RSS, Knowledge Management, and Me
Let me frame the following observations:
The NLII’s Learning Objects Virtual Community of Practice (LOVCOP) is undertaking several research projects within the framework of the ANGEL (hosted by CyberLearning Labs) site. The projects will explore how to use some of the new collaborative or knowledge management technologies to capture, store, and retrieve insights from a group of like-minded practitioners studying the same things: knowledge creation, creativity, and collaboration. A pretty tall order!
Blogs as a collection of learning objects
The blog is the experimental space itself. By its very structure it captures and archives individual contributions. My office mate uses the archives feature to be able to locate specific items which can then be re-purposed in articles, book chapters, or other ongoing academic projects. By titling each blog entry carefully, by writing to one idea at a time (a form of modularizing), you can automatically structure the knowledge capture to make items accessible as well as readily reusable.
Blogs seem now to be a permanent feature of the Web landscape. RSS feeds, on the other hand, offer great technical promises for aggregation, but after the aggregating is all said and done, one still must harvest the “feeds” and somehow convert even this amount of information into usable, thoughtful, reusable knowledge nuggets which can move forward one’s own intellectual development and that of a larger defined community. In this case the community is the LOVCOP, consisting of around 50 very busy, very interesting and engaged academics.
Before I proposed an RSS feed experiment to our community, I decided to give it a test run myself. I’m fascinated by the topic, skilled at searching, synthesizing and writing about ideas. How would/could the RSS feed I set up take me on my journey in a faster, potentially richer way?
From Stephen Downes to my portal page
1. Stephen Downes creates
Edu_RSS with over 300 feeds from writings on all aspects of education and technology. The feeds are categorized into topics, with each topic containing multiple feeds.
2. I select three of these topics which relate to learning objects, knowledge management, and digital repositories.
3. I have chosen three categories, so I have already narrowed my selection of information to view by using a method comparable to firing a shotgun. Not as much precision as I would like. But, these three topics feed into a module on the ANGEL portal web page.
http://69.2.201.103
4. I visit the site daily and examine strategies for harvesting the feed links in a coherent, creative, and informative way.
Preliminary Observations
The RSS feed within Angel portal lists 20 items, from which I choose by title. The first question I asked myself was “where do the titles come from?” Ancillary questions followed: Does the feed use meta-tags? Descriptive key words? If it’s not one of these two, then right away my ability to select accurately is diminished. I haven’t yet achieved a precision-based research tool.
Where would I find this precision? Dig into Downes’ sources and feed them into Newswire Lite? But then that’s not front and center in my portal. I could choose three Downes topics this week, then select another three next week. But then I am spreading my attention too broadly.
Having chosen the RSS feeds, they are then PUSHED onto my desktop. I select what to print, read, annotate, and write about.
To be used as a research tool, the RSS feed would have to be a precision instrument. Is an RSS feed a precision instrument or rather a superb serendipity tool? Mulch for the garden? Read for one hour and discover one great gem?
I did discover gems, in the links to Amy Gahran and Alan Levine’s Octillo work. But I also printed too much. I use yellow highlighter, small sticky notes, and no organizing beyond the piles of paper. So has the wonder of RSS feed simply left me with more unstapled articles floating around my paper piles?
On August 4, I returned to an Amy Gahran link. Her blog entry on “arranging ideas” had struck a chord and she listed the other blogs that had linked to and commented on her work. I checked out each one methodically. Many folks quoted a good chunk of her article, and then added a sentence or two of comment. No sustained discussion of her ideas. Just a positive response without additional development.
I want sustained inquiry. It’s not worth my time to hit all these blogs only to find a “me too” type response. Hence, we still have the problem of locating the gems.
I have, however, found that I look forward to checking the ANGEL portal page and enjoy the sight of new feeds. That frequency of updating depends on the Downes site being updated and this doesn’t always happen on an hourly or even a daily basis. Hence, I am still hostage to someone else’s feed choices, though at this stage of the experiment that’s okay.
Then what is ideal?
Our LOVCOP workgroup hand-selects a limited number of RSS feeds which push information into a target space on our desktops; in this case, that space is the ANGEL portal. The information is then at the top level so it’s unavoidable.
