Group items tagged

Google, a major source of information overload, can also help manage it,

These strategies present challenges for accurately tagging data and archiving it, the presenters warned.

It reduces the complexity, yes, but more importantly it provides a starting point for a common process. Without it, we would be lost in theory. 

The same holds for learning to some degree. We look for structure, but if none exists on sight, we combine things until some structure emerges. That structure can be represented in a single symbol, but its foundation might shift as new understanding emerges. Occasionally, there is need to ditch the symbols or invent a new one altogether as emerging learning dictates. That is a healthy and complicated process. The MOOC captures this process a bit and adheres to an open structure to allow pattern language to emerge, a shared vocabulary, a knowledge construct (however ephemeral).

Feedback as friction as forces interact. A spark, a collision, waste, and occasionally a nova. A big (learning) bang. This makes me think a learner's responsibility (among many others) is to be open to this collision of actors, agents, feedback, waste, noise, and then, ideally, pattern, understanding. The only way out is through.

Disturbing- an ontological disturbance, an unknown, an uncanny sense of veering through uncharted, potentially treacherous waters. It is a good place to be as a learner, but it requires a strength and confidence that only an empowered learner could put forth. But in that disturbance, that mess, there is the friction, that meat-grinder of understanding.

This is learning as curiosity and sometimes it can be quite scary. 

Often we seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge (anyone subjected to my endless banal history lessons will understand this), but I do believe that most learning is action oriented. To learn not only to get a job, to live in a world, to subsist, but rather for acting as best as we can. For improvement, for progress, for self-actualization.

disaggregated, emotive, functional machine of interaction. One that has to be tinkered with constantly. 

one program: Evernote

Off-site storage is more secure in the long run,

you need a backup routine

online access to your backed-up files means you have nearly universal access to your work.

2. Let your computer (do some of the) work for you; metadata is your friend.

Tag everything.

hink of tags less as categories or folders and more as the code words in your own personal index.

Documents, images, pdfs, articles, notes can all have as many tags as you want. And items in separate folders can be tagged with the same word or phrase.

Use tags to describe an article in a way the author might not.

Clip articles to read later using Evernote;

install the Evernote clip tools {Chrome and Firefox extensions}

Use EndNote or Zotero to quickly grab citation information

3. Learn to search, not just organize.

Evernote and Google Docs perform OCR by default

, which yields searchable text from what was just an image file. 

at some point, you forget what you have written or what notes you have taken

Evernote is essentially an easy-to-use personal database,

4. Let these techniques and habits help you find patterns that you would not otherwise see.