's view (you can find plenty of them by searching Google under "Ivan Tribble"), nicely said by Evan Roberts in his weblog (one of many in the University of Minnesota multiuser weblog system) Coffee Grounds:

To me it seems that the gist of Tribble's article is that the search committee was shocked (shocked) to learn that their candidates had outside interests and emotions that might prevent candidates from spending 14 hours a day on research or teaching.

He gives a lead in to some other higher ed weblog material from Daniel Drezner

"…"[Untenured faculty are cautioned to] think very, very, very carefully about the costs and benefits of blogging under one's own name (emphasis original)." I'm not sure that I thought very, very, very carefully about blogging under my own name; perhaps very carefully.

as well as the following analysis

Can academics be bloggers?

A truncated version of what I said at the Public Choice roundtable with Michael Munger and Chris Lawrence on the question of "Can Academics Be Bloggers?":

1) Of course academics can be bloggers. The more interesting questions are:

a) Can academics be good bloggers?

b) Should academics be bloggers?

My answer both of these questions is "yes, with significant caveats."

CAN ACADEMICS BE GOOD BLOGGERS?

The answer should be yes:

1) 40% of TTLB's Higher Beings have Ph.D.s, so clearly it's possible.

2) Academics possess skills that are useful for blogging -- expertise, writing experience, analytical and critical thinking skills, etc.

That said, the answer for many academics is no:

1) To put it gently, some top-notch academics have not completely mastered the art of the blog. In all likelihood this will change, but it points to a barrier to entry for good scholars; unlike lower-level primates like myself, high-profile academics will often attract attention the moment they start blogging, stripping them of the opportunity to stumble out of the gates and move down the learning curve under the radar.

2) Furthermore, tenured academics have to adjust to a new and strange power structure if they start blogging. Suddenly they're in a world where mere graduate students, or worse yet, people possessing only a B.A., wield more power and influence than them. I mean, it's been three months and Munger is still in a fetal position from being exposed to my "mighty" hit count. And that's just between a full professor and an assistant professor!

3) Richard Posner's theory of public intellectuals suggests that as academics stray from their area of expertise, their signal to noise ratio of the information they generate drops. Some academic bloggers strongly confirm this hypothesis.

4) Yes, academics have writing experience, but they've been trained within an inch of their lives to eschew clear prose for jargon-laden discourse. There are sound and unsound reasons for this within the academy, but for blogging to the general public it's disastrous.

5) It should be stressed that these hindrances are not permanent, but they do constitute a barrier to entry.

SO, SHOULD ACADEMICS* ENGAGE IN BLOGGING**?

*By academics, I mean untenured ones, for tenured faculty [ motivation to exert oneself is less?, see however Manho Singhman's notes on why he blogs below. ]

**By blogging, I mean [general blogging-- my phrase SPH] rather than blogging only about one's research, which is an unalloyed good. [emboldening is mine , SPH. See, for example, excerpts below*** from Mano Singham's Web Journal

1) Blogging can be thought of as part of service. It's a low-cost way of reaching beyond the ivory tower. It's also acting like a quasi-referee of public intellectual output.

2) As blogging has become more respectable, the stigma associated with the activity has faded away.

NO:

1) It can be addictive.

2) If the blog is successful, it will breed resentment from colleagues, because it creates an alternative path to acclaim where tenured faculty do not function as gatekeepers.

3) Colleagues who do not write for a wide audience will overestimate the amount of time you devote to blogging, because they assume a one-to-one correspondence between public articles and scholarly articles (the actual ratio is more like 1:3). They will also underestimate the possibility that blogging is a complement rather than a substitute to traditional scholarship.

4) Scholars who out themselves as not part of the mainstream political persuasion of academics will have some uncomfortable hallway moments -- though this cost is often overestimated.

5) More serious are the academic political minefields that blogging can trigger -- you know, thin-skinned senior academics who are perfectly willing to carry a blog grudge into the academic realm.

*There are gradations in professorial rank (in the US, typically, instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, professor-- professor the highest).

** Movement through the ranks is supposed to relate to quality in carrying out the actions associated with the role. Generally the actions are categorized as teaching, scholarship and service. While much time can be, and is, in some cases, spent assessing each, in my experience rough and ready solutions are applied in order that committee members can return to more familiar, and less intense, duties. I would say that, in general the rough and ready translations are: quality of scholarship translates as "number of juried journal publications (prestigious , juried, journals preferred) per year", quality of teaching translates into a summary of student evaluations on after-class polls and quality of service translates as "number of worthy nonteaching, nonscholarship activities (committee work is typical) successfully undertaken.

***Mano Singham's "Why I blog"
I reached a kind of landmark this week with this blog. I have been making entries since January 26th, posting one item each weekday, except for a three-week break in June. As a result I have now posted over 100 entries and consisting of over 100,000 words, longer than either of my two published books.

Why do I blog? Why does anyone blog? The Doonesbury comic strip of Sunday, July 3, 2005 fed into the stereotype of bloggers as self-important losers who cannot get real jobs as writers, and feed their ego by pretending that what they say has influence. The idea behind this kind of disparaging attitude is that if no one is willing to pay you to write, then what you have to say has no value.

Of course, there are a vast number of bloggers out there, with an equally vast number of reasons as to why they blog so any generalization is probably wrong. So I will reflect on why I blog. Some bloggers may share this view, others may have different reasons. So be it.

The first reason is the very fact that because of the blog, I have written the equivalent of a complete book in six months. Writing is not easy, especially starting to write on any given day. Having a blog enforces on me a kind of discipline that would not exist otherwise. Before I started this blog, I would let ideas swirl around in my head, without actually putting them down in concrete form. After awhile, I would forget about them, but be left with this nagging feeling of dissatisfaction that I should have explored the ideas further and written them down.

The second benefit of writing is that it forces you to clarify and sharpen your ideas. It is easy to delude yourself that you understand something when you have the idea only in your mind. Putting those ideas to paper (or screen) has the startling effect of revealing gaps in knowledge and weaknesses of logic and reasoning, thus forcing a re-evaluation of one's ideas. So writing is not a one-way process from brain to screen/paper. It is a dialectic process. Writing reveals your ideas but also changes the way you think. As the writer E. M. Forster said “How can I know what I am thinking until I see what I say?” This is why writing is such an important part of the educational process and why I am so pleased that the new SAGES program places such emphasis on it.

Another benefit for me is that writing this blog has (I hope) helped me become a better writer, able to spot poor construction and word choice more quickly. Practice is an important part of writing and the blog provides me with that. Given that the blog is public and can (in principle) be read by anyone prevents me from posting careless or shoddy pieces. It forces me to take the time to repeatedly revise and polish, essential skills for writers.

When I started this blog, I had no idea what form it would take. Pretty soon, almost without thinking, it slipped into the form that I am most comfortable with, which is that of a short essay around a single topic each day. I initially feared that I would run out of ideas to write about within a few weeks but this has not happened. In fact what happens is what all writers intuitively know but keep forgetting, which is that the very act of writing acts as a spur for new ideas, new directions to explore.

As I write, new topics keep coming into my mind, which I store away for future use. The ideas swirl around in my head as I am doing other things (like driving and chores), and much of the writing takes place in my mind during those times as well. The well of ideas to write about does not show any signs of going dry, although it does take time to get the items ready for posting, and that is my biggest constraint. Researching those topics so that I go beyond superficial "off the top of my head" comments and have something useful to say about them has been very educational for me.

Since I have imposed on myself the goal of writing an essay for each weekday, this has enabled me to essentially write the first draft (which is the hardest part of writing, for me at least) of many topics that may subsequently become articles (or even books) submitted for publication. If I do decide to expand on some of the blog item for publication, that process should be easier since I have done much of the preliminary research, organization, and writing already.

All these benefits have accrued to me, the writer, and this is no accident. I think most writing benefits the author most, for all the reasons given above. But any writer also hopes that the reader benefits in some way as well, though that is hard for the author to judge.

I remember when I was younger, I wanted to "be a writer" but never actually wrote anything, at least anything worthwhile. Everything I wrote seemed contrived and imitative. I then read a comment by someone who said that there is a big difference between those who want to be writers and those who want to write. The former are just enamored with idea of getting published, of being successful authors and seeing their name in print. The latter feel that they have something to say that they have to get out of their system. I realized then that I belonged to the former class, which I why I had never actually written anything of value. With that realization, I stopped thinking of myself as a writer and did not do any writing other than the minimum required for my work. It is only within the last ten years or so that I feel that I have moved into the latter category, feeling a compulsion to write for its own sake. This blog has given me a regular outlet for that impulse.

I would never have written so much without having this blog. I would recommend that others who feel like they have to write also start their own. Do not worry about whether anyone will read it or whether they will like it. Write because you feel you have something to say. Even if you are the only reader of your own writing, you will have learned a lot from the process.

POST SCRIPT

Paul Krugman is an economist at Princeton University and is a member of the reality-based community. His July 15, 2005 op-ed in the New York Times shows how far politics has moved away from this kind of world and into one in which facts are seen as almost irrelevant.

Thanks to Richard Hake for the following quote by F.M. Cornford, Microcosmographia Academica - Being A Guide for the Young Academic Politician (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 4th ed., 1949 first published in 1908), which might well have been addressed to Krugman and other members of the reality-based community, although it was written over a century ago:

You think (do you not?) that you have only to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and act upon it at once. It is just this conviction that makes you so unpleasant….are you not aware that conviction has never been produced by an appeal to reason which only makes people uncomfortable? If you want to move them, you must address your arguments to prejudice and the political motive….

**** a more systematic analysis of perceived benefits and detriments on the part of higher education practicitioners; I'm collecting documents now. Suggestions are welcome!

University Weblogging: Where, With What System (and How Fast)?

Sun, 17 Jul 2005 00:54:20 GMT

Summary: I started with leads from Jeremy Smith and James Farmer , D'Arcy Norman, among others. I have compiled a list of higher education multi-user weblogging implementations. There are two results: a) the table below, in which are noted institutional weblogging adaptations and software, where known, and b) also a list of some of the softwares available.

There were more institutions and softwares mentioned than I have shared. Why? If I, rightly or wrongly, had the impression that in-early-development was more the flavor than "we're using it, it works for the average user" I left the institution or software off the list. (This is a weblog entry, however, and I was, no doubt, less consistent in this attitude than I could/should have been {;o} !!)

While we're at it let's moderate any unbridled enthusiasm for the institutional momentum chronicled here and elsewhere. As excited as I am about the possibilities of weblogging as a part of effective and collaborative learning, I am leery of the consequences of rapid deployment for the sake of invention and institutional fund-raising (not the same as a deep, collective conviction amongst the majority of those who will have to live with all of the consequences of the innovation). In this vein, James Farmer also wrote another entry in which to worry about this phenom here. He was thoughtfully supported by a number of others. His entry is well worth your reading and thinking time. Let me here add my vote for caution; it's a mistake to give full reign to the charge led by early adopters and fund-raisers; I'm old enough to have helped "lead the charge" (aka dragging the many behind the cart of the enthusiastic few) more than once. The results of precipitous development aren't always pretty, even for the developers!!

University Weblogging Systems
Country	Description	Comments
Case Western University	US	Jeremy Smith of Case Western (see below) gives a 3.5/5.0
Stanford	US	Campus-Wide Weblogging Collaboration is essential to the Stanford University mission. After starting with one installation to meet a specific need in IT, the university now offers a campus-wide license of Movable Type to support the multi-disciplinary teamwork of faculty, staff, and students. Approach A member of the IT staff who'd been using weblogs for a while set up Movable Type as an ad-hoc bug-tracking system, allowing his team to submit bugs, make notes, and stay current with development project status. The department evaluated various backend tools for communication with an eye to campus-wide deployment. Movable Type was selected. Results Movable Type is designed to facilitate communication. For instance,at Stanford, science departments are able to work with engineering departments to realize innovative ideas and bring new projects to completion. And now anyone at Stanford can better foster highly collaborative teaching, learning, and research. [Statement above is from Moveable Type site]
Yale	US
Harvard	US	Open to anyone with a Harvard email address. Hosted at Harvard Law School. Dave Winer, one of the pioneers of weblogging, instrumental in setting up Harvard system and philosophy. Donna Wentworth is coeditor. 765 weblogs (onsite and off) hosted on Userland Manila server.
Northern Michigan University	US	Looks as if there's a clearance/recruitment process. Implying a wish for control signifying much for all institutional moves in this direction.
University of Minnesota	US	Assigned a 4/5 by Case Western rater (which has its own blogging system which the rater, http://blog.case.edu/jms18">Jeremy Smith gave a 3.5
Reed Journals	US	Run independently and is, at this point, used by a small fraction of student, administrator and faculty population (186 accounts on 7/14)
University of South Florida	US	---
Bryn Mawr	US	(for use with language classes, 67 users on 7/15)
Penn State	US	experimental system
Rice University	US	Official launch 2/24/05
Virginia Commonwealth University	US	(not rated; not clear from online links how much weblogging is a central feature of WSS services at VCU or of student or faculty participation in the university)
Dartmouth	US
MIT	US	Rated by Smith at a 3.5 out of 5
University of Calgary	Canada	Appears to have been up 20 weeks or so; wiki available and navigable/editable by all. Powered by Drupal. (See this page to read D'Arcy Norman's comparison of multuser weblog systems.)
Weblogs@UBC (University of British Columbia)	Canada
University of PEI (Prince Edward Island)	Canada
University of Warwick	Great Britain	(rated a 5 out of 5 by J Smith of Case) Some advantages: single sign-on system, a blog directory, a "planet" site, as well as a roster of blogs for courses, faculty divisions and services plus "tons" of documentation, FAQ's, tours, a glossary and etc. Plus all setting up of blogs has be automated through something called Blogbuilder .

Software:

As for software to run a multiuser weblog system, see James Farmer's entry on Incsub his weblog. He and his commentors give considerable detail. His initial list includes* **:

Manila,
Drupal. See, also, this this presentation on Drupal as a nonproprietary Drupal to forward teaching, writing collaboration and general engagement in higher ed (Samantha Blackmon, David Blakesley, Charlie Lowe, TLT Conference, Feb 2005) ,
Moveable Type,
Tikiwiki,
WordPress Multi User,
pLog,
LiveJournal.org,
Roller, and
Blosxom (The Blosxom inspired Blosjom (a java application) can also be configured for a multiuser environment. It now comes bundled with OS X (Tiger) version (more here from Tom Hoffman).

*Click on the software name to get James' summary points about each. **Click here to link to commenter responses to James' detailed entry.

Technorati tags: multiuserweblogs universityweblogs universityweblogging highereducationweblogs webloggingsoftware socialsoftware knowledgemaking wiki weblog

Tags Again, Some Considerable Hope

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:46:24 GMT

Summary: After I blogged critically on tags recently, I found and read a wowser summary treatise from Clay Shirky. Then I happen upon Ming the Mechanic (Flemming Funch) singing the praises of Clays article. I offer my own excerpts and emboldening below. The article is well worth the reading.

In short, Clay has hope and reason for it. He believes that the mechanisms are developing so that we will, in a not-so-distant future, be able to use the web as a giant reference system, even while each of us has singular purposes and a distinctly individual philosophy of life.

Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags: "Great Minds Don't Think Alike #

Tags are simply labels for URLs, selected to help the user in later retrieval of those URLs. Tags have the additional effect of grouping related URLs together. There is no fixed set of categories or officially approved choices. You can use words, acronyms, numbers, whatever makes sense to you, without regard for anyone else's needs, interests, or requirements.

The addition of a few simple labels hardly seems so momentous, but the surprise here, as so often with the Web, is the surprise of simplicity. Tags are important mainly for what they leave out. By forgoing formal classification, tags enable a huge amount of user-produced organizational value, at vanishingly small cost.

[…]

With those changes afoot, here are some of the things that I think are coming, as advantages of tagging systems:

Market Logic - As we get used to the lack of physical constraints, as we internalize the fact that there is no shelf and there is no disk, we're moving towards market logic, where you deal with individual motivation, but group value.

As Schachter says of del.icio.us, 'Each individual categorization scheme is worth less than a professional categorization scheme. But there are many, many more of them.' If you find a way to make it valuable to individuals to tag their stuff, you'll generate a lot more data about any given object than if you pay a professional to tag it once and only once. And if you can find any way to create value from combining myriad amateur classifications over time, they will come to be more valuable than professional categorization schemes, particularly with regards to robustness and cost of creation.

The other essential value of market logic is that individual differences don't have to be homogenized. Look for the word 'queer' in almost any top-level categorization. You will not find it, even though, as an organizing principle for a large group of people, that word matters enormously. Users don't get to participate those kind of discussions around traditional categorization schemes, but with tagging, anyone is free to use the words he or she thinks are appropriate, without having to agree with anyone else about how something 'should' be tagged. Market logic allows many distinct points of view to co-exist, because it allows individuals to preserve their point of view, even in the face of general disagreement.

User and Time are Core Attributes - This is absolutely essential. The attitude of the Yahoo ontologist and her staff was -- 'We are Yahoo We do not have biases. This is just how the world is. The world is organized into a dozen categories.' You don't know who those people were, where they came from, what their background was, what their political biases might be.

Here, because you can derive 'this is who this link is was tagged by' and 'this is when it was tagged, you can start to do inclusion and exclusion around people and time, not just tags. You can start to do grouping. You can start to do decay. 'Roll up tags from just this group of users, I'd like to see what they are talking about' or 'Give me all tags with this signature, but anything that's more than a week old or a year old.'

This is group tagging -- not the entire population, and not just me. It's like Unix permissions -- right now we've got tags for user and world, and this is the base on which we will be inventing group tags. We're going to start to be able to subset our categorization schemes. Instead of having massive categorizations and then specialty categorization, we're going to have a spectrum between them, based on the size and make-up of various tagging groups.

Signal Loss from Expression - The signal loss in traditional categorization schemes comes from compressing things into a restricted number of categories. With tagging, when there is signal loss, it comes from people not having any commonality in talking about things. The loss is from the multiplicity of points of view, rather than from compression around a single point of view. But in a world where enough points of view are likely to provide some commonality, the aggregate signal loss falls with scale in tagging systems, while it grows with scale in systems with single points of view.

The solution to this sort of signal loss is growth. Well-managed, well-groomed organizational schemes get worse with scale, both because the costs of supporting such schemes at large volumes are prohibitive, and, as I noted earlier, scaling over time is also a serious problem. Tagging, by contrast, gets better with scale. With a multiplicity of points of view the question isn't 'Is everyone tagging any given link 'correctly'', but rather 'Is anyone tagging it the way I do?' As long as at least one other person tags something they way you would, you'll find it -- using a thesaurus to force everyone's tags into tighter synchrony would actually worsen the noise you'll get with your signal. If there is no shelf, then even imagining that there is one right way to organize things is an error.

The Filtering is Done Post Hoc - There's an analogy here with every journalist who has ever looked at the Web and said 'Well, it needs an editor.' The Web has an editor, it's everybody. In a world where publishing is expensive, the act of publishing is also a statement of quality -- the filter comes before the publication. In a world where publishing is cheap, putting something out there says nothing about its quality. It's what happens after it gets published that matters. If people don't point to it, other people won't read it. But the idea that the filtering is after the publishing is incredibly foreign to journalists.

Similarly, the idea that the categorization is done after things are tagged is incredibly foreign to cataloguers. Much of the expense of existing catalogue systems is in trying to prevent one-off categories. With tagging, what you say is 'As long as a lot of people are tagging any given link, the rare tags can be used or ignored, as the user likes. We won't even have to expend the cost to prevent people from using them. We'll just help other users ignore them if they want to.'

Again, scale comes to the rescue of the system in a way that would simply break traditional cataloging schemes. The existence of an odd or unusual tag is a problem if it's the only way a given link has been tagged, or if there is no way for a user to avoid that tag. Once a link has been tagged more than once, though, users can view or ignore the odd tags as it suits them, and the decision about which tags to use comes after the links have been tagged, not before.

Merged from URLs, Not Categories - You don't merge tagging schemes at the category level and then see what the contents are. As with the 'merging ISBNs' idea, you merge individual contents, because we now have URLs as unique handles. You merge from the URLs, and then try and derive something about the categorization from there. This allows for partial, incomplete, or probabilistic merges that are better fits to uncertain environments -- such as the real world -- than rigid classification schemes.

Merges are Probabilistic, not Binary - Merges create partial overlap between tags, rather than defining tags as synonyms. Instead of saying that any given tag 'is' or 'is not' the same as another tag, del.icio.us is able to recommend related tags by saying 'A lot of people who tagged this 'Mac' also tagged it 'OSX'.' We move from a binary choice between saying two tags are the same or different to the Venn diagram option of 'kind of is/somewhat is/sort of is/overlaps to this degree'. That is a really profound change.

[…]

[After looking at user tagging patterns we can say], of particular URLs, that the users tagging this URL either did or did not center around a certain core tags, with this degree of certainty, and, thanks to the time stamps, we can even start to understand how the distribution of a URLs tags changes over time. It was 5 years between the spread of the link and Google's figuring out how to use whole collections of links to create additional value. We're early in the use of tags, so we don't yet have large, long-lived data sets to look at, but they are being built up quickly, and we're just figuring out how to extract novel value from whole collections of tags.

Organization Goes Organic #

We are moving away from binary categorization -- books either are or are not entertainment -- and into this probabilistic world, where N% of users think books are entertainment. It may well be that within Yahoo, there was a big debate about whether or not books are entertainment. But they either had no way of reflecting that debate or they decided not to expose it to the users. What instead happened was it became an all-or-nothing categorization, 'This is entertainment, this is not entertainment.' We're moving away from that sort of absolute declaration, and towards being able to roll up this kind of value by observing how people handle it in practice.

It comes down ultimately to a question of philosophy. Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world? If you believe the world makes sense, then anyone who tries to make sense of the world differently than you is presenting you with a situation that needs to be reconciled formally, because if you get it wrong, you're getting it wrong about the real world.

If, on the other hand, you believe that we make sense of the world, if we are, from a bunch of different points of view, applying some kind of sense to the world, then you don't privilege one top level of sense-making over the other. What you do instead is you try to find ways that the individual sense-making can roll up to something which is of value in aggregate, but you do it without an ontological goal. You do it without a goal of explicitly getting to or even closely matching some theoretically perfect view of the world.

Critically, the semantics here are in the users, not in the system. This is not a way to get computers to understand things. When del.icio.us is recommending tags to me, the system is not saying, 'I know that OSX is an operating system. Therefore, I can use predicate logic to come up with recommendations -- users run software, software runs on operating systems, OSX is a type of operating system -- and then say 'Here Mr. User, you may like these links.''

What it's doing instead is a lot simpler: 'A lot of users tagging things foobar are also tagging them frobnitz. I'll tell the user foobar and frobnitz are related.' It's up to the user to decide whether or not that recommendation is useful -- del.icio.us has no idea what the tags mean. The tag overlap is in the system, but the tag semantics are in the users. This is not a way to inject linguistic meaning into the machine.

It's all dependent on human context. This is what we're starting to see with del.icio.us, with Flickr, with systems that are allowing for and aggregating tags. The signal benefit of these systems is that they don't recreate the structured, hierarchical categorization so often forced onto us by our physical systems. Instead, we're dealing with a significant break -- by letting users tag URLs and then aggregating those tags, we're going to be able to build alternate organizational systems, systems that, like the Web itself, do a better job of letting individuals create value for one another, often without realizing it.

No Common Tag Rules Means Problems, Even Dysfunctionality

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 20:07:36 GMT

Summary: Paolo Valdemarin voices concerns that I share. Using some commonsense usability ideas (see his entry below) he finds that rule-free Technorati, Flickr and CCMixter tag systems are dysfunctional. The loss between sender/tagger and receiver/tag searcher is too great. Too many items that should be found, aren't, too many that are found, don't fit need.

On the other hand there's Wikipedia -- careful development, more front end learning load, yes, but, contrary to the three examples above, "the whole system is blooming beautifully".

One Million Tags: "David Sifry is reporting that Technorati has now indexed one million distinct tags, found in 14 million blog posts. It looks like at least some people likes to tag what they write and to contribute to the building of a meaningful web.

I must admit I am still not completely sold on tags.

It's not that I'm not fascinated with the whole concept of a bottom-up, social driven, taxonomy: it's quite similar to what we used for K-collector, what leaves me a little cold is the lack of coordination tools and rules. Are my posts about my computers supposed to be using the 'Mac', the 'MacOS' or the 'Macintosh' tag?

Last week I went to a conference in Florence, took some pictures and posted them on Flickr using the name of the event: Nuovo e Utile. Later I discovered that other people were posting pictures under the name of the sub-event we were all participating: Neuweb. It's obvious how we could have gotten in synch by other means, and partially we did: I did found out about the second tagging and added to my pictures, but not everybody did, and this is leaving both tags incomplete.

I might be a little frustrated because when we went through this stage first, a couple of years ago, we decided that it was broken and tried to fix it adding tag sharing and tag gardening tools.

While today everybody seems to be enthusiast I keep going to the main tags page on Technorati and thinking that none of those tags would be helpful to find information in a sea of 14 million posts, simply because these are the most popular tags and consequently they are not very helpful. Until some time ago the most used tag by far was 'General', now it's not there anymore, somebody has removed it, it think it was a good idea but who did it? Using which tool? How was the decision taken?

A few days ago I visited for the first time CC Mixter, because I was thinking about a similar service (music track sharing). I visited their tags page in order to get an idea about the content and, again, to me the page looks totally useless: the most used tags are 'MP3' and 'Stereo' which is hardly of any interest if you are looking for a song title. Imho in this case a good old directory based on Artists and Songs would be the better way to navigate in this database.

Every time I mention adding some rules to these systems I get one of those 'he's not a true believer' stares.

But look at Wikipedia: it's a totally bottom-up project which has some very simple but strict policies and guidelines about how it should be developing. Writers are respecting these rules, finding new ways to enforce them and the whole system is blooming beautifully."

Enabling Knowledge-Making in Personal, Instructional and On-The-Job Contexts

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 15:43:23 GMT

Summary: I would like to see some explicit discussion amongst research-oriented and instruction-oriented "personal web publishing" theorists and practitioners. The topic: knowledge development strategies for individuals and groups. To jump the gun a bit:

In order to accelerate an individual's learning provide, and train to use, two pieces of software, in addition to general web access software: a weblog and a content management system like Omnioutliner Pro. (Assuming s/he is already proficient with general productivity and web access software).
Once individual already has above skills, fold in use of wiki software in a group learning format.
(The group learning format can be in a "face-to-face plus online", aka "hybrid", setting (e.g., coworkers at same site who also work and communicate on line) or it can be done purely online. In either case, this step also requires skill development in the social arena--accepting and generating praise, accepting and generating constructive criticisms, listening and feedback skill, generally.
Also involved: extemporaneous extrapolation and explaining "on the fly" (The extrapolater will not have had chance to practice saying this "new-to-her" idea.)

It occurs to me, as it has to numerous others (see others in links section... follow their link trails for a good starter set of thinkers), that the same relationship between inputs, processes and outputs can be variously labelled weblogging, journal writing, learning, research, 'my job', etc. depending on the context. Whatever the context, the inputs, processes and outputs remain the same and effective knowledge development and organization strategies remain the same. I believe that collaborative research & development (as supported by weblog & wiki -see below) is prepared for by training . The training would be not only in subject matter but in "learning to learn"** via the acceleration enabled by personal web publishing.

For your inspection, a summary of two writings: first work done by Seb Fiedler and Priya Sharma on training to learn via the use of personal webpublishing tools and the second a summary of my entry concerning the conduct of team research also using personal webpublishing tools.
-----------
What are personal webpublishing tools? Examples are group and individual weblogs and wiki's. Software details vary slightly between the two projects; the primary difference between the two is that one focuses on the generic process with secondary attention to subject matter (the topics are chosen individually but are within a discipline). In the research process suggested below the topics are distinct subpieces of a general research topic. A general problem has been partitioned into researchable parts and handed to researchers who are knowledgeable in the general area and in the use of the personal webpublishing approach to learning/research acceleration.

See what you think.

Seb Fiedler's Personal WebPublishing as a Reflective Conversational Tool for Self-Organized Learning (for BlogTalk1 11/03). At the time of publication he and Priya Sharma were together running a special topics class which were aimed at enhancing self-managed learning projects at Pennsylvania State University. Because there was the opportunity/requirement for face-to-face interactions with teacher and among students--the authors have been classified this as a hybrid learning environment.

Project Notes (please see illustration in final section of paper (link above is a .pdf of that paper)).

Project Roles
1. Learning Environment Designer: Sets up of the technological architecture. (Used Userland's Frontier/Manila package: "The backbone of our conversational learning environment is a cluster of independent sites that are visually and functionally interlinked. A course log functions as the publishing space for the Learning Coach and the Learning Environment Manager. … Project owners can comment on items that are published there and open up independent discussion topics if they feel the need. … The project logs offer a similar set up like the course log. Project owners can create and publish log items, story pages, pictures and files (e.g., .pdfs). Initially they can only edit two additional interface elements [ useful links and an about page in which scope, intention etc. of project is presented]
2. Learning Environment Manager: Monitors the ongoing use of the Webpublishing spaces, comments on technical features and procedures, assists participants when there are questions or problems, alters the system interface when the need arises, works out bugs and technical problems when and if they occur.
3. Learning Coach: the following are the actions commonly taken by the learning coach:
  - negotiates needs and purposes,
  - helps to define a manageable scope for project,
  - facilitates conversational exchanges among the participants,
  - introduces and suggests resources,
  - comments on the task-focused activities and negotiates criteria for evaluation,
  - coaches and counsels as needed,
  - creates opportunities for face-to-face meetings,
  - augments, highlights, models and fees back good practice
  - scaffolds (breaks final skill set into steps as needed) by providing mini- interventions and assignments to trigger inner and outer conversations.
4. Learning Project Owners: "spend most of their time working on their particular learning projects, documenting their meaning making process through the externalization of thoughts, observations and questions, chunks of newly constructed meanings, reflections, and so forth. In addition they provide feedback and commentary to each other through face-to-face encounters and their personal Webpublishing spaces."

------

My Group Knowledge-Making Paper (full reference here) (illustration and process description):

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle--preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.
At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) "situation". Each has researcher's assignment has two aspects: first is to "getting a good answer" to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.
Each researcher's notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members--via the evaluated member's wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members' wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.
There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki's from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.
In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).
For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.
A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)
[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]
[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]
[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

RELATED LINKS

Seb Fiedler's Papers at his site.
Denham Gray's entry (3/05) on the social character of Personal Learning. See , also, his link (via Ton) to a free course on action research and evaluation.
Ton Zylstra's Series of Entries(12/03) on Actionable Sense
Seb Paquet's Article (10/03) Exploring Relation of Weblogging to Research
Seb Paquet's wondering (9/03) about how long it takes for students to get comfortable with weblogging
Dave Pollard's (7/03) Detailed Analysis of Blog Flow Sequence
Related Entries from Spike Hall:
- Entry (12/03) showing a research process as it might follow weblog-based networking -- responding to ideas of Ton Zylstra
- One of my entries on Learning to Learn Learning to Learn ---high proven payoff
- Notes extending Dave Pollard's weblogging flow ideas into research
- Definition of Klogs (10/02) (knowledge logs): thoughts and processes involved
- The Bounded Group Knowledge-Making Hypothesis, (12/02)including a restatement of two earlier hypotheses. This thinking led to my proposal of the group research model pictured above. Details of the hypothesis are below.
  
  First, the basic klog hypothesis: a comparison of otherwise equivalent initial learning 'problems' will show that klogging of knowledge acquisition [with no other supports, not even the news reader] will result in faster and more comprehensive knowledge acquisiton than a nonreflective participation in a quest for the same knowledge.
  Second, the augmented klog hypothesis: comparison of otherwise equivalent initial learning 'problems' will show that the klog augmented by news aggregators, automatic google searches (such as googleIt applied to title) and commentary from readers of klog entries (as in 'further reading' [see above]) will demonstrate significantly enhanced speed and comprehensiveness of development when compared to results of the pure klog approach.
Lilia Efimova's Thoughts about Weblogs and Wiki's (6/04)

*Comparability is necessary across sets; the sets need to be of equivalent psychological stature. By way of illustration, "20 single syllable french nouns versus an earlier, altogether different, set of 20 single syllable French nouns". 20 addition problems versus 20 ice skating manuvers wont do. :o]

**When we get into the realm of 'Learning to Learn' (aka deuterolearning, metalearning) our discussion is particularly called for because, or so it seems to me, discussion of various levels of learning as if they were one will undermine our collective ability to construct effective systems (If we assume that all food is the same won't we be able to think out how to mix, prepare, cook and present in efficient and esthetic ways?

Using the broadest designations Bateson (Towards an Ecology of Mind) listed at least three levels of learning:

learning,
learning to learn (i.e., demonstrating altered knowledge of learning such that greater speed and efficiency is clearly demonstrated in situation 2 as opposed the otherwise comparable* situation 1 , and
"learning to 'learn to learn': acquiring the more or less independent ability to generate learning strategies.

[Technorati learning, learning-to-learn, research, knowledge-making]

Tags and the Growth of Knowledge/Understanding

Thu, 05 May 2005 19:39:27 GMT

Summary: I need to study and think/write more about tags. There is an alternative to my personal project management style: piles, each more or less in sequence of treatment-- most recent on top. The alternative is sorting entries by category; it gives easy, efficient access to information, via an established conceptual map. The map can be personal. or professional or cultural. In the case of information storage, the category map would give access to to entries which relate to certain areas of knowledge and the experience to which it relates.

As I understand it, tagging is categorizing on the fly by individual tag users (see the definitions at Technorati and at del.icio.us (under bookmarklets.. about half-way down the page) . As soon as more than one person is involved in tag use the degree of agreement on tag meaning becomes a possible problem. The joint understanding must be there if miss-sorting and consequent loss of information is to be avoided. This issue becomes critical in proportion to the number of users of the tag system.

If the group is small--a club, a family, a neighborhood--- the tags can circulate informally or while expertise is being passed on; if you're learning to harvest wheat, conduct a burial, prepare a meal, about to marry or adopt a child. When you are in common (generally experienced by at least one person in a neighborhood or family) situations with more or less common goals, the vocabulary can be shared and easily passed from the experienced to the inexperienced, the expert to the inexpert, in the course of actually doing or in processing that common situation. In short, transmission is clean/efficient when tag and the situational experience it refers to are pretty clear. There are, however, many situations in which much works against clarity.

What if, for example,a group is made up of members who , each unknown to the others, is working on material that is related. Relatedness is important because of the possibility of cross-fertilization between similar lines of thought?

The discovery of overlap will lead to investigation, reading and, ultimately, to an improved development in one's own knowledge-making efforts. It is this scenario that is at the core of my belief that knowledge-making efforts, as a whole and for individuals, will be markedly improved by comprehensive access to related lines and types of thought. Improved access of this sort will lead to faster development of useful knowledge -for individuals and the sum of individual working with the knowledge venue. Knowledge development that is both faster and "deeper" constitutes the payoff for the effort that goes into developing and using a universal category system for submissions, including weblog posts*, into web, or any other, common knowledge "space" .

I don't think that tags, as they are presently constructed and used, aren't the final answer. Why? First, their relationship to deep bodies of knowledge has not been established. This limits search possibilities for the universal audience which includes people with varying depth of skill re the published material. One way or another the ontological tree --ie the body of ideas upon which this one is built and which are built upon this one should be linked to this one -- needs to be easily accessible via the item coding. Second, and equally important, the terms that are used should not only relate to the ontological tree, but should be common and/or commensursate, i.e., translatable one into the other. Inaccessible terms, for example, the terms used only by a group of three avant-garde artificial intelligence researchers, clearly do not suit the needs of the maximal development of universal understanding. Is the use of tags a movement in the right direction?

Yes!
By way of illustration:

If attaching tags at the moment of weblog entry completion helps me get better access to my own body of work, then tags have already helped.
If, not only I but all other members of a group of webloggers who are writing about weblogs in education, write my entries using group terms (and tag my entries using those terms ) then I've probably increased my own and my fellow group members access to my reasoning. I've also gained access to the entries of others who are working on related material. This done, we all, as individuals and as a whole, will learn more and faster in our tagged area of knowledge.

Interestingly, here are Technorati's most popular of more than 837000 tags presently(5/5/05) in use. The word "tag" is not among the most used ];o] !!

*Looking ahead I think that the following need doing:

all intellectual material placed on-line, not just weblogs, not just current efforts.
Category system has to be developed . Whatever form it takes, it should be automatic -- tags/labels generated according to some accepted system for classifying knowledge.
Systems of access for various purposes should then be built. Once the ontology --the knowledge vocabulary and hierarchy is developed, navigation systems for various knowledge consuming and/or Knowledge-making could then be constructed. Maps for the various user groups would differ; the full ontology would be the "same" for all but used differently by the different consuming and developing groups.

**Not that there are not reasons for having private (as in restricted usage) vocabulary or languages. However, for so long as, and to the extent that, a language or vocabulary is private is the degree to which they undermine the goal of advancement of universal understanding. Sometimes this is seen to be OK. For example, in the cases of a) developing proprietary knowledge e.g., new software for commercial use) or b) of espionage and spying, the disadvantage to universal understanding is seen to be a benefit to the knowledge-makers.

My Weblog Characterization (from BlogThings)

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:21:49 GMT

Summary: I took the weblog survey.I'm pretty much in agreement, I would like to grow wisdom in my blog. Pundit Blogger an aspect my ideal. But there is at least one other aspect of my makeup; call it "Fellow Traveler", someone who enjoys sharing the quest with one or more others.

Gotta say Pundit Blogger characterization is much closer than, say, "Snarky Blogger" --defined as: "You've got a razor sharp wit that bloggers are secretly scared of. And that's why they read your posts as often as they can!

Nope!, "Look at Me Blogger" doesn't fit either.

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

Technorati

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:16:42 GMT

Summary: Working on technorati profile. Have added technorati javascript to bottom of my main page template. Am making sure technorati is pinged after I submit an entry and am now putting tag information at bottom of entry. Have also claimed my connectivity3 humor site .

Instructions for pinging technorati:

download technorati radio userland ping service and decompress.

Open Radio application , select open from the file menu and select the expanded file == services.technorati.fttb--

remove all path information so that display shows only --masterPingData.services.technorati-- and click OK

enable Technorati ping from the Master Ping Configuration page. technorati ping claim tags

Podcasts: Why I'm Making the Transition to On Demand Podcast Consumption

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:54:13 GMT

Summary: I need better rowing material than Angel--love the show, but, hey, "higher self" would rather catch up on famous web developers or philosophers. I row multiple hours per week; scheduling around TV schedules is dysfunctional. On demand listening of relevant growth material lowers dysfunction index on two counts . Podcasts, of course! Why? Because I could wear a player (e.g., ipod or rio karma) and still row. Playbacks would be from rss subscriptions automatically downloaded to my mac and copied, via ethernet connection, to my player. I could then listen to the player whenever, and as long as, I row. All that's left is saving up enough to buy the player.

IT Possibilities:

The IT podcast feed with individual audio downloads below.
Rael Dornfest on Remixing
A reading of Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture (Chapter 1)

Phillip Greenspun

Software Engineering for Internet Applications

From IT Conversations
[via plasticbag.org]

Philosophy/Culture/Ethics Possibilities:

Miette's Bedtime Story Feed (readings which have included Dostoevsky, Dorothy Parker,Iris Murdoch, D.H. Lawrence).
Stephen's Web Stephen Downing's audio essays blog.

(tags: podcast, philosophy, internet, ipod, literature)

Tags in the Quest for New Knowledge: further commentary!

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:22:18 GMT

Summary:It is no trivial matter to be able to send a question into "web space" and have an answer come back.However, It's one thing to send out "New York Yankees" or "weblogging"; the search task is pretty simple. It's another search entirely that brings back sites, commentary, photos etc. that are "precisely" at the edge of your knowledge space. No single word, probably no single phrase, will bring back such a result.

The likelihood of search success diminishes as the searcher's knowledge space increases in size and complexity. Or, putting it in another way, my bet is that, holding "results=successful--the search result desired was found" constant, the more complex and layered the knowledge space, the more difficult the construction of and deployment of search tools/robots/spiders and etc.

And, as for tags?

Tags connect us. But they are imprecise. However, imprecise though they may be, when I am faced with the options that are now available, I'll take tags, over one word or multiword search phrases, as the fundamental search term. Tags, when used as categorical signs, will afford me a stronger chance of connecting with someone who is working on material that overlaps my knowledge space (pks or personal knowledge space), enough, I think, to inform/inspire any learning reach beyond its present boundaries .

When thinking about this it will probably be useful to think of a specific knowledge concern. For example, let's say that I am interested in knowledge-making, knowledge-making in the situation: "ecological protection in isolated, communities faced with strong real estate development forces (e.g., wealthy retirees from the big city who are more interested in a shoreline view of whale migrations than in the ecosystem damage done by acquiring a private access to such a view)".

How would I explore ? How would I choose between possibilities? 1) reading the entries of my favorite bloggers hoping for an appropriate stimulus or 2)perhaps googling a word or, in really sophisticated fashion, a set of words combined with a set of blogger names. I am faced with the sure knowledge that this must be a multilayered complex search process. Reading favorite bloggers and writing reactive entries seems to be comparable to the "One Hundred Monkeys Typing" method of creating Shakespeare's plays (i.e., ~~pretty~~ incredibly unlikely). If I use tags, however imprecise, I am forcing myself to abstract my own categorical view of path and implications of my own body of ideas. If there is/are people out there in somewhat the same space... and categorically representing where they are in the same fashion, if that is so, I will find them and their material. And, my knowledge space will have food for growth and elaboration.

Here's what Dave Wineberger had to say(I love the ambivalence here; exactly my kind of see-sawing! I have taken some liberties with layout and occasional emboldening):

Companies like Boeing spend years developing controlled vocabularies to drive ambiguity out of their technical documentation. For example, tech writers might be told to use the word "turn" but not "twist" when describing any circular motion involving a tool. And, at Corbis, the home of millions of digital images, the in-house cataloguers might be told to use the word "shore" and not "beach" when describing coastal photos.

But no one is in a position to write a controlled vocabulary for the Internet, And if they were, you can be sure that many of us would be twisting the night away on the beach, just to break the rules.

This is the promise and the risk of folksonomies. Folksonomies arise when people are tagging objects (Web pages, photos, etc.) in public. If you want something to be found by others, you'll choose the most popular tag. That adds yet more momentum to that tag. And before you know it, most people tag posts about PC Forum as "pcforum05," not "pcf", "pcf05" or "Esther's thang." Folksonomies are bottom-up controlled vocabularies.

For not very good reasons, the word "controlled" raises a red flag for me. Here's my mental back-and-forth on the issue:

Back: A folksonomy is not centrally controlled, which is good because a vocabulary dictator would not only frequently get it wrong, but would silently enforce her interpretation. Word choice is too important to be left to the tyrants. In fact, the first thing tyrants do is try to control our word choices.

Forth: But a folksonomy is nonetheless controlled by a majority. Do folksonomies replace the central vocabulary dictator with an emergent dictator? The word choices are likely to be more in tune with majority thinking, but the conformism of the hippies was as bad as the conformism of the suits.

Back: This is simply how language works. Words and meanings arise from a type of "conformism," but so what? Meaning itself is a type of conformism, you aging hippie douchebag!

Forth: But, language changes through implicit evocations of meaning. There is no word dictator who declares "Thou shalt now replace the word 'idea' with 'meme.'" Nope, we hear the word, get a sense from context or from a bumbling, hand-waving definition from someone at a party, and we appropriate it. After a while, a dictionary notices and attempts to freeze and formalize the definition. Yet, tags are explicit. They take something as rich in meaning as a family photo and reduce it to a single word. That's a diminishment.

Back: Big freaking deal. Categorization diminishes. Everyone knows that. It's why we categorize: It reduces complexity to something manageable at least for the moment. But often categorization diminishes so that things in their richness can be found: Menus in restaurants categorize food so you can taste it in all its glory. And if people feel that the popular tags are not categorizing objects the way they want, they can build local folksonomies, using the tags accepted by their social group.

Forth: Not in the commercial world. Steve Papa at Endeca at the PCForum open discussion a few days ago pointed to eBay as an example: There are economic reasons to describe your items for sale using the most popular language. E.g., call it a "notebook," not a "laptop." Likewise, where there are economic or other reasons for people to use the popular tags, some folksonomies will dominate. This will undoubtedly drive some ambiguity out of our everyday language. For example, someone pointed out to me recently that CNN started out calling the tsunami a "tidal wave," but switched when everyone else was calling it a "tsunami." That sort of thing will happen faster and more regularly as folksonomies grow in more and more fields.

Back: Big deal. Tsunami = tidal wave. And because CNN switched, now we can find its stories when we search for "tsunami."

Forth: No two words are every exactly the same. And clarity leads to division. Imagine that a site like NYTimes.com allows us to tag their posts in a del.icio.us sort of way. (We can do that already at del.icio.us, of course, but doing it on the Times site would be different.) There will be tag wars over whether to tag articles as "tax relief" or "wealthy welfare." Communities will form around semantics, making George Lakoff happy, but further driving us apart.

Back: So the only thing that lets us live together is the ambiguity of our language? If we ever really understood each other, we'd kill each other?

Forth: Well, ambiguity sure helps. What would we do without those gray zones?

Me: Folksonomies will influence how we use words outside of the tagging environment. It will sometimes replace the subtle, organic ways in which language evolves with the crudity endemic to explicitness. Groups will form around words, and words will form around groups, as always. We and our language will survive.
[ViaJoho the Blog: Controlled and suggested vocabularies: Are tags making us dumb?]

Adam Bosworth has similar concerns.. expressed in his own way reflects on social software at in his weblog.:

…As long as we don’t let the ontologists take over and tell us why tags are all wrong, need to be classified into domains, and need to be systematized, this is going to work well albeit, sloppily. What it does is open up ways to find things related to anything interesting you’ve found and navigate not a web of links but a link of tags. At the same time Wikipedia has shown that a model in which content is contributed not just by a few employees, but by self-forming self-managing communities on the web can be amazingly detailed, complete, and robust. so now people are looking at ways in which the same emergent self-forming self-administering models of tagging and Wiki’s and moderation can be used for events (EVDB) and for music and for video and for medical information. It’s all very exciting. It is a true renaissance. I haven’t seen this much true innovation for quite a while. What I particularly like about all this is how human these innovations are. They are sloppy. To me Tags are sloppy practical de-facto ontologies. Wiki’s are sloppy about changes and version editing. It is accepted that we’re trying new things and that sometimes messes will occur. In short, it is unabashedly creative and imprecise. I’ve always believed in the twin values of rationalism and humanism, but humanism has often felt as though it got short shrift in our community. In this world, it’s all about people and belonging and working with others….

Adam goes on to note that social software gets spammed (nod to Clay), “We got, unfortunately, any application talking to anyone (we call this spam).” He raises privacy concerns and the cost of interruptions to conclude:

It is going to be fascinating and exciting to watch how these tensions play out, namely the rising trend of people working together and collaborating and communicating over the web in increasingly real time ways contending with the human needs for privacy and reflection and with the unfortunate nature of some humans to vandalize rather than to construct.

As things play out, I’d suggest we will see forms of communication more asynchronous than email, the social network employed as a filter, richer forms of presence, easier group forming and reputation used only at large scales.

Many-to-Many 3/25/05 9:55 AM

[Technorati tags: taxonomy folksonomy tags knowledge-making "personal knowledge space"]

[edited and revised, 4/3/2005]

Tags Turning Web Chaos into Categories

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:55:23 GMT

Summary: Matt Hicks of Eweek explains the effect of tagging blog entries. Wikipedia, Technorati, Flickr and Delicious are all involved. In short. tagged entries, even if [contributed and accessed by] by multiple, incommensurate mental universes (individuals) give the option to search for online entries by category, even subcategory [as accessed via intersections of tag categories]. For purposeful knowledge-building this can be a great advantage.

Here's the Eweek article[emboldening is mine, SPH]:

SAN DIEGO—In the quest to organize the Web's information, an emerging approach is putting the power to categorize everything from links to digital photos into the hands of users.

In the halls and session rooms at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference here, a series of talks this week explored the growing use of tags to let users associate keyword metadata to Web information.

Among the early implementers of tags are Ludicorp's Flickr photo-sharing site, the del.icio.us social bookmarking service and the Wikipedia collaborative online encyclopedia. During one conference session, leaders from the three upstart services explored the impact of their decisions to turn categorization over to individuals rather than enforcing established categories.

Tags are creating more than straightforward classifications of Web documents or links, said Joshua Schachter, the creator of del.icio.us. One of the most popular tags created on the bookmarking service is "to_read," a tag attached to links of pages users want to remember to read.

"There is a behavior around tags that has nothing to do with categorization," Schachter said.

On del.icio.us, users create one-word tags for Web pages as they bookmark them in the service. Users can sort and view their bookmarks by various tags, while also viewing the Web links associated with the most popular tags among all users.

Even the new term "Folksonomy" has emerged to describe the potential for user-defined tags to organically develop structure out of what might appear to be chaotic collections of information.

One of the uncertainties about tags is how they can fit together among various services and what meaning can be gleaned from the tags of a large mass of users.

Efforts to collect tags broadly have begun. Earlier this year, Weblog search engine Technorati Inc. started supporting tags. The site now tracks tags from photos in Flickr, bookmarks stored in del.icio.us and LookSmart Ltd.'s Furl service, and blogs published with tags.

Tags aren't without their drawbacks. Stewart Butterfield, Ludicorp's president and founder, noted how in Flickr an individual's tag of a photo might be a mismatch for another user.

For example, a user who travels to Tokyo might tag all photos from the trip as "Tokyo," including those taken inside a hotel room, Butterfield said. But other users might expect to see only photos of the Tokyo cityscape, and not a hotel's interior, when viewing photos tagged as Tokyo.

"I don't think in the context of Flickr that there are bad tags," Butterfield said. "The point is not for you to find all of and only pictures of elephants but to give people a few extra tools to organize their own stuff."

Similarly, del.icio.us focuses more on individuals, avoiding approaches where the service might suggest or steer users to use any specific tags, Schachter said.

"I don't want people to be dominated by group think," Schachter said. "It's your instinct that is the most reliable and reproducible thing."

Yet for Wikipedia, tags complement its group approach for organizing the popular online encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, said the project relies on a core group of between 600 and 1,000 people to manage the encyclopedia and that the group collectively corrects misclassifications.

"If you start tagging things in the wrong way in the encyclopedia, you'll hear about it right away," Wales said.

Wikipedia last summer launched its categorization system for the encyclopedia, and Wales said that opening classification to individual project contributors fit with Wikipedia's collaborative approach.

"As to why we decided to let the masses categorize things, it never occurred to us to ask that question," he said.

[Via Eweek, Matt Hicks and the Article:" Tags Turning Web Chaos into Categories: "]

Deuterolearning and the Lifetime Personal Webspace

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 04:33:58 GMT

Summary: Learning to learn, aka metalearning or deuterolearning, is an important and still unusual intentionally chosen product of teaching endeavors. To so set a learning situation such that metalearning is highly likely and at the same time occurs in an evolving fashion based on each person's unique series of works (weblog entries on a personal website) ?? To facilitate and document this over the course of a lifetime of work? WOW!! This is what George Siemens is talking about in a recent entry.

Coincidentally, I just finished watching an interview in which an only-child actress admitted a considerable fogginess to her understanding of who/what she was before she was twelve. She went on to observe that in the absence of siblings and abiding friendships [her family moved frequently] --- and therefore in the absence of telling and retelling stories on and about each other-- one loses the chance to form and retain memories --memories, I would add, that are part of an evolving theory of self-in-life. The ability to systematically add to or alter life-view via interaction with personal artifacts (in her case remembered, because retold and abstracted many times in the conversations) is undermined without the individual and collectived artifacts to reinterpret.

In the entry below George Siemens excitedly ponders the consequences of having many artifacts to use in the constrant reconstruction of life view/life strategy as our lives play out and as our string of conscious leavings afford interpretation. (Until now, or so it now seems to me, only the biographers and students of the highly published had such material to work with.) However, now that we have the prospect of what George calls the A "Lifetime Personal Web Space" the reconstruction experience is available to a larger fraction of humanity.

A major aspect of this personal webspace is the presence of permanent tracings of self-understanding, self-questioning, world pondering, and life strategies as they are visited and revisited in the weblog.

Lifetime Personal Webspace: (Via Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom: Weblog Theory.)

(via George Siemens)

Now I know I'm kinda strange, but the premise of this article from Educause seriously gives me chills:
What do we wish for? That every citizen, at birth, will be granted a cradle-to-grave, lifetime personal Web space that will enable connections among personal, educational, social, and business systems.

Ok, now I know that's a lot to wrap your brain around, especially on a Friday afternoon. But if you are at all interested in the potential of the read/write Web and what it might evolve into, I think this is must reading. The paradigm shift is staggering, and the pedagogical foundation its build on is still pretty rickety, but think about some of this, for starters:
The LPWS will store searchable content (personal, educational,social, business) that was important in a user’s past and make it accessible for future use, as well as current projects. Since technology changes over time, the older sections of the Web space (for example, K-12 grade content) might be technologically less sophisticated, but would connect nonetheless to newer additions (such as postgraduate work activities).The primary user would decide whether a cell is private or public (potentially functioning as an e-portfolio or Web site) and who will be permitted to enter various parts of the structure. Some cells may be off-limits (even invisible) to all but the primary user. Moreover, the user will decide which cells connect to others and which do not. As the user matures, an analysis of the types and numbers of connections might assist in setting goals and strategies for subsequent personal and professional development.

Um, whoa. I seriously want one of these. And the benefits:
Few students maintain ready access to both the content and products from their K-12 years. College students typically sell their books and lose access to their collegiate course management Web sites. While an e-portfolio provides ready access to selected work products, intent and effort are required to transport content between separate, often incompatible systems. The LPWS construct will enable users to preserve more knowledge over time and to forge richer connections between their academic and work endeavors.

Read the scenario that's included. In fact, read the whole thing. What a concept.I think the reason this idea connects so strongly for me is because of what I've been mentioning recently about this being a learning log, and probably the most educational experience of my life. It's really wild when I think about it. For me, blogging just clicked; maybe I had the gene, or maybe it was because I always wanted to write, or that I'm an info junkie or a hundred other reasons. But I have sampled the Kool-Aid, and I really do believe. In some really strange way (remember, I am sorta out there...) it's like my recorded life began three years ago, and I really wish I had a more historical archive. Should have started earlier.

Anyway, this is what the read/write Web makes possible for us and for our students. We just have to grab it."

Making Sense: Taking Stock (1)

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:13:39 GMT

I am now doing what I should do far more often: discovering my own big picture. Over the past several days I have been sorting and categorizing all of my weblog entries. (Omnioutliner has been very helpful, wondering if Tinderbox , with it's graphical interface option, wouldn't be better.). My goal is to then cluster, summarize and project future directions.

Wish me luck or give me advice, either way!

Get Organized, Tagged and Located: Much Weblog-Related Activity

Mon, 07 Mar 2005 16:06:51 GMT

Summary: Am trying to situate myself in blogspace, in several respects. First, I've added my longitude and latitude to the head section of my home page template so that geourl will be able to pinpoint my headquarters on a map, allowing others in search of Blog locations to find my site. Third, I am learning the del.ico.us tagging system --allowing a search of weblogs by topic of entry and b) organizing my netnewswire list by area of interest (knowledge-making, for example) so that workflow has me scanning, and responding to, NetNewsWire by topic.

The del.icio.us write-up is below... with emboldening of material that was of particular relevance to my wish to find topic-related entries.

» del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.
» Once you've registered for the service, you add a simple bookmarklet to your browser. When you find a web page you'd like to add to your list, you simply select the del.icio.us bookmarklet, and you'll be prompted for a information about the page. You can add descriptive terms to group similar links together, modify the title of the page, and add extended notes for yourself or for others.
» You can access your list of links from any web browser. By default, your links are shown to you in reverse chronological order, with those you've added most recently at the top. In addition to viewing by date, you can also view all links in a specific category (you define your own categories as you add the links), or search your links for keywords.
» What makes del.icio.us a social system is its ability to let you see the links that others have collected, as well as showing you who else has bookmarked a specific site. You can also view the links collected by others, and subscribe to the links of people whose lists you find interesting.

Attempt to Consolidate All Weblogging with MarsEdit and NetNewsWire Input

Sat, 05 Mar 2005 22:30:04 GMT

Summary: I am making a 'strategic' self-organization move. If this move works as I hope it will, I will be writing entries for any of my online content in MarsEdit... choosing on the fly which of the RU categories or other weblogs I'm using to Use.

Those weblogs are:

This one -- with several categories (CMS, Ecology/Marine Ecology, EdSped, Evaluation, Notes, Philosophy, Seeds and Weblogging.
A site reserved for "Spirited" Entries and Dialog" For very big picture stuff, religion, philosophy of life, etc. and
Connectivity3, a place for Humor, Jokes,etc. and possibly material on creativity and, if you like, a "theory of humor"

Enough for now until I see that this MarsEdit test has worked.

Hours later: it's obvious that it works. Safari the exception, not cooperating, Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, [will check Opera and Omniweb and say something here only if they don't work; Opera worked , Omniweb did not. Both were fresh from download and with start-up settings.].
Plus -- the whole notion of surfing in some systematic, category-driven manner -- using netnewswire to find and present...then I click to get into MarsEdit with my material, annotate, link and comments and then select which category or Weblog I want my entry to be sent to. Amazing, fast, organized. I can hardly believe my eyes.

Defining a Knowledge Worker, Several Closing in [via Ton Zylstra]

Sat, 25 Sep 2004 17:18:18 GMT

Summary: Ton Zylstra works on the definition of knowledge worker. He cites works of Martin Roell, Florian Heidecke, Geoffry Rockwell and Jack Vinson, David Gurteen, Dave Snowden, David Weinberger. For Ton the ability to participate in a collaborative cycle is central to the knowledge worker[base ']s competence. Ton has set up a wiki workspace for some collaborative amendment and refinement of our collective understancxing. Ton speaks for himself below:

Defining the Knowledge Worker.
Martin Roell in a recent post described his thoughts about a workeable definition of what a knowledge worker is. In the trackbacks Florian Heidecke, Geoffry Rockwell, and Jack Vinson add interesting thoughts and observations.

What Martin describes resonates with my own perspective:
I think that when I say [base "]knowledge work[per thou] I nearly always only focus on workers who are not in operative processes. That means their job is [base "]different every day[per thou] - they don[base ']t have taks that are the same every day. They innovate their own work and usually work on innovating other people[base ']s work too. They need to manage complexity. In Dave Snowden[base ']s Cynefin Model they would work in the Complex and Knowable fields most of the time. However I am not sure that this is really the core of my view. I can see many [base "]knowledge workers[per thou] that do have repetitive tasks. Maybe this part is just [base "]information work[per thou]?

I agree with Martin putting knowledge work more in the complex and knowable realms of Dave Snowdens model, and less in the known. That in my opinion is why plumbers and carpenters are not knowledge workers, even though they are skilled specialists requiring specific knowledge at what they do. They apply an established body of knowledge to mainly well known problems.

As to the routine work knowledge workers do, I think what we deem routine largely falls into the category of activities necessary to fit into an organizational environment. Attending meetings, writing reports, etc, it[base ']s all interfacing with the formal structures surrounding you. That is probably also why most knowledge workers find them boring.

This as opposed to the other part of their routine activities, the ones you hear them complain much less about: collaborating with others. We all engage in finding and contacting others, then building relationships, rapport and context, enabling us to create artefacts (documents, stories, objects) and exchange knowledge (in the form of information, experiences, skills and attitudes), and ultimately to store/anchor knowledge in our personal routines, flows and tools. This cycle of collaboration as I call it, is reflected at the organization level by the general knowledge flow of importing/generating knowledge, diffusing and applying it, and in the end evaluating/unlearning it.

Now everybody in the world is caught up in these collaborative cycles of course, and that in itself does not make someone a knowledge worker. What does, I think, is the notion that while you can be great at the conveyor belt, or as an artisan, without being able to nurture your social network effectively, you cannot be a great knowledge worker without being great at the collaborative cycle. In knowledge work your social environment is the source of your creativity, the place where ideas come to fruition, and where you are rewarded with appreciation and increasingly income. This second part of routine tasks knowledge workers have, is in the vocabulary of the previous paragraph, interfacing with the informal structures around you. Whenever this clashes with interfacing with formal structures knowledge workers feel restricted, unappreciated, misunderstood etc.

David Weinbergers definition of knowledge work, which he explained during the first BlogTalk conference in 2003, as having interesting conversations captures that exactly in my view.
[sigma]
All in all the above paragraphs are all just impressions and stories around the concept of a knowledge worker, and not yet a definition. To explore this further I have set up a group of wiki-pages (in the Personal Something Management Wiki) where I will work on this question from several different philosophical perspectives, in order to build a broader understanding, and a basis to arrive at a (consensus) based definition.
[Ton[base ']s Interdependent Thoughts]

My Radio Weblog is Back Online

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:03:15 GMT

Summary: I am happy to say that Radio is back online. I can now publish there and setup a transition to new CMS site between now and next April.

My troubles began when I tried to merge entries, written while in the Northwest, with entries already on my desk machine at home. Problems involved loss of articles (which I have found and saved ) and nonpublishing. Nonpublishing amounts to inability to send in to the Radio Userland server. (I was able to Publish to my home site).

I must have attempted 20 variations of repair and finally left off because my two Summer classes needed work. Wierdly, the outliner did publish and was used up to actual class start. (I provide it because I think it more accessible when in outline form ala the html-ized outlines that Marc Barrot created for Radio).

[My interim blogging tool has been Blosxom. I have used it to keep up and develop skills but I don[base ']t think it will be the new home . I am looking to set up one or more CMS, since and I cannnot see that Blosxom yet has the ability to be a flexible and deep CMS to the degree, say , that Plone, PHPNuke or Mambo I am planning to move on. Still, I have been enjoying adding plugin features to Blosxom, one by one; the experience has enhanced my OS X literacy and enhanced my already serious respect for what Rael (at http://www.blosxom) and collaborators [plugins] have accomplished.]

Yesterday, as a means to verify and re-examine the problem I put together a one line post and mailed it in. Whah!!?? It published. Then sent in another entry and that, too, published. Am back in business, at least on the portable, and must now think out a transition plan involving my old site, tranferring best of old entries and getting the word out to any that made a habit of reading what I wrote.

Weblogged Learning

Fri, 24 Sep 2004 13:31:26 GMT

Summary: There should be some way to document both the perceived and 'real' benefits of blogging from both teacher and student points of view; Online surveying technologies come to mind for the perceived benefits; online surveys accompanied by tests, online or not, would allow access to both.

As Jeremy Williams and Dan Mitchell point out, there are bloggers out there who are spreading the Word with great energy! Perhaps old fashioned rigor would provide very useful information!

Exploring the Use of Blogs as LearningSpaces in the Higher Education Sector (pdf).
The authors write that "the chief purpose of this paper is to comment, critically, on the potential for blogs as 'learning spaces' for students within the higher education sector," which it does with an examination of how blogs have been used at Harvard Law School and Queensland University of Technology. Some interesting bits, including some reflection on the dearth of refereed literature about blogging (the edu-bloggers tending to put the work in their blogs instead, where it is subject to a rather more vigorous screening). "The fact of the matter is that blogging, for all intents and purposes, is a grassroots phenomenon. For this reason, academic bloggers, if they are true to their ideals, may be more concerned about spreading their message in the blogosphere than in the 'Journal of Obscure Facts'! ... blogging seems to be working in practice, but does it work in theory?" Some empirical research, which may as well be published in an academic journal, where standards are lower, since a sample of 51 self-selected people wouldn't stand a moment's scrutiny in the blogging community. By Jeremy B Williams and Joanne Jacobs, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Summer, 2004.

[OLDaily] [Dan Mitchell's Teachnology Weblog]

Waypath again, same conclusion too.

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 04:30:16 GMT

Summary: I tried Waypath again. Formatting work in radio templates was undertaken with some initial success. But I made too little substantive progress; in short, I don't see the purpose of generating links that are only marginally related to the content of the entry, particularly when a carefully chosen google search for a well chosen phrase will get something more exactly to a reader's liking. The alternative, fagan finder, is set up in the right hand column so that a reader can paste in a phrase (or create a variation on one and then paste it in) and then conduct a search in a variety of spaces.

Conclusion: I've provided some workable tools and the content. There are already supportive follow-up tools (Google search and fagan finder). (6/7: And by a GoogleIt bookmarklet courtesy of Seb Paquet. Just highlight text in an entry and click the GoogleIt bookmarklet in your browser bar and the search is on!!)
However, there isn't yet easy access to my own topic space and the associated entries. I'll set that up using hot topics. Finally, I need to follow-up on first investigations of K-Collector as a rough and ready access to individual and group blog space as related to something more organized than a simple list of topics.