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This is an interesting article on why knowledge sharing isn’t the solution it has been promoted as. The nice thing about this article is that it goes through and explains why knowledge management falls short of its promises and then offers other solutions to address the problems supposedly addressed by knowledge management.
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management at 10:09 AM EDT
In my readings on knowledge management, I’ve been trying to convince myself that this is a good thing. So far, the best knowledge management I’ve seen has been the suggestion that small businesses put their knowledge or expertise into a coherent format and publish it as a source of residual income.
I came across this article while I was cleaning out two months worth of emails last week. For all the people singing the praises of knowledge manangement, it was really nice to find this article. It was nice to see someone who has been watching the field of knowledge management grow to its current state agree with me that it’s just not a feasible model in a business structure.
The author’s correct. Knowledge management tends to focus on the collecting and storing of information, theoretically so that everyone in the company can access this fountain of knowledge. As the author points out, this doesn’t do the company any good without some form of teaching and learning going on in tandem with the knowledge management database. In my own opinion, this only works if your people are sufficiently motivated to learn on their own, but that is really a topic best discussed in an online learning/distance learning discussion.
It’s just refreshing to know I’m not the only one who sees things this way.
Originally posted at cybergrrl.blogspot.com on 10 September 2004
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management at 10:06 AM EDT
A while back, and possibly in other blogs, I wrote about why practice is so necessary when learning something. I’ve also written about my newbie experiences with CSS and Photoshop 7. I’ve spent about six months trying to learn CSS and about two months trying to learn Photoshop 7.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the reason I was getting nowhere quickly with my attempts to learn CSS was because I really don’t have an opportunity to practice. I have three or four half-started sites that are in various locations of my overall to-do lists. I now have one completed site that still needs a bit of tweaking, but is finally up and running. (I’m proud to admit that I wrote much of the site without many references, and it even displayed correctly on Opera over the weekend!) I really don’t need half a dozen sites, so I’ve been a bit perplexed trying to come up with other ways to gain more experience and more confidence with CSS. The only solution I’ve come up with so far is “skinning”, but I need to learn more about that before I can start.
Photoshop 7, however, has been a happy story. Originally the bane of my graphic design newbie experience, I find myself almost not missing Image Composer anymore. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned in the past two months! Of course, I have a built-in practice arena for this one because I volunteer to make avatars for people.
However, I’ve now added another practice arena. I’ve become brave and opened a CafePress Store. I’m still working on putting items in my store, but I’m having a wonderful time doing it. I only have a free store, so I can only have one of an item up at any given point in time. However, that hasn’t really stopped me from lining up other designs to rotate into the shop. I’m hoping in the next week or so to have enough designs for various items to keep me going for the next three or four months.
So…practice is good. It builds confidence and experience. I’m becoming very comfortable with Photoshop 7, and should make it my goal to be more comfortable with CSS by the end of the year.
Originally posted at cybergrrl.blogspot.com on 11 June 2004
Posted by Rebecca as Components of Learning at 9:48 AM EDT
I don’t know how long this link will connect to this article, but it’s an interesting little read on compensating for classroom clues in an online environment.
Body language can say so much about how someone is reacting to the presented material. In a realspace environment, it allows us as teachers to modify our lessons in an effort to connect with our students, to help them form their connections so they can assimilate or accomodate the information as needed.
The article really seems to focus on the self-directed learner, who is not only removed from the teacher, but also the classroom environment, distracted by the noise and stress of normal life while trying to form the necessary connections for learning to occur. An online lesson cannot modify to bring this student back on task the same way a realspace teacher could.
The article does, however, suggest plausible alternatives requiring some form of input from the student. The problem is that you cannot be sure that the student has actually engaged with the material. I can think of two examples in the past year where I have been in online courses and played “click whatever seems reasonable” without reading a word of the accompanying material. In one case, if you didn’t give the right answer, the program would actually tell you to go back and select the (provided) correct answer.
Perhaps this is an interesting step toward trying to make realspace teachers replaceable by computers, the eternal threat that has been held over educators’ heads for decades now.
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning at 10:18 AM EDT
I often look at the current culture around me and wonder how people a thousand years in the future will view us. In one respect, I may not have to wonder any more.
In a move that is reminiscent of oral tradition, businesses are realizing the strength of pooling the collective knowledge of employees into a technological resource to be accessed by everybody. The knowledge possessed by one person is retained after they leave the company, and can then be learned by someone who may never have known the first person by accessing the technological resource that the first person’s knowledge has been stored in. This process is known as knowledge management.
This is not all that dissimilar from the revered storytellers, druids, and clerics of the past. These community figures gathered knowledge from many, sometimes diverse, sources, and then passed that knowledge on to apprentices, bards, and initiates, who in turn passed it on. It’s the way we preserved so much of human history. The human touch makes it that much more powerful because it gives the information relevance.
Knowledge management starts with that same human component, but then incorporates a contemporary twist by using an electronic database (because we all know and understand that a library of history books is just as valid a database as anything on a computer). It would appear at this point that the information loses its humanity at this point, when in fact, it does not. One of the nice features of knowledge management is that the stored information can then be disbursed through electronic means, or through personal contact.
In a thousand years, when anthropologists look at us, will they look at this new take on an ancient practice and see it as part of the oral tradition continuing in a modern form? Will they see this as a further dehumanizing of the human race? Will they thank us for working to preserve what we knew? Will these attempts to archive what we know survive the thousand years to be discovered and analyzed?
Originally posted at cybergrrl.blogspot.com on 16 April 2004
Posted by Rebecca as Knowledge Management at 9:29 AM EDT
Fabulous article! I’m thinking about adding it to my del.icio.us bookmarks. I am actively using parts of it while I redesign both of my websiotes.
When trying to create an experience that you want people to learn from, careful planning is really a necessity. A classroom teacher wouldn’t walk into a classroom without a carefully crafted, well thoughtout unit. The same is true for those designing learning events in e-Learning (or other informal spaces).
In some respects, e-Learning is really more like classroom teaching than not. You go through a certain cycle in both: plan-teach-check for understanging-reteach if necessary. It’s the daily cycle of teaching and needs to be remembered by those designing e-Learning experiences. Plan well. Test on a targeted group of users. Be ready to adjust elements to achieve the results you want. Never release until you are sure that the reteaching step can be handled by your design plan.
Found via AngieMcKaig.com
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning at 9:27 AM EDT
I had an interesting experience at Amtgard today. One of the more hyper children in the group decided he wanted to help out. It should be noted that this boy is a first grader who was recently labeled ADHD after a long fight by his parents to not let their son be labeled. At first, we just had him retrieving items, but then we gave him another task. We let him add the scores from various competitions. The numbers were all in fives. He figured each line out quickly and correctly, and enjoyed being so useful to the group.
This is not an isolated incident. About a year and a half ago, when the TCG Yu-Gi-Oh was first becoming popular, an older boy challenged me to a Yu-Gi-Oh duel. I had never played before, and it meant a lot to him, so I sat down across from him and let him teach me. Again, this is a great child who has been known to frustrate people no end, but here he sat, teaching me his new game and helping me keep track of my life points without so much as a calculator or a piece of paper and a pencil. I should have mentioned it to his parents. I am certain they would have been impressed.
I am slowly becoming of the notion that the Montessori philosophy is a good one to study. My formal teaching experience is mostly in informal settings, usually a museum or planetarium. I have stood accused by classroom teachers of contributing to “entertainment education”, a notion currently decried as the next great evil threat to education. To me, if there is any entertainment, it is only in the delivery, not in the message. The classes I teach have always involved manipulatives or engaged the students in discovery lessons or open discussions.
Am I entertaining? Some have said as much. However, I have never given up my message or lesson objective in the hopes of keeping the students engaged. If I were in a traditional classroom, I would be no less engaging. My classroom would be no less active or noisy. Are talking and doing effective learning methods? For audio and kinethetic learners, most definitely! I enjoy the informal setting because it allows me the freedom and flexibility to step outside the conventional teaching methods to reach a student.
Learning happens everywhere at all times. It does not have to be stuffy. It does not have to quiet. It does not have to be rigidly structured. It can be fun. It can be entertaining (although I prefer the term “engaging”). I do not find myself a blight on the education profession. On the contrary, I find myself more opportunistic. I find myself able and ready to teach at all times, regardless of my situation, and to encourage someone else to grow in their own learning.
Originally posted 3 April, 2004 at cybergrrl.blogspot.com
Posted by Rebecca as Experiential Learning at 10:25 AM EDT
Continuing in my look at weblogs in education, I present this article on weblogs as a means of community management. It’s just a nice example of how weblog as a community can work effectively.
The article came to my attention via this article by Michael Feldstein, who goes through the article and rewords it to become useful to the education community.
It’s often amazing how many methods can be exchanged between sciences. This is just a example of that.
Posted by Rebecca as Weblogs, Learning methods at 1:17 PM EDT
This article jumps into a look at the use of blogging as an educational tool, before breaking into an interesting history of blogging.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a discussion of the use of blogging in the classroom. In fact, this seems to be a really hot topic that has been discussed in different education arenas, including the traditional classroom and e-Learning.
As an educator and someone who has maintained a series of online personal journals and blogs, exploring this topic is very interesting. I can see and understand the arguments from various camps for and against the use of blogs in the classroom. I’ve sxeen arguments that for the blogging to be truly effective in the classroom, it will have to be restructured to something resembling a forum. I will be quite interested to see the developments that come from this.
From my own point of view, I can see the argument for blogging’s growing use in a classroom setting. Among my areas of interest in education are peer teaching and reflective learning. In a blogging atmosphere, especially if a community is implemented, students are allowed to create their own meaning from what they have learned as they post about what they have learned. Fellow students can look at each other’s blogs and start discussions through the commenting feature, fostering a discussion in an environment that has the potential to be non-threatening. Of course, I would expect that the teacher or facilitator would monitor these blogs to make sure the blogs are being used with their purposed intention and that discussions remain non-threatening and on-topic.
I think, if implemented properly, blogs can be extremely useful learning tools at any level of learning. They permit reflective learning, peer teaching, and classroom discussions; while allowing the teacher to monitor and facilitate in a less-invasive manner.
Posted by Rebecca as Learning methods at 9:39 AM EDT
Today’s offering is this article on experience-enabling design.
Absolutely fascinating!
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning at 8:48 AM EDT