Personal Knowledge Management

By Harold Jarache

   

   The videos for Learn Trends 2009: Convergence in the Workplace Learning (Nov. 17-19) provide an excellent source of information on social learning.  Although this free, online conference focused on social learning in the corporate world, many insights apply equally to the university setting. 

   A recurring comment by presenters was how difficult it is today to stay up-to-date. George Siemens observed that today's abundance of information means we have to change how we operate.  "Continual change requires rapid learning and innovations for individuals and organizations." 

Harold Jarache shared the  personal knowledge management (PKM) system he uses to handle today's  overload of information.  This 5-minute presentation gives a quick overview and links to posts on the topic.  He showed the relationship between the recursive, internal elements of sorting (gathering information), categorizing (tagging and filing), making explicit ( writing) and retrieving (looking up info when needed) with the external elements of connecting, exchanging and contributing. 

   In addition to the process he outlined, several individual ideas he mentioned resonated with me.  One was the importance of adding notes, tags and categories to your blog and Delicious account.  Another was backing up your Delicious account.  (I'll have to figure out how to do that one). Perhaps for me the most salient idea was hearing that he blogs every Friday.  That's a practice worth emulating for those of us who need some structure in our lives.  I often glean ideas from others' posts but don't take the time to pull together a week's worth of ideas.  I  think I've been missing the critical-thinking  or explicit part of managing knowledge and I plan to correct that!

Upcoming Online Educational Technology Conferences

Connectivism is alive and flourishing through many free, online conferences in November and December.  The K12 Online Conference involves educators from around the world who are interested in innovative ways to incorporate web 2.0 tools into their teaching.  It runs or two weeks (Dec. 7-11 and Dec. 14-17). Archived live events from 2008 let you  a feel for topics addressed by participants.
 On November 13 Educause, Vice President,  Richard Katz will present a webinar entitled The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing.

Nov. 17-19 Learn Trends 2009: The Corporate Learning Trends & Innovations Conference takes place in cyberspace.  The focus of this conference is learning in the workplace.

Two new online conferences are debuting this year.  The Virtual Roundtable Conference on language learning with technology Nov. 12 and 13 and the Campus Technology Virtual Conference on December 3.

If you are thinking about attending some of these events, be sure to check out which specific topics are interested in and see the time that they are offered.  You may have to use a World Clock Converter to be sure that you arrive in cyberspace on time for the event.  Some of the conferences also require prior registration, so don't wait until the last minute!

Ideas for Using Photos

This week the students in my online class at the State University of New York at Buffalo are working with photos and the multiple things you can do with them through Flickr applications.  In Big Huge Labs you can use photos from Flickr or your hard drive to create mosaics like the one to your left.  You can also create posters, name tags and many other objects.

In a previous mod some of the students explored Animoto, a site where you can create cool slide shows with music.  Down below is one I just created of my son's early years in Mexico.  Loved those pinatas!

Online Conference on Social Networking

Recently Vicky Saumell tweeted about an upcoming online conference Nov. 5-8 on social networking organized by two South American affilliates of IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) which is, perhaps, the European conterpart of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).  The organizing groups are AVEALMEC ( Asociación Venezolana para la Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de Lenguas Mediados por el Computador) and ARCALL a group of innovative language teaching professionals from Argentina.

The line up of guest speakers looks very impressive.  Here are just a few:

George Siemens: Connectivism and Social Networking

Etienne Wenger: Communities of Practice: A Social Discipline of Learning

Vance Stevens: Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities and Networks

Nik Peachey: From Information to Knowledge: Creating Your Own Development Network

According to the website, you do not need to register for the conference but, you will need a WIZIQ account, the on-line platform that will be used for the video conference.


This promises to be a conference worth attending!

Video Tutorials for Using Blogger

In planning for teaching the technology segment of a course on second language learning, I've chosen to focus on social bookmarking, blogging and global collaboration. So today as I was revisiting some of my bookmarks in Delicious, I found these fantastic video tutorials created in Camtasia by J. Black. It's evident that J. Black has extensive experience using Blogger with students since she emphasizes the issue of safety throughout.

Tutorials on internet tools tend to get outdated very quickly, but these tutorials from April, 2008, are still right on target! Thanks, J.Black!

National Educational Computing Conference

So inspiring! The National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in D.C. put on by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was such a great learning experience. This was my first time at their conference and I was delighted with the presentations. Those that stood out for me were the ones by Vickie Davis on DIIGO, by Will Richardson on connective learning and Steve Hardagon on Ning and Learn Central.

In Steve's presentation he also elaborated on the new feature of Elluminate through with educators can have a free account which will allow them to have a virtual room for private sessions of up to 3 people and public sessions with a much larger number of people. I have attended many webinars in Elluminate and always wished I could make use of this tool. Elluminate also offers free training sessions. Definitely something to check out!

Review of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other ...

The updates in Will Richardson's 2nd edition of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms provide a lot of new information. Simply comparing the table of contents of the 2nd edition with that of the first (as I did), one might not appreciate all the updates contained in the newer edition

Richardson has now explored and explained the intricacies of social bookmarking tools such as Delicious and Diigo as well as visualization tools such as Flickr. He has also updated the chapters on weblogs and podcasting to reflect recent developments.

His book continues to be a stellar choice for teachers who want to enhance their teaching by utilizing web 2.0 tools to create more interactive learning environments for their students and it is rumored that a 3rd edition will be due out soon. Can't wait!