Mathemagenic

As I dive into reading on ethnography I start understanding better what type of work I’m passionate about. It’s work which is about “being there with critical perspective”.

It’s about understanding how people live, work and do things, better through experiencing and participation. I like first-hands experiences, like exploring a foreign city by myself instead of being on a packaged tour.

But it’s also about not taking things for granted, critical perspective, all those “why?” and “what if?”, as well as comparisions and associations. I guess this is something that brought me into doing research since I wanted more space for reflection and exploration in my work.

So, I’m reading all kinds of things on ethnography, struggling to catch the essence of “how to” next to the spirit of it… So far it’s not easy, so I’m thinking about the reply of John Seely Brown on my innocent question about good way of learning to do ethnographic research. He said that the best way is to learn by working with an experienced ethnographer.

It feels right - learning from paper is so painfully slow, so I’m looking for opportunities to learn from people. Next to looking for possible meeting/doing/learning options which are relatively close I’m thinking along lines of distributed apprenticeship - what if something like that may work?

And, discovering a bibliography on ethnography and a course reading list by Louise Ferguson I kind of regret of not having a time travel machine: now I know what kinds of questions I had to ask when meeting her at BlogWalk/London.

I’d love to have someone more experienced around to help me picking up problems and issues that I can hardly articulate yet and to suggest where to look for solutions…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/02/18.html#a1496; comments are here.

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Every time it’s a very strange feeling: finding a two years back post and realising that my today’s ideas have roots in the past.

Themes from that particular post: learning from process, apprenticeship, visualising traces…

And, before I forget it again - Harri-Augstein and Thomas (1991) quoted by Sebastian Fiedler:

To the extent that a person becomes aware of his or her processes of construction and takes control of them that person acquires self-organisation in learning.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/12/05.html#a1446; comments are here.

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Ideas and presentations about implementations of weblogs and wikis from conferences I visited (see other themes). These are the highlights grouped in themes (relevant for our research); I’ll try to link to full sources as much as possible.

Weblog imlementations in corporate settings

Distributed KM - Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing by Martin Röll at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, presentation with notes, draft version of paper, wiki notes, Martin’s post
• conceptual ideas on connections between personal knowledge management and organisational KM; weblog in the context

Informal, joined up knowledge sharing using connected weblogs in pursuit of Mental Health service improvement by Lee Bryant at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, presentation, wiki notes, post by Lee with summary and links to people who wrote about it
• bonus: Stephanie Booth and Lee on the “Lee Bryant notetaking experiment”
• case study: 18-month knowledge community development project with the National Institute for Mental Health in England
• best of all: full of ideas, tricks and lessons learnt!

Using Weblogs as Project Management Tools in innovative projects by Michael Schuster at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, presentation, wiki notes
• case study: multi-author project weblog with students for real-life project => used as discussion board, not very interactive, topics not used

Enhancing Blogs with a dual interaction design by Brigitte Roemmer-Nossek at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, wiki notes
• case study: virtual communication among a class of trainees and among their coaches during on-the-job training
• results
  • coaches didn’t expept the tool (not many, mainly to communicate with trainees, but not between each other), trainees did
  • weblogs worked better than discussion forum and chat in two previous cases

Learning from weblogs of others (re: weblog apprenticeship)

Legitimised theft: Distributed apprenticeship in weblog networks, our own work, presented at I-KNOW KM/learning track

• paper, presentation
• conceptual framework, “public weblogs” case and possible limitations of implementing in companies

Using weblogs for eliciting new experiences and creating learning elements for experienced-based information systems by Gabriela Avram, Eric Ras, Stephan Weibelzahl, presented at I-KNOW KM/learning track

• Gabriela, is anything online?
• a case of weblog implementation in a company
• study of how weblog posts could be useful as resources for (more) formal learning programs => yes, they are useful

Collective blogging from the view of a context-oriented understanding of knowledge by Markus Glötzel at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, wiki notes
• a case of weblog implementation
• study of how people contextualise observations through blogging and what others can learn from it => weblogs allowed totally exterior person to construct narrative based on what information had been stored in the weblogs

Beyond webpublishing: a journey into reading… lurking… learning… - my presentation at EdMedia symposium on weblogs and learning

• presentation; no paper, but I’ll be writing on it coming months
• conceptual framework for analysing learning effects of weblog reading: weblog networks as social ecosystems as slides + lurking/legitimate peripheral participation + implicit learning

Weblogs in educational settings

Seeding conversational learning environments: Running a course on personal webpublishing and weblogs by Sebastian Fiedler at BlogTalk 2.0

• wiki notes
• related presentations at EdMedia symposium on weblogs and learning and I-Know/Hybrid learning track, but nothing is online (Sebastian?)

Don’t remember the title, but it was interesting by Adrian Miles at EdMedia symposium on weblogs and learning

• is anything online? I could find only general notes on symposium

Blogging as a dynamic, transformative medium in the writing classroom of an American Liberals Arts College by Barbara Ganley at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, presentation, wiki notes, notes by Barbara (before the conference, most detailed)

Blogging in higher education: 10 thoughts/lessons by Tom de Bruyne at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, presentation, wiki notes

Weblogs in journalism

Blog to work: blogging and journalism by Jane Perrone at BlogTalk 2.0

• abstract, wiki notes
• on experiences writing weblogs for Guardian Unlimited: personal blogging vs. blogging for work; role of weblogs in news coverage

From weblogs to wikis

Bottom up Knowledge Management with Weblogs and SnipSnap by Stephan J. Schmidt & Matthias L. Jugel

• abstract, presentation, wiki notes
• conceptual stuff on bottom-up KM
• use of SnipSnap (integrated weblog/wiki solution) in Fraunhofer (not much about it in the presentation, but I guess they will tell you stories if you ask :)

Roughing up processes the Wiki Way - Knowledge communities in the context of work and learning processes by Frank Fuchs-Kittowski, David Fuhr, André Köhler at I-KNOW KM/learning track

• hope presentation will be online soon
• one more case of wiki implementation in Fraunhofer, this time in connection with formal learning program

This post also appears on channels BlogTalk and weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/07/13.html#a1280; comments are here.

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If you didn’t talk about it with me face-to-face you don’t know that I’m reading quite a few food/cooking weblogs. Reflecting on how reading them changes my own cooking practices provides lots of ideas for thinking about implicit learning and legitimate peripheral participation in a case of weblogs (more on it soon: my presentation at Ed-Media is in two days ;)

Chocolate & Zucchini is one of my favourites: it’s a great combination of style, inspiration and humor (and of course, new dishes on my table :) Today Clotilde shares her joy of discovering le sandwich corse de clotilde:

I cannot begin to tell you how gratifying Chocolate & Zucchini has been, since the very early days. But this, having a sandwich named after me at one of my absolute favorite lunch places, is a benefit I clearly hadn’t foreseen. You must forgive my candor, but : how unbelievably cool is that, I ask you?

Read the whole story: it’s a great example of how ideas travel, not only between weblogs, but to our offline life as well. And then you have a choice: you can treat it as a source for cooking inspuration, example of legitimised theft or a business case :)))

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/06/22.html#a1252; comments are here.

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As promised: Legitimised theft: distributed apprenticeship in weblog networks (written with Sebastian Fiedler, Carla Verwijs and Andy Boyd)

Abstract. In corporate settings one would like to enable employees to learn from each other even if they are distributed: ideally access to experiences of others should be available at any place (e.g. another part of the globe) and at any time (e.g. after the expert retires). In these settings traditional apprenticeship models do not scale. In this paper we describe a case where technology seems to provide a window onto practice, creating an environment where people can observe and “steal” practices of each other, engaging into distributed apprenticeship relations. We explore how weblogs can support apprenticeship-like relations between their authors by distinguishing between processes of articulating, “stealing” and refining practices one can observe weblog networks on Internet, and then reflecting on possibilities of replicating these experiences in corporate settings.

This paper will be presented special track on Integration of Knowledge Management & (e)Learning at I-KNOW04 conference (30 June - 2 July, Graz, Austria). It landed in a good company of Gabriela Avram and her colleagues presenting on weblogs and some people I don’t know yet presenting on wikis (see the progam).

To make choices more difficult there is a parallel track on Hybrid learning with presentation of Priya Sharma and Sebastian Fiedler (guess the topic :) and a couple of other tracks with few interesting papers. You can see the whole program (and if you look carefully you’ll find another paper I’m going to present :)

The bottom line: I-KNOW may be worth visiting, especially given that it’s two days before BlogTalk and Graz is very close to Vienna.

See also: earlier abstract for the paper, more thinking about apprenticeship and previous posts about I-KNOW and BlogTalk.

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/05/14.html#a1208; comments are here.

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Thinking about my PhD approach… Some people do their PhD research in a very systematics way - going through well articulated steps and designs. Somehow I don’t feel like doing it this way. My way of doing PhD is similar to how I would solve jigsaw puzzle:

1. First I look at border pieces and try to make a frame out of them.
2. Next I find pieces that stick together and make small “clouds” of them, trying to connect them to the frame if it is possible.
3. Then big picture starts to emerge, “clouds” get connected with each other and with the frame.
4. After that there are just a few empty spots and I fill them in with pieces that left.

Currently in my PhD research I’m iterating between 2 and 3, while focusing mainly on making “clouds”. I use my 3 circle personal KM model as a frame (see the paper for academic description) to work on my “clouds”. My idea is to work on relatively independent studies of different aspects of blogging and then triangulate them to re(de)fine the initial model.

So far the studies I’m planning/doing are an attempt to look at weblogs from different perspectives (btw, this is described in a more systematic way in my PhD outline):

• me - weblog writing - understanding the activities around blogging and their value for an individual
• others - weblog reading - understanding effects of other weblogs (e.g. work for Ed-Media conference)
• ideas - weblog conversations - understanding how ideas develop in conversations (e.g. argumentation analysis of weblog conversations)
• corporate context - corporate weblogs - understanding how far all the nice things above would (not) work in corporate settings

Of course, when it comes to writing papers I also do something in between. For example, weblog apprenticeship paper is a way to connect all four perspective around one practical idea of using weblogs.

Ah, still much work to do before I’m at the stage 4 of my PhD puzzle :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/05/13.html#a1206; comments are here.

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Radio went off on Friday, so I couldn´t post. Will try to catch up tomorrow, happy that I have saved my notes on WBC…

Good news - extended abstract for I-KNOW04 has been accepted. See Legitimised theft: distributed apprenticeship in weblog networks (written with Sebastian Fiedler, Carla Verwijs and Andy Boyd). Reviewer comments:

The Idea of using weblogs as utility for knowledge “creation” is very interesting, cause it seems to be “unstructured” way of micro articles.

For me the fact of stealing as fruitful reuse is missing in the abstract, so I am looking forward for it in the full paper. (like Garvin cites Milliken: “stealing ideas shamelessly”).

I am missing the fact of information overloading and what weblogs can do against this.

Maybe it is possible to insert a pro/cons of discussion boards versus weblogs, cause the discussion board technology is very spread in companies.

Another reviewer asks for empirical evidence… Comments are to the point and hope we can address them within the page limit we have :)

This post also appears on channel weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/03/27.html#a1145; comments are here.

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Just realised that I have two more thinking themes from BlogWalk:

Roles, interplay and affordances of physical and digital artefacts in thinking and communication. This is not a very new one - I have been touching it while thinking about connections between information and knowledge, knowledge traces we leave and apprenticeship… As an illustration - a piece from my paper on knowledge work model (p.13):

…developing knowledge requires filtering vast amounts of information, making sense of it, connecting different bits and pieces to come up with new ideas. In this process physical and digital artefacts play an important role (Kidd, 1994; Sellen & Harper, 2001; Halverson, 2004), so knowledge workers are faced with a need for personal information management to organise their paper and digital archives, e-mails or bookmark collections.

BlogWalk observations and discussions made this theme deeper - thinking of post-it idea aggregators, affordances of digital photography and connections between physical and digital objects.

The second theme is more of a question: what invisible blogging audience does to us? There is something very strange in public blogging where just the probability of someone reading your words changes usual habits and practices… Trying to understand writing for the mix of known audience (explicit subscribers and usual commenters) and invisible “the world” audience is fascinating…

This post also appears on channels BlogWalk and weblog research

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/03/22.html#a1135; comments are here.

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Andy Boyd comes back to blogging with Croeso (one more Welsh word to learn :) and with a reflection on modern day apprentiships:

I have just returned home from my funiture making lessons with Hans Koot in Renkum, here 6 of us learn the old hand skills of furniture making and a little about design. It struck me that what we are often trying to do with Knowldge Management is to transfer experience and maybe the old fashioned apprentiships may give us some clues to tried and tested techniques.

I’m not surprised with a lot of synchronicity recently. Here is my “definition” of KM in a paper-to-be:

In a simple way the purpose of knowledge management could be defined as supporting learning from and building upon experiences of others in a company in a way that crosses geographical, hierarchical or time borders.

The paper is on rethinking apprenticeship :) I’ll share some bits that inspire me…

Jim McGee on knowledge work as a craft:

The indirect values of improving knowledge work visibility may be the heart of realizing the promise of knowledge management for the organization. [...] The first will be increasing the value of knowledge work as a learning environment for other knowledge workers. As craft work, knowledge work fits more into apprenticeship learning models than in conventional training approaches. Making the work process and its intermediate products more visible will make the apprenticeship process more effective.

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in Stolen knowledge:

The means to build connections between learners and to the world of full-blooded practice are essential. In the workplace, learners can, when they need, steal their knowledge from the social periphery made up of other, more experienced workers and ongoing, socially shared practice. [...] A preferable goal, it seems to us, is to design technology that provides an underconstrained “window” onto practice, allowing students to look through it onto as much actual practice as it can reveal, to see to increasingly greater depths, and to collaborate in exploration. The closer such technology can come to making theft possible, the better it is likely to be.

Me and Sebastian Fiedler in Learning webs:

Distributed apprenticeship. Regular reading of other weblogs provides novices with opportunities to learn from experts’ “thinking in public”, selecting role models and engaging in conversations beyond geographical or disciplinary borders.

I do experience blogging this way and I wonder if it could work in a corporate KM settings…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/02/06.html#a1074; comments are here.

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Jill Walker has made a final step in her PhD journey. Over last couple of month I was reading her weblog regularly and observed anxieties and fun of finishing a PhD. Today, reading about her defence, I realised what this reading is doing to me: it makes the perspective of finishing my own PhD research closer and easier to grasp.

Now it’s not an “I know there will be an end of it, but it’s too far away” journey anymore, now I can better imagine the details of what I want it to be, what I hope to feel at the end and why it’s important to me at a personal level. Now I know better that all the pain and hard work will dissolve giving space to feeling happy of accomplishment and joy of having people you care about to share it with you. To the certain degree I always knew it, but observing how these feelings develop in front of me makes it more real, motivating me to work hard now.

I wonder if/how apprenticeship relations work with weblogs, and I hope to do some research on it, but at the personal level I don’t need to be convinced: it works for me.

And, to turn to something else, a small bit from Jill’s defence story:

The dinner may be stressful to prepare on top of preparing the defence itself and the trial lecture, but in retrospect I realise that it, along with the lunch with the professors, is crucial: social networking is absolutely necessary in academia and it’s a skill that’s not often formally recognised as part of the job. Often seeds of important ideas and collaborations are sown in these less formal settings, and getting to know one’s colleagues socially allows much more fruitful collaboration later.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/30.html#a854; comments are here.

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