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From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments Posted January 7th, 2009 by Michael Wesch , Kansas State University Tags: * Essays * Teaching and Technology * anthropology * Assessment * information revolution * multimedia * participatory learning * Web 2.0 2 Comments | 9313 Page Views Knowledge-able Most university classrooms have gone through a massive transformation in the past ten years. I'm not talking about the numerous initiatives for multiple plasma screens, moveable chairs, round tables, or digital whiteboards. The change is visually more subtle, yet potentially much more transformative. As I recently wrote in a Britannica Online Forum: There is something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human Knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative Knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where Knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.1 This new media environment can be enormously disruptive to our current teaching methods and philosophies. As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply Knowledgeable to being Knowledge-able.

Where Knowledge Management Has Been and Where It Is Going- Part One KM has changed in many ways since its beginning some fifteen years ago, with new tools and new strategies. But what is most interesting to me is the profound change in the way we conceptualize knowledge and the implications of that conceptualization for how we do our work as knowledge professionals. What I mean when I say, "how we conceptualize knowledge" are issues like, "Who in the organization has useful knowledge;" "How stable >is knowledge over time;" "How we can tell if knowledge is valid or trustworthy." Picture 1 These are not trivial issues because how we conceptualize knowledge greatly impacts the way we design our KM systems and strategies.

Knowledge Harvesting Wed, 05/23/2007 - 9:53am - Informant By Jan Sykes, Principal, Information Management Services Inc. Knowledge harvesting is a new trend in the established field of Knowledge management. It can be viewed as an effort to create some recommended practices for the field. Where Knowledge management identifies best performers and captures an organization's intellectual output for access by those who need to exploit it, Knowledge harvesting raises the value of that body of information and the way it is used. KM-Chicago, the organization dedicated to professionals in the field of Knowledge management, heard two specialists introduce the core aspects of "harvesting" on April 10. The discussion was led by Kate Pugh of Intel Solution Services and Nancy Dixon of Common Knowledge Association. They frequently referenced work by Hans Meidjan of HP Services who is doing Knowledge harvesting work in The Netherlands. Members and friends of KM Chicago participated in person or via teleconference.

Where Knowledge Management Has Been and Where It Is Going- Part Three In this three part series I've classified the evolving landscape of Knowledge management into three categories. The first category is Leveraging Explicit Knowledge and is about capturing documented Knowledge and building it into a collection - connecting people to content. The second category is about Leveraging Experiential Knowledge and it gave rise to communities of practice and reflection processes. It is primarily focused on connecting people to people. The third category is Leveraging Collective Knowledge and Picture 2it is about integrating ideas from multiple perspectives. Its medium is conversation in both its virtual and face-to-face forms.

Knowledge Management: Where We've Been and Where We're Going - Part Two In this series I've classified the evolving landscape of Knowledge management into three categories. The first category is leveraging explicit Knowledge and is about capturing documented Knowledge and building it into a collection - connecting people to content. The second category is about leveraging experiential Knowledge and it gave rise to communities of practice and reflection processes. It is primarily focused on connecting people to people. The third category is leveraging collective Knowledge and it is about integrating ideas from multiple perspectives. Its medium is conversation in both its virtual and face-to-face forms.

Kate Pugh of Intel and Nancy Dixon of Common Knowledge discuss Knowledge Harvesting Knowledge "harvesting" programs -- such as post-mortems, Action-in-Reviews, and Lessons Learned - have three major objectives. 1.) Real-time team and individual insight; 2.) Improve team's processes; and 3.) Reuse by the larger organization. Many organizations fail to achieve these objectives, or feel they don't get a return on their Knowledge capture and reuse efforts.

Community of Practice Handbook - Company Command Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Harold Jarche company-command.jpg Company Command is the most practical community of practice (CoP) implementation guide that I've read so far. It traces the story of the development of an online community designed to share knowledge between US Army company commanders, past and present. If you can get over the military jargon (and even some acronyms that I, an ex-soldier, couldn't figure out) the lessons in this book are transferable to civilian life. Here is a summary of the key concepts from Chapter One: * knowledge resides primarily in the minds of community members * Connecting members allows knowledge to flow * Relationships, trust and a sense of a professional community are critical factors for an effective community * Content development emerges from needs expressed in conversations * A decentralized network is best

INTRODUCTION The current environment for organizations is one that is characterised by uncertainty and continuous change. This rapid and dynamic pace of change is forcing organizations that were accustomed to structure and routine to become ones that must improvise solutions quickly and correctly. To respond to this changed environment organizations are moving away from the structures of the past that are based on hierarchies, discrete groups and teams and moving towards those based on more fluid and emergent organizational forms such as networks and communities. In addition to the pace of change, globalisation is another pressure that is brought to bear on modern organizations. Although some argue that the increased internationalisation should bring about an increased need for knowledge sharing (Kimble, Li and Barlow, 2000), many organizations have responded to this development by restructuring through outsourcing and downsizing, which paradoxically can result in a loss of knowledge as staff leave the organization.

"The Center for Open Innovation, a unit of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization at UC-Berkeley, conducts scholarly research and engages corporate leadership in three key areas: Open Innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate innovation. With knowledge now widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research, but should acquire inventions or intellectual property from other companies when it advances the business model. Open Business Models create value by leveraging many more ideas, due to their inclusion of a variety of external concepts, and can also enable greater value capture, by using a key asset, resource, or position not only in the company's own business model but also in other companies' businesses. Services Science, Management and Engineering integrates management, social and cognitive sciences, computer science, operations research, and engineering to drive innovation, competition, and quality of life through service systems."

How can you build a successful community of practice that is integrally linked to your company's strategic vision? Learn from the first-hand experience of Hubert Saint-Onge, recognized by Fortune magazine as a leader in the field of knowledge capital, and co-author Debra Wallace, the people responsible for a recent project to establish a community of practice for independent agents at Clarica Life Insurance Company- voted one of the most admired knowledge enterprises in the world by practitioners and researchers.

Faciliated Knowledge Harvesting

Communities of Practice, a Brief Introduction Print This Page. Author: Etienne Wenger Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field of communities of practice and their application to organizations. He was featured by Training Magazine in their "A new Breed of Visionaries" series. A pioneer of the "community of practice" research, he is author and co-author of seminal articles and books on the topic, including Situated Learning (Cambridge University Press, 1991), where the term was coined, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1998), where he lays out a theory of learning based on the concept of communities of practice, and Cultivating Communities of Practice: a Guide to Managing Knowledge (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), addressed to practitioners in organizations. Etienne is also a founder of CPsquare, a cross-organizational, cross-sector community of practice on communities of practice. His work is influencing a growing number of organizations in the private and public sectors. Indeed, cultivating communities of practice is increasingly recognized as the most effective way for organizations to address the Knowledge challenges they face. Etienne helps organizations apply these ideas through consulting, public speaking, and workshops, both online and face-to-face. His new research project, "Learning for a small planet," is a broad, cross-sectoral investigation of the nature of learning and learning institutions at the dawn of the new millennium. Check out his website www.ewenger.com

Interesting take on knowledge transfer and the increasing role of the modern academic

Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn't change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what's possible. This is good news for those of us intent on changing the world and creating a positive future. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don't need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage, and commitment that lead to broad-based change.

Anecdote is an Australian consulting firm that specialises in helping organisations to tackle complex problems like organisational change, learning and project evaluation. We help to create the conditions for insight and empowerment. Anecdote can help organisations when traditional methods have failed. Better still, we can help you to avoid failure. We use a range of contemporary but proven approaches that draw on group intelligence, participation, complexity thinking and the power of narrative. We believe that everyone in an organisation has something valuable to offer in making improvements and our techniques draw on this priceless and diverse resource. Our techniques are based on the disciplines of complexity science and knowledge management and include business- narrative, storytelling, communities of practice, social network analysis and open space technology. In fact Anecdote is regarded as a world leader in the practical applications of business-narrative.

The adult learners we work with face a difficult conundrum: Their social world is constrained by the technologies they know how to use and vice versa: The technologies they know how to use are limited by their social world. For many people, a solo exploration of the online world can be arduous, insecure, and time-consuming. In an age characterized by increasing access to information and communication technologies, and by learning through these technologies, such issues acquire a great significance. This is particularly true when we view learning as a social experience and not one of absorbing information. In this article, we explore a design for learning that includes connecting people across time and distance so that they develop practices for sharing and creating information and knowledge rather than just acquiring it.

Mediated Cultures: Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University netvibes site for mike wesch's course using rss feeds etc

mike wesc purpose driven research project on anonymity kansas uni ethnography/social anthropology on web 2.0 trends