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.

filtering and organization is performed automatically

Articles you saved about the latest gadgets would end up in one section, for example, and those about politics would end up in another

What about the information that is actually consumed?

households were bombarded with 3.6 zettabytes of information (or 34 gigabytes per person per day)

half of all bytes are received interactively

“information created by machines and used by other machines will probably grow faster than anything else,”

‘database to database’ information

Only 5% of the information that is created is “structured”, meaning it comes in a standard format of words or numbers that can be read by computers.

changing as content on the web is increasingly “tagged”, and facial-recognition and voice-recognition software can identify people and words in digital files.

more popular than sending instant messages

only a little less popular than using social networking services

powerhouse of “crowdsourcing,” before most people had even heard that word

With Twitter, we are starting to see how a Wikipedia-like approach to information scales even further.

Along the way, there are errors and all kinds of other noise — but over time, it produces a very real and human view of the news.

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.

. It provides you with a one-stop shop for all your social networking profile

FriendFeed

Power.com: all your friends in just one place

Power.com tries to do for social media what Meebo has done to IM’s; basically blurring the boundaries that separate one network from the other and allowing to use them all from one interface and exchange information and images from any of them and to all of them.

ultimate interoperability

What is new with constructivism today is that these principles are being (have been) coupled with existing calls for educational reform

calls for increased learner control

From whence does connectivism originate?

1. Tools augment our ability to interact with each other and to act.

“carriers of patterns of previous reasoning”

all technology carries an ideology.

2. Contextual/situated nature of learning.

3. Social learning theory

4. Epistemological views: all learning theory is rooted in epistemology

5. Concept of mind.

6. We also find a compatible view of connectivism in the work of new media theorists such as McLuhan

7. We also find support for connectivism in the more nebulous theories of complextiy and systems-based thinking

8. Network theory

The Unique Ideas in Connectivism

1. Connectivism is the application of network principles to define both knowledge and the process of learning.

2. Connectivism addresses the principles of learning at numerous levels – biological/neural, conceptual, and social/external

3. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology as part of our distribution of cognition and knowledge.

4. Context. While other theories pay partial attention to context, connectivism recognizes the fluid nature of knowledge and connections based on context

5. Understanding. Coherence. Sensemaking. Meaning.

learners are a diverse group

uniformity of university program tracks masks the differences of learners.

In an open course, participants aren’t filtered in the same way.

Higher education generally homogenizes learners through pre-requisites or subject streams (programs).

we begin to connect with those who respond favorably, we gravitate toward those who we find interesting (but not so interesting that we feel no connection),

One of the primary ways of connecting with others in an open course is through creating and sharing artifacts of sensemaking.

When our learning is transparent, we become teachers.

Essentially, we form small sub-networks that connect (lattice-like) to other sub-networks