Bring tacit knowledge to the fore

Google ’s answer to the Wikipedia encyclopedia, Google Knol (short for Knowledge), launched earlier this week.

Knol is a unit of knowledge! or so the logo proclaims. In fact, Knol is a collection of authoritative articles, written by a community of experts and as such Google Knol is positioning itself in direct competition to Wikipedia.

Knol is looking for authors (either singularly or in groups) willing to put their names behind their content on a wide of range of topics, “from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.” Google will not edit the content in any way, but, like Wikipedia, readers will have access to community tools that will allow them to submit comments, questions, edits, and additional content — in addition to being able to rate or write a review of a knol.

In addition, Knol authors can share in the revenue generated from the Google Adsense ads on their subject pages.

I’ve read quite a few reviews, reports and comments about Knol.

It’s still in its infancy as a project, so issues about content and quality are still being fixed. However, my favourite take on Knol comes from Richard Gale, who (after giving Knol a drubbing) discusses some positive thoughts about Knol.

In particular he brings into play a discussion about tacit and explicit knowledge.

Huge amounts of information are collected inside a person’s head or on their computer. And it is not accessible to anyone else. Getting this tacit information out, making it explicit so that others can use it, is an important goal of many Web 2.0 tools.

By providing singular authorship, knols allow a more ego-driven approach for making the information explicit than Wikipedia does.

That is, Wikipedia also provides a means for moving tacit information into the explicit realm. But, there is no real sense of authorship, nothing to really plant a flag and say I did this, I am providing this to the world.

Finding ways to transform tacit information into explicit are crucial in today’s world. Wikis can do this. Blogs can do this. And so can knols. Knols will not replace other approaches. They provide a new path for the transformation to occur.

A danger point? – Knols can move us away from an open-source environment to a digital form of the ‘authoritative’ texts that we bought so frantically to support 20th century learning. Knols are about digitizing our global knowledge base and adding value to their interpretation and delivery of knowledge – by paying out some money. That’s publishing – online!

George Seimens (f Knowing Knowledge fame) says:

Google is essentially stating that individual ownership of articles is important. How will knols be listed in Google searches? Will they receive better search returns than Wikipedia articles? A part of me would like to dislike this service (how much more of our soul must we give up to Google?). But the idea is well conceived.

Digital Inspiration provides a Quick Start Guide.

Resources on the site are quite scarce now, as to be expected. But I am watching this development because I see furture e-texts staring me in the face. The anonimity of wikipeidia is its strength and its weakness. I’m tipping that plenty of teachers will love Knol as the content expands.

Knols are citizen reporting. Knols are democratising information access. Knols are here to stay – aren’t thet?

Cool circulation statistics!

Dewey Bubble!

Check out this cool data visualization of book borrowings! Click here to see an enlarged version of circulation statistics displayed as Dewey Blobs 🙂

The transactions are placed on a 32×32 grid based on their Dewey classification (000-999). Each transaction is shown as a semi-transparent circle with two attributes:

1) colour — based on the School the student making the transaction studies in
2) size — based on the popularity of the book (the larger the circle, the more times it’s been borrowed before)

From Dewey Blobs at Dave Pattern’s “self-plagiarism is style”.

Library Program APIs

Information Matrix

At my recent visit to NECC, accompanied by my participation in Remixing for Library 2.5 I mentioned a great interface being promoted here in Australia called LibX. Roy Tennant recently posted a list of library-related APIs that library developers may find useful.

What’s an API exactly you ask? Application Program Interfaces (APIs) are structured methods for one software application to communicate with another. APIs allow programs to interoperate and share data and services in a standard way.

This is why you can embedd videos in your blog, or create a feed of your blog to appear in FaceBook – its about creating Mashups. Check out ZDnets video What is a Mashup?

Only APIs that are deemed to be generally useful are listed by Roy. However, almost any library catalog will have a search API (e.g., Z39.50) and may have others as well depending on the vendor and product. Contact Roy if you have a great API to add to the list.

Some great examples:

• Google Book Search API – link to items in GBS, and find out about their availability
• Amazon
• pewbot (Huddersfield University Library) – “People who borrowed this also borrowed that” service

You see, THIS is the future of information services – Interoperability and flexibility of interfaces.

A very good reason to have a library system that allows you to get involved with API enhancements.

Photo: Favourite tree?

Male bravado?

The Pew Internet Post provides New Numbers for Blogging and Blog Readership. In their spring tracking survery they used two new questioning measurements of blog reading, each of which captures a slightly different set of behaviors.

Our first measure of blog readership uses the present-tense question, “Do you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?”. In total, 33% of internet users (the equivalent of 24% of all adults) say they read blogs, with 11% of internet users doing so on a typical day.

Our second blog readership question is based on a slightly different question construction: the past-tense “Have you ever read someone else’s online journal or blog?” This figure is consistently higher than the one discussed above; this is because its wording captures people who once read blogs but now do not for whatever reason. 42% of internet users (representing 32% of all adults) answer this question affirmatively.

Apparently because of the power of questioning, we are seeing a difference between males and females.

male and female internet users are equally likely to say that they do read other people’s blogs (35% for men, 32% for women). However, among internet users men are more likely to say that they have read other people’s blogs (48% vs. 38%). We suspect that this is due to the male-heavy nature of the initial blog readership population–men are generally heavily represented among the early adopters for most.

Oh please! give me a break. Even if there is research that says males are more likely to be early adopters – you can’t just assume this is the cause of the difference in response.

Maybe guys felt easier about saying the they have read other peoples blogs than owning up to not reading blogs …. easy to stretch the truth and make it look as if they’re cool.  Maybe its something else entirely.

Either way – ‘Apparently!‘ wouldn’t be quite legitimate social research analysis would it!

Wetpaint wiki – my patience is totally shot! (with happy end!)

Setting ourselves up for some new things this term (I’ll blog about that next) I did a bit of a ‘will I, won’t I’ excercise with three wiki tools. I like Wikispaces a lot – but the basic interface looks so basic that I wasn’t willing to make the choice to use that tool until I learnt more about customization. For me the exisiting templates are just too ‘home-made’ looking.

My other choice was PBwiki – but I have not used that yet, and in the time I had set aside, I decided not to use that either as it was a totally new wiki platform for me. I will be going back to PBwiki too!

MY BIG MISTAKE

I started a new wiki with both those good wiki companies approved my request for ad-free spaces within 36 hours at the outside, one of them even quicker than that!

What’s my problem? Well as I have said in my tweets – Wetpaint support sucks!

Wetpaint as a wiki tool is quite nice, particularly in the hands of students. Lets face it. If the kids want to build a wiki, then Wetpaint has some template choices that make them feel as if their work is ‘cool’! In other words, it’s more like the kind of choices you get with various blogging platforms.

Nice 🙂

Until you as a teacher decide to jump in there and take advantace of the Ad-Free Education Wikis. 48 hours to have the request processed? Try more than a week and a half and still counting!!! Expect automated replies. Even worse, when you have sent in the requested information in the ‘How To Apply section’, expect to get an email requesting the age of the students! Yes, it’s mentioned in the promotion but not in the information that is needed to apply.

Righto I think..we’re getting close when the email comes asking for the age of the students. Next? another automated reply.

Still no ads removed. We have started teaching with our wiki, which is against my policy entirely.

We even held off for the first lesson waiting for the magic to happen.

I am sure that Jeff Utecht, Wetpaint’s Education Ambassador, (and pro-blogger at The Thinking Stick) is as embarrassed as I am about this whole debacle. Talking to Wetpaint education services is like dealing with call centres – you never know who you are talking to, and when you call back they don’t know you rang before). I’m also wondering – is the company based exclusively in the States? Do they not factor in the fact that we go to school at different times in the Southern Hemisphere?

I had to laugh because my husband’s take on the mess was to ask – Does Jeff get paid to promote Wetpaint? This is a question derived from a business response. He assumes that Jeff would believe in the services he is promoting and would expect it to be efficient – unless of course he is being paid to promote which makes it all a bit more rubbery. I explained that Jeff wouldn’t promote something he didn’t believe in. Must be a business management issue at the moment.

So – Wetpaint take note – if you want to build your business, it would be fabulous if you could be responsive to educators. If we love your platform we will buy into it.

Congratulations to PBWiki and Wikispaces for their extremely prompt response to.

Wetpaint, I very much hope to hear from you soon. As an education consultant I used to promote your product too. I’m embarrased to think that I might have been giving teachers poor advice. I would much prefer to dig into the product and push it to the limits for good use than have to give it up.

Come on Wetpaint – on behalf of all educators let me ask you to speed up your response times.

UPDATE: Less than an hour after this post, Michael Bolognino from Wetpaint has been in touch. See his comment to this post. Thanks Michael. If this problem can be resolved, and if my experience can help streamline things for other educators then it’s a win all around! Perhaps we educators could also help Michael and his team continue to develop a great wiki product for our students to use.

UPDATE TWO: Congratulations and thanks for Michael’s support of educators by resolving this problem less than half a day after I posted this story. The wiki looks fabulous now! I know that things can go wrong But the fact that a blog post reached you Michael and you were kind enough to jump right in and resolve the problem is fabulous. Michael also said that he saw my forlorn tweets of frustration, replied (which I missed being in a different timezone) and assumed the problem had been resolved. A message there too for ed companies. Watch the tweeters 🙂 and don’t forget to send a Direct Message if you need to make contact. I purposefully tweeted the issue early, then vigorously in the last 24 hours before writing this post of frustration. To blog IS to communicate.

UPDATE THREE: Michael remains in contact and is going to do a thorough review of the scripts that they currently use to make sure that they are as accurate and friendly as possible in supporting educators requests. He may also try work with his developers to try to come up with a way to make the ad removal process automated.

A happy and successful solution.

Photo: Elaine’s photostream

Infobabble and my head

Reading this article about Twitter made my head hurt just a little less.

The story of how Twitter took off reflects how web 2.0 tools are taking off!

Twitter has become so popular, so fast, that keeping up with its fast-growing user base is a real issue. So many people now use Twitter to update friends that the system often crashes. Twitterers, as they call themselves, post their updates at Twitter.com or by using text- or instant-message tools. The service is even credited with breaking news about fires and other natural disasters.The service is even credited with breaking news about fires and other natural disasters.

So for some, Twitter has been a lifesaver in the whole sea of virtual information. I’m finding that there is just so much information available, at such pace, from so many people…well to be honest, my head hurts a lot! When I started out blogging, social networking was easygoing, a friendly bit of patter with superb points of connection.

Now there is almost to much, and I sense a competitive edge that is not in keeping with that easygoing social networking kind of way of learning. It’s no longer about what the latest tool is, but how many of the seemingly vital tools YOU are using otherwise otherwise you are not really funky Web 2.0!

I am having to prune down rather than add to my toolkit. Too many Ning groups, too many flash meetings, too many points of connection. I am certainly over that initial flush of tool grabbing. I use what I need. I read about the rest, and when I need a way of thinking or connecting for my students, I’ll integrate that. After all, we should be focusing on shifts in thinking, not shifts in technology tools. Too often the shift is about a toy tool, not about substantially different pedagogy. Unfortunately, the reality is that we can’t substantially shift pedagogy on our own, or easily, unless we have a whole-school approach to change. That’s where a school approach wins hands down – the most creative, immersive and best example I have seen of this has been the work the Lenva Shearing is doing at Bucklands Beach. Lenva, you are a dynamo, and an awesome example to us all.

So you know what? I’m over the initial flush of social networking.

Why?

Because more and more networks and social connections are being created and maybe, for me at least, there are too many. So I have to be very particular about what I choose and what I follow – and more importantly – WHY! I have a very busy day job that takes me into the night with all my networking and creative planning for change.

Interestingly these concepts were raised in the backchannel of the excellent Knowledge Conference Key Note presentation by Steve Hargadon on “Web 2.0 is the future of education”. (Congratulations to the organisers for a great conference!)

While we are busy social networking, collaborating, and creating a shared language, I believe we are also beginning to fragment the conversation. The culture of participation is pervasive, and even invasive. I love it and I hate it. I enjoy it and am frustrated by it. The teacher librarians in the back channel reflected on the explosion of information that Steve talked about. No solutions, just ideas. An excellent session for my staff to attend.

My personal focus is staying apace with 3D and the metaverse – simply because this is the new frontier and I want to understand it’s potential for learning and teaching – and life! I can’t ‘talk’ or network with everybody. For now, the group of educators involved with Second Life and the like is sufficiently small for me not to have infobabble in my head!

Photo: Headache

Here Be Dragons and Critical Thinking

I am in exploration mode, as I prepare for another term of busy work with teachers and students. I rather liked “Here be Dragons” as a discussion point with older students.

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Working the itouch for my blog!

Well just for fun I am using the updated mobile interface for wordpress which is not sexy but is practical. Actually I can use the normal website on my Itouch, but this would definitely be better for my humble phone.

Basic for now but could be handy. Find it at http://m.wordpress.com or using HTML at http://m.wordpress.com (which just might be too much trouble even if it works). However, if all you want to do is Post a bookmark, then you can just use the Bookmark tab rather than the post tab to do that.

Lets you add tags too and save drafts or publish, but you have to add categories later.

As we move slowly into mobile tools with students, this type of thing, and future enhancements, will become part of the core toolkit for 21st century learning – added to all the other uses interactive mobile devices allow.

Lively Google (second) life – don’t miss this!

Have been saying for some time now that our online experiences are going to become more and more 3D. Yes, we need to explore all the options – which is why we are looking at Teen Second life as a co-curricular learning experience for our students ‘in world’ at Skoolaborate. Another option for our Year 7 students will be Quest Atlantis. But kids will get into anything that is going, so I am going to watch this closely!

Like the beginnings of the web, when we first learnt about ‘www’ searching, and visual interfaces, it is time for us now to turn our educators thoughts towards emerging 3D environments. No, we can’t put it off any longer! There are many options of course, but the most recent entry into this from Google Labs (for PC only at this stage) is Google Lively.

Second Life requires users to download and install a separate “client” software package that taps into the online world. Lively also requires a download and installation–Windows only for now–but then people can use Internet Explorer or Firefox to enter the virtual world.

Integration with the ordinary Internet takes several forms. For one thing, you can pipe in content hosted elsewhere on the Internet, including photos or videos. For another, you can embed your Lively area into your blog or, using widgets Google has written, on MySpace and Facebook Web pages. And you can e-mail your friends a normal Web address to get them to join. You can set up you own online spaces–rooms, grassy meadows, desert islands, and you can change the clothing or form of your avatar. And of course you can chat, do backflips, or whatever takes your fancy. Check out the rooms, apparel and accessories at the product catalogue. Read more about it from Ars Technicha (the art of technology).

Guardian Tech says:

At the moment, Lively doesn’t support user-generated content, so you’re stuck with whatever is available in the Google catalogue (click the “Shop for more” button),,,,,it’s another step in Google’s plan to achieve world domination…..

There are already a couple of systems like this around, such as Pelican Crossing, SceneCaster, Imvu, Meez and RocketOn (still in a closed alpha). But Google, like Microsoft, can use its market power to get Lively in front of a lot more eyeballs.

So, is this an important part of Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information”? Or is it just a cheap knock-off that will be binned by Christmas?

This is definitley another 3D thing to check out. Truth is, if it is a Google product, students will grab it and play with it, as they did with Sketch-up and Maps. Watch out world!

Microblogging future

A short post from Alexander Hayes really made me sit up and look. The slideshare presentation on the future of participatory media raised some really interesting concepts that explains some of the ‘issues’ we are looking at as Web 2.0 educators. The presentation itself is not directed at educators – but by golly are there things for us to learn. It’s a year old, but still oh so relevant.

Conversations that are cross device and multichannel – that’s what we need for sure. Any device that is web enabled should be part of our educator’s tool kit. The kids get it! but when will we! Lets get into disruptive innovation. Lets discover the difference between social networking and what Jyri Engeström
describes as “social objects” – or in our case perhaps its learning objects and social objectives. Now I understand better why Flickr and Delicious has worked in classrooms, but other things have not. A worthwhile set of slides to view.