The Art of Knowledge

 
Let's start that list

The one about, well hell, I don't know what its about actually. It started with what we were saying about how Amazon is useful as a research tool to find out about music. Basically, I guess the idea I'm getting at is that all the tools and methods ordinary people have for dealing with technology right now could yield up some important clues and trends about what direction technology education could take in the future. Consider this my concerted effort to be constructive and give examples...

Amazon.com

• Finding out what artists, music, genres are similar to ones you like
  
• I've started to use that "search this book" feature to find out more about obscure topics or research terms which I have been unable to locate information about on any normal websites
  
• If you think about it, Amazon has created a knowledge repository based around highly specialized topic areas. It has at its core the "official" information released by companies about their products. But around that is all kinds of information which has been added completely by customers, at no cost to Amazon. It might be a good analogy to think of the customers in this case as "learners" within this system. In this case, the customers go to Amazon to learn, but can also apply their expertise to become educators on the system, by writing reviews, lists, etc. You also have the option to say whether or not information on their is helpful to you. The idea I guess is that the best information will float to the top.
  
• The reason I like this sort of thing better than acronyms like SCORMS, is partly because of the language. It is not daunting to understand how a "review" works, or what it means to write a "list," but as soon as you start to get more abstract and technical, it becomes more difficult to use & understand as a beginner, because the ideas become more and more dissociated from ordinary life activities.
  

Friendster.com

• I actually heard that Google approached Friendster about buying them. Don't know if that's true or not. And then there was that article Mike had about that thing Wallup, which is like the friendster knockoff thing, which allows you to interact with a group of people on a complex dynamic basis. Where people you interact with a lot come into the foreground, while others go into the background.
  
• I mentioned to you originally Friendster as a possible context for how to organize an electronic classroom. I still think it has potential for that.
  
• Maybe one thing different about Friendster and Amazon as a knowledge repository is that in Amazon, interacting with other people on the system occurs in certain ways, but it is not really the focus of the application. Mostly, you interact directly with the products, by looking at them, reviewing them, making lists including them. I wonder how it would change if you promoted within that system the idea of looking at other customers, of looking at them, and reviewing them (writing testimonials). One way Amazon lets you abstractly look at other customers is through the "customers who purchased this item also purchased"
  

Blogger

• I think this collaborative blogging stuff is really important too.
  
• It gives us an easy and public way to keep track of and share information & resources, as well as debate over the value of information. I think thats definitely something we get into fights over all the time, is what are the good sources of information. But definitely that also comes from the differences in our learning styles, and what kind of information we prefer to digest, shit like that.
  
• I also think its vastly important that we each have our own blogs, in which we can just take and run with our own ideas and our own interpretation, and that soemtimes that becomes a battleground, but whatever. We need both, the individual and the collaborative, and for different reasons.
  
• I also think this new picture blog is really interesting because of the sheer number of people posting to it right now. I know its very different from this blog, or our own individual ones, but i think it represents some other kind of interaction that is possible, although im not sure how to define it yet
  

Okay, there are others, but thats a pretty good start, I feel like. What say ye
Link posted by Anonymous : 4:38 PM