Learning

Silvia Andreoli has added to my last post on PKM and created this graphic to show the individual as well as the social aspects of personal knowledge management. I like its simplicity and the way it shows the flows. My only minor issue is that I would replace “knowledge” with “personalized information”. Knowledge is an emergent property of the entire system, in my opinion.

Silvia’s graphic has some similarities with one of my earlier representations, which included four internal processes and three external ones:

I found over time that even this representation was too complicated to get the idea across quickly and people did not remember it, so I developed the more simplistic Seek-Sense-Share graphic. For people steeped in knowledge management or learning models, a more complicated representation is likely better, but as an introduction, I will keep to the simpler representations. Silvia’s graphic makes an excellent addition to these models.

PKM consists of practical methods for making sense of the increasing digital information flows around us. There is no procedural method to go from data to wisdom. On this Stephen Downes and I agree, though he thinks I adhere to the DIKW model.

That said, while this is a much better model than this, I think it stays true to the original ‘filtering’ vision, where you go from data to wisdom through successive filtering processes. And while there are different ways to think of knowledge — processed, procedural, propositional — this model I think adheres to a more basic view.

Here are some images from a presentation on PKM I will be giving at our local university tomorrow and including in a workshop next week. Data does not create information, information does not create knowledge, and knowledge does not create wisdom. People use their knowledge to make sense of data and information. People create information that represents their knowledge, which can then be more widely shared.

DIKW

Data + Knowledge = Information

Seek, Sense, Share: Find

PKM is an approach for dealing with information by making our thoughts more explicit through filing, classifying, commenting, writing, presenting, conversing, mashing, etc. PKM itself will not make us any wiser, just as accumulating knowledge does not equate to wisdom.

The ways of adding value to information I described in my last post (Filtering; Validation; Synthesis; Presentation; Customization) are not a series of steps, only some of the ways we can make sense of information, for ourselves and for others.

The term personal knowledge management (PKM) isn’t about management in a business sense but rather how we can manage to make sense of information and experience in our electronic surround.

Personal – according to one’s abilities, interests & motivation (not directed by external forces).

Knowledge – connecting information to experience (know what, know who, know how).

Management – getting things done.

PKM is an individually created process. Tim Kastelle has discussed how important it is to Filter, in the process of Aggregate-Filter-Connect. I have recently used Seek-Sense-Share to describe PKM.

The critical part of PKM is in personalizing information and experience, or to use a business term, adding value. Ross Dawson shows five ways to add value to information (my examples/descriptions follow):

Filtering (separating signal from noise, based on some criteria)

Validation (ensuring that information is reliable, current or supported by research)

Synthesis (describing patterns, trends or flows in large amounts of information)

Presentation (making information understandable through visualization or logical presentation)

Customization (describing information in context)

Terms such as Filter or Sense don’t adequately describe the sense-making process in PKM. Looking at it from an outside perspective though, as Ross Dawson has done, gives another way to describe some of what is happening in our minds. We are adding value (and context) to information so that we can later retrieve it and perhaps use it. Whatever we make transparent is value-added information for others, especially if we do it consciously and well.

The image below shows an expanded description of sense-making in the context of PKM.

A basic tool I’ve described for PKM is social bookmarking to file information. It’s simple but doesn’t add a lot of value, just a few text comments. A tweet is also simple and cannot add much value with a 140 character limit. A blog post can be much more informative especially if one takes time to research, link and compose. A collaborative document that aggregates information and shows it from a different perspective could also be valuable. Developing a slide presentation with carefully selected graphics could be seen as higher value information. More difficult to produce and perhaps adding more value to basic information, could be a narration with the slideshow. I have noticed that the process of developing higher-value information helps to sharpen one’s own thinking.

Once again, I want to point out that people with better PKM skills, an ability to create higher value information, and a willingness to share it, will become more valued members (nodes) in their professional networks.