Stephen Downes is correct, this EDUCAUSE Review article is must reading for anyone interested in knowledge networks. As the authors say, "The bottom line? Dare to share! Taken separately, e-learning, knowledge management, and IT have failed to provide strategic differentiation for colleges and universities. But by combining the three in higher education, e-knowledge can avoid suffering the same fate if it is used to change the dynamics of institutional business practices and to create new knowledge-based experiences, unleashing enhanced value."
JH
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A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing. This may be the most important article you read
this year. The authors document the fundamental shift in
the learning landscape taking place right now: the sharing
of knowledge. And they nail it: what makes knowledge
sharing inevitable and important is the nature of
knowledge: "There is no simple, linear
hierarchy and progression from data to information to
knowledge. In reality there is a complex intermeshing, such
as a continuous churning of insight, the meaning of which
changes in different contexts and through conversations
with different participants." Because of this, to work
with knowledge, what you need are not some sort of linear
"delivery systems" but rather "knowledge
networks". The authors outline four major types:
description, discovery and exchange of content; interaction
with and tracking of content; applications systems
interoperability; and infrastructure interoperability. If
we look at knowledge today and tomorrow, what we see in
general is a progression from static,independent,
stand-alone, contextless knowledge objects to a network of
dynamic, related, context-embedded flows of knowledge
within a network. This produces what the authors call a
"revolution in knowledge sharing" where
"leading-edge individuals and institutions are on the
threshold of major advances in their capacity to acquire,
assimilate, utilize, reflect on and share knowledge."
Read this paper, or better, share it! By Donald N. Norris,
Jon Mason, Robby Robson, Paul Lefrere and Geoff Collier,
EDUCAUSE Review, September, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily]
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