About this Blogsphere:

This blogsphere attempts to capture, catalog and share resources relating to visual perception of information. It is about a world mostly dealing with Physical (Touch, Taste, See/Sight, Smell and Hear) and sometimes Metaphysical (and that is none-of-the-above category). Physical, for instance, touch (e.g., feel, felt, found), look and visualization, is here with an attempt to combine verbal, vocal and visual--to synchronously see, hear, share and do much more. Interestingly, in order to visualize one does not need special skills, competencies, etc. It is all about common sense, especially with human visualizations. In short, "information is in the eye of the beholder." Continue reading much more all-ado-about this Blogosphere

Akbani is a Cutchi Memon family name.

May 21, 2006

Scientists and Artists: Who should design learning?

An interesting perspective, indeed!!! The above title is from an article posted by Gsiemens, at the Connectivism Blog.
[P.S. Incidentally, I tried to leave my comment on the same page, but the blog requires registration. Hence, I post my comments here. I hope this will benefit all those who have not crossed this creative visualization]
Thank you gsiemens for the balanced approach in presenting the debate. Also thanks to Deirdre Bonnycastle for highlighting the (intrinsic and extrinsic) value of information visualization. Here, I reproduce the comment by Deirdre Bonnycastle
Here's a question to ponder "Why are most educational Blogs full of words?" "What is it about the alphabet that consumes educational practice?"

While it is proverbial to say a picture is worth a thousand words, I would quote the original author (to show the true colors): “Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone.” This quote by William Albert Allard, interestingly, also supports the reason for the existence of my blog, viz., Information Visualization.
Back to the article and its debate - who is more competent. My comments are as follows:
On the question who should design learning, my own answer will be (agreeing with the author), none of the above. I am a librarian, and understanding the process of educating the educators was my Fulbright project (more specifically, it was to get a feel of how user education program was implemented in American libraries, 1989-1990). I have taught library science for over fifteen years -- all without any formal training in the area of how-to-teach! Only recently I took a course (Teaching effectiveness Certificate), to get a look and feel of educational methodology. (Wherein, two courses are taught by a Nursing specialist).

Permit me to narrate my experience. I did a presentation in the above course. My presentation had three goals, viz., a) introducing the class to blogsphere, b) facilitating visualization of how blogs can be both entertaining and educative and c) present the results of my research on trends in blogging and blog as tool for the educators. View this research survey results at my blog: Blog As A Teaching Tool. At the end of the lecture, as a stimulant, I presented the Blogga song [See details of this on my blog: The Technique of Song and Sound Visualization]. Blogga song is by and for librarians, but entertains everyone.
What I learnt from this presentation is that the participants were motivated to a great extent by this lecture and the tools that I brought in. A few were familiar with the name blog, fewer had seen it, and finally I initiated them to be bloggers, at the end of day.
What I infer, from all the exposure and experience is, competencies and skills if shared collectively, and if digested professionally by any one, can result in producing good design and aid in good delivery.
Recall cases where teachers with master or doctoral degree in education have failed and failed badly in communicating actual sense of learning objectives (L/O) & / Or learning outcome (lot). The debate on the importance of such fundamental concepts continues even in this 21st century.
My belief is good teachers are not made; they are born.
Interestingly, the Connectivism Blog -with its subtitle: Theory of how individuals and organizations learn in a digital ecology- has much more content, context and concerns for us as teachers.

3 comments:

Joel said...

Indeed good teachers are born, but their arrival is a matter of timing. Incidentally I grabbed your webliography on KM. Very interesting. Now if you could only yield a spot for my allied paper "KM and Folk Knowledge: Lessons from Social Software. Link is here.

Thanks for your time and attention.

M Taher said...

Thanks JC.
I agree with you about the sync ( timing as worded traditionally); some call it luck and some others call it coincidence. Anyways, it is a matter of synchronization of so many facets and doing it in a natural mode, as well.

I had a quick look at your scholarly work , viz, Knowledge Management of Folk Knowledge. I will be adding your work in my KM Society-wise webliography. [by the way, is it published or updated? In case, it is, let me know, I will be happy to add this info, as well.]

Incidentally, I have reviewed two books recently in the area of indigenous Knowledge or local knowledge (local is prefered by social anthropologist, such as, Clifford Geertz; see the book, Local knowledge, 2003). For me, looking at area studies, local is more important than global (not vice versa), and I will be happy to send you both the book reviews.

I wish you all the best in this venture. In this context, I have on my desk another book, Socio(onto)logy by Ben Agger (1989). This book reminds that KM as a social dimension needs its own taxonomy and ontology.

With this in mind, the other day I requested a knowledge worker in UK to think of an article on culture in the context of KM and to map this using taxonomies and / or ontologies. In case I hear more on this, I will keep you posted.

While I am not sure how strong is your network and how deep is your research, I hope you will find some activists to help you work on this social good, and develop a business model for non-business environments. If you need my research and business intelligence skills, free feel to contact me: dr.mohamedtaher at yahoo dot com.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for quoting me. As I was reading your comments, I was thinking about an Anthropology prof who filled a 500 seat theatre during the turbulent sixties because he brought in film, song and dance to his lectures.

Deirdre Bonnycastle
Support and Development Program for Community Based Faculty