Learning

Learning

Personal Knowledge Management 2

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Note: If you are looking for the summary page on personal knowledge management/mastery (PKM) it is now here: jarche.com/pkm/

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Jay has recently posted on Learning Circuits that blogs can be used as knowledge management (KM) tools. Using these tools brings some new challenges, as Lilia has noted “In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.” I won’t deny the cultural change issues in using blogs for knowledge management but I will show how I, as an independent worker outside an organisational hierarchy, use blogs and other tools for personal knowledge management. [This is an update & re-write of a previous post from last year.]

I write on my blog for several reasons. First of all, it’s the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my life. By forcing myself to write a summary or an observation, I have to reflect on my own learning. Also, by making my thoughts public I know that they will be scrutinized – now and in the future. There’s nothing like public visibility to make you check your logic. I also view my blog as my main communication medium, letting me converse with potential clients or provide them with a venue to get to know me without any feelings of obligation. Basically, it’s all out there for the world to see.

But how do I get from “Gee isn’t that interesting?” to a written blog post?

Many of my observations come from the blogs that I visit regularly. These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account which is made up of +/- 100 feeds. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. The feeds I select are a reflection of the work that I’m doing. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipitous learning. The ability to scan, preview, read and save posts makes this a simple and easy process – better than visiting each site.

There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but I feel are not worth the effort of writing a blog post. For these sites I use Furl, a social bookmarking service. Furl not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. My Furl archive is public so that I can share these pages.

Items and thoughts that are not ignored or stored in Furl usually get saved into a temporary bookmark folder in my browser. Over time I review these and may find a few others that relate to each other. When I have the time and inclination, usually after exercise, I’ll draft a post, review it and post it.

But what use is my blog?

Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve two years of thoughts and comments and easily review these. This is quite practical for presentations, papers, proposals and responding to questions. If I didn’t write a blog, I would have a lot more bookmarks, without annotations of my reasoning and reflection at the time. After two years, my blog is becoming a valuable productivity tool, and the comments and links from others only add more value.

My blog is also a great way to meet people interested in similar subjects, and has helped to create an evolving community of practice. As I’ve mentioned before, this blog is like a very detailed business card, and those who disagree with my points of view may decide not to engage my professional services. This would be a good thing; from both perspectives.

As an independent consultant, a blog is probably the simplest, cheapest and most effective knowledge management tool there is today. Some other benefits are listed here.

Bloggers’ Rules

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I’m currently in Jay Cross’s Informl Unworkshop and we are discussing some guidelines for bloggers. From Dave Pollard’s front page is this great advice:

Blog readers want to see more:

  1. original research, surveys etc.
  2. original, well-crafted fiction
  3. great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
  4. news not found anywhere else
  5. category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
  6. clever, concise political opinion (most readers prefer these consistent with their own views)
  7. benchmarks, quantitative analysis
  8. personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
  9. first-hand accounts
  10. live reports from events
  11. insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
  12. short educational pieces
  13. relevant “aha” graphics
  14. great photos
  15. useful tools and checklists
  16. précis, summaries, reviews and other time-savers
  17. fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

Blog writers want to see more:

  1. constructive criticism, reaction, feedback
  2. ‘thank you’ comments, and why readers liked their post
  3. requests for future posts on specific subjects
  4. foundation articles: posts that writers can build on, on their own blogs
  5. reading lists/aggregations of material on specific, leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
  6. wonderful examples of writing of a particular genre, that they can learn from
  7. comments that engender lively discussion
  8. guidance on how to write in the strange world of weblogs

Update: This was quickly posted while listening to the unworkshop, so perhaps I should add some commentary, especially since Stephen has picked it up. I would think that one blogger could not address ALL of the readers’ wants nor could every reader give writers everything that they want. I think that the “reader wants” show how varied are the demands of this worldwide audience, and why sites like BoingBoing are so popular. This site will never be in the top 10,000 blogs of the world, but there are some points about reader wants that make sense for my particular situation, such as — original research; personal stories; relevant graphics; first-hand accounts. Anyway, I think that Dave has made a thought-provoking list.

A new threat for our universities?

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From Daniel Lemire is this news from the Guardian (is it news to our academic institutions?) that China is looking at becoming an exporter of degrees, attracting students to study in China where it will be cheaper than here. Today, many Western universities are exporters of degrees to Asian students. One strategy of traditional universities is to create online degree programs. Daniel makes a couple of conclusions about this tactic:

However, before online degrees become a distinct exportable good, you need to have your local students freely choosing the web instead of the classroom. Asians are not going to buy degrees your local population doesn’t value dearly.
I really think China can reverse its status as far as education goes, and by doing so, hurt badly Western Universities in the long run. I don’t think online degrees are going to be a viable escape for Western Universities. If China goes ahead with its plans to become an education provider, it will hurt, no matter what!

I’m sure that there will be a growing demand for online degrees, it’s just that a cheaper alternative may make for a more competitive marketplace.

As if changing demographics weren’t enough of a challenge, now it seems that China will be taking some of the international students that our universities are starting to depend upon for sustainable revenue. The world is flattening and direct competitors are now half way around the world. I wonder if our boys will go to university in China and learn Mandarin at the same time.

Quotable Comments on Learning

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Here is a random selection of some quotes that I’ve been collecting. This collection is one example of why I focus my efforts on informal learning rather than more formalised education.

“… curriculum is a solution to a problem we created.” —Brian Alger

“No generation in history has ever been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.” —David Warlick

“The claim is that if educators invested a fraction of the energy on stimulating the students’ enjoyment of learning that they now spend in trying to transmit information we could achieve much better results.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” —Albert Einstein

“Play is ever more important to skill development and professional competence. Yet our schools do not tolerate, much less teach, play.” —Nine Shift

“After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.” —John Taylor Gatto

Dave’s Social Media Project

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Dave Cormier has started a wiki with the provisional title; The Best Damn New Media Curriculum Evah! Plan. The idea is to get a number of thinkers and workers together to build something (a course?) that will support and encourage learning activities on the Web. I’ve volunteered to get involved and we’ll see where this all goes.

I like the idea of a collaborative curriculum, but I have some concerns about the restrictive aspects of curriculum, as has been brilliantly described by Brian Alger. My own focus will be to try to develop some artifacts that could be used by others to support learning in an inter-networked world. Nothing ventured, nothing gained; so it’s time to stick out our necks and create something new. Check it out and join us.

Please don’t push my learning

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This week I’ve been back into a classroom training environment, something I haven’t experienced for many years. Much of my learning has been informal, or as Jay Cross recently put it, it’s PULL vs PUSH [link updated to newer post]. Going back into push learning (formal, training, curriculum, mandated, just in case) has forced me as a learner to slow down. For the past several years I’ve been learning in the fastlane by pulling my learning (informal, performance support, collaboration, self-service, just in time).

This week has reinforced my opinion that training is too often a solution looking for a problem. Many performance issues can be addressed through non-training interventions, or as Harold Stolovitch and Erica Keeps said in Stop wasting money on training:

“… most performance deficiencies in the workplace are not a result of skill and knowledge gaps. Far more frequently, they are due to environmental factors, such as lack of clear expectations; insufficient and untimely feedback; lack of access to required information; inadequate tools, resources, and procedures; inappropriate and even counterproductive incentives; task interferences and administrative obstacles that prevent achieving desired results.”

The amount of information and knowledge available are increasing at an exponential rate and we need to improve our methods to support learning. Focusing training in the right place would be a start.

Life in Perpetual Beta

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One definition for a Beta release is, “A version of the vendor’s software that is given to selected installations prior to the product becoming generally available. This version is often not free of defects.”

I can relate to the second sentence when I think of my personal and professional life being in a state of continuous Beta releases. This perspective has been my norm for a few years, particularly since I’ve become a free-agent and have to do everything, including my own tech support.

Perpetual beta is my attitude toward learning — I’ll never get to the final release and my learning will never stabilise. I’ve also realised that clients with a similar attitude are much easier to work with than those who believe that we will reach some future point where everything stabilises and we don’t need to learn or do anything else. I believe that this point is called death.

My wife has often told me that my current situation as a consultant is the best vocation for me because I bore easily and need constant challenges. Life in beta seems to suit me. This may be because I am male, as there is more research coming out that our ‘drill & fill’ education system doesn’t work for boys, as the Eide’s note in The Trouble with Boys. A solution could be what Christian at Think: Lab refers to in a recent article on schools in perpetual beta:

Beta schools.  Perpetual.  Environments that promote infinite discovery.  Student and teacher as co-researchers.  Form.  Intent.  Re-mapping the entire premise of ‘school’.

Given the abundance of information and connectivity, or what Mark Federman calls “ubiquitously connected & pervasively proximate”, we may find that in the near future hyperactivity is no longer diagnosed as a problem.

Learners as contributors – the end of the industrial model

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I’ve just read one of the best posts that shows how the Internet changes everything in education; many just don’t realise it yet. Christian Long at Think: Lab has a long post on the connection between blogging and formal education. Christian starts by describing a new billboard from AT&T that has only one word on it – Blogging – and then talks about a major difference in life for a 15 year old today and ten years ago. This is the ability to connect with anybody in the world on any subject, no matter how narrowly defined:

We’ve discussed a basic definition of blogging (web-based journaling).  We’ve accepted that anyone can immediately create a website now called a blog.  And if you think about being a 15 year old and wanting to share your ideas about music or sports or whatever comes to mind in a creative and individual way, a social and collaborative way, you can see why someone would create one.  Even see the potential for a teacher and a class full of students to create ‘class blogs’ for a project or portfolio.  But is there more?


Yes, and it all comes down to something so fundamental to the very existence of schools and even education itself that it’s actually pretty easy to overlook:  information and who owns/creates it. 

This final point, the question about information and who owns/creates it – is shaking our concept of education to the core. The ability to be the co-creators of worldwide knowledge now lies within the means of a large percentage of the world. For example, anyone can contribute their individual area of expertise to the wikipedia knowledge repository.

The discussion at Education Bridges echoes a similar vein. In the creation of wikibooks as online textbooks for the world, should only the experts build and distribute the accepted official curriculum or should learners be involved in the co-creation of knowledge? Personally, I feel that this is no longer a valid question because of the nature of digital networks. If you don’t allow for the co-creation of information (construct, deconstruct, reconstruct) then your information will gather electronic dust in its uselessness.
Albert Ip states it another way with this picture, which asks how anyone could limit peer interaction to "just" the classroom.
Teachers and educational organisations can longer hide behind the classroom firewall. As Christian says, just imagine:

Now, go back to that original 15 year old. Imagine you as a 15 year old with a blog of your own.

Imagine that student able to create a blog in seconds and within days or weeks or months have an audience spread out around the world that is genuinely interested in the ideas and stories and links and images that are on the blog, beginning to be taken seriously as a writer or an expert or a legitimate voice, and beginning to use the blog as a way to further explore ideas and develop a far-reaching network of thinkers and beginning to be seen on a level playing field as any adult.  And now imagine that student going back to school the next day and being asked to sit still, read books or notes that expect no interaction, being forever being seen as inexperienced and incapable, and not being able to contribute any ideas or questions to the larger body of research or ideas.

Both of my boys are in middle school and have their own blogs. One of them writes a lot, including the creation of a fantasy religion, while the other builds animations and shares them online. The eldest is learning Java on his own, via tutorials he finds online. At school they can use Google as an online library (find, access, use) during their limited time available during "computer lab". The physical library does not have any information for a report on the Avian Flu, and there is only one computer available. Access to Blogger is forbidden.
Teachers cannot teach the students how to get involved in the co-creation of knowledge because they don’t have a clue. The kids live in a completely different world than school. School is fast becoming irrelevant.
Next year, our eldest son will be 15. What will he think of school then? [I think I know the answer]

Three Conflicting Pillars – Revisited

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This post was prompted by Jay Cross’s discussion on how comments to blog posts get lost by not being tracked by most RSS readers.

A while back I made some comments on Education’s Three Conflciting Pillars, and a discussion ensued with excellent comments from Brian Alger, Rory McGreal of Athabasca University, and Terry Wassall.

It went sort of like this this [this is abridged and you can read the full conversation on the main post]:

Three premises compete for attention in our public education systems:

  • education as socialization
  • education as a quest for truth (Plato)
  • education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)

Brian: Given the fact that we have frozen knowledge and skills in something called curriculum, I would characterize today’s education system as something that is completely static and far removed from the practical realities of everyday life. So in that sense I would say that the very idea of a primary premise is plural and inseparable from the circumstances and situations we find ourselves in. I have not read Egan’s book, but I see no reason why the three premises mentioned above, and others, cannot co-exist simultaneously. Nor can I think of a reason that we would want to identify one and follow it exclusively.

Harold: The point that I remember was how the three premises have historically competed for primacy in the education system. When one dominates, then the others get less attention. We see this in initiatives like ‘no child left behind’ or the demise of music and physical education in the Canadian public school systems. My main concern is that there is no clear idea of what our education systems are trying to achieve, and we constantly go through ‘flavour of the year’ initiatives.

Brian: If I was to express a first principle it would focus on the desired quality of communication in education (in contrast to the current one). It seems to me that it is the nature of communication that needs to be changed in education more than anything else.

Rory: Western education has NEVER been based on those three pillars. Perhaps some lip service has been paid to them in the universities, but the schools K12 were formed for the benefit of employers in the manufacturing economy. They taught students how to sit still, do as they are told, and shutup and do monotonous tasks without complaining AND most importantly to arrive on time and respond to the bell and leave only after the day was over with the final bell — and by the way if they could become literate while these skills were being taught, that would be considered a good thing.

Harold: I think that curriculum development is a black art because we as a society and educators have not confronted what we really want from education. The disagreements that I hear over our education system are focused on symptoms and we”ll continue to tinker with the system unless we can find a way to address the foundations, such as “what the hell are we really trying to do and how are we going do it?” ; and even more importantly “how are we going to measure ourselves?”.

Terry: The extension of education to the masses was viewed with deep suspicion by the ‘natural’ and traditional ruling class. Education has always had the dual role of both enabling and controlling and has always been a double-edged sword. Teaching individuals how to read in order that they can read the Bible and employers” instructions always risked the possibility that they would also read subversive pamphlets if available. The controlling aspect was seem as crucial to those that begrudgingly conceded that they were having to ‘educate our masters’ — the Duke of Wellington I think. Whatever the other contradictions and tensions in education today I think this fundamental one between the enabling agenda and the controlling agenda is still very much in evidence.

Effective communication for learning

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Dave Pollard has a post on what communication methods are most effective. He has created a table that compares several media as to their cost, impact, value and cost/benefit. This is a good table for instructional designers to consider before creating educational media, and as Dave says, it’s open to revision.

Dave goes on at the end of this post to list his principles of human learning preferences:

  1. People like information conveyed through conversations and stories because the interactivity and detail gives them context, not just content, and does so economically.
  2. People hate talking heads, and are increasingly intolerant of them.
  3. People no longer have the opportunity for serendipitous learning and discovery — everything they read and learn is narrow, focused, bounded, and the tools they are given in their reading and research reinforce this blinkered approach to learning. The consequence is the intellectual equivalent of not eating a balanced diet — a malnourished mind.
  4. People do not know how to do research, or even search, effectively. They think these two things are the same, which they are not, and they have never been trained to do either properly. It’s a good thing the search engines are so smart, because our use of them is mostly dumb.
  5. People search as a last resort. They prefer to ask a real person for what they want to learn or discover, because it’s faster and the answer is more context-specific. And if there is a single good browsable resource on their subject of interest, readily at hand, and they have the time, they will usually prefer to browse that resource rather than looking at a bunch of disconnected, often irrelevant, search engine matches.

Continuing from my last post on Controlling Chaos?, I would suggest that these preferences show that learner behaviour indicates that better tools, like tag clouds, are needed to enable serendipitous learning (Point #3) and that better built-in search is critical for finding good learning resources (Points #4 & 5).

Dave’s principles also support the idea that we should put more effort into contextualising online learning and less on cataloguing information/learning objects (Point #1). This is similar to the  concept of Stock & Flow, because having meticulously catalogued & tagged Stock (learning objects) is of little value without the contextual Flow (conversations & stories).