Curatr Launches: Social Learning SW Connects content and person objects

Using an object oriented approach to viewing people and the content created in various media as connectible objects, Curatr's features and metaphor for social learning holds promise to support collaborative networked learning for self organizing learners and for other guided learners as well as the collaborative networked learning-worker in the larger organization. Curators organize information into Collections, Exhibitions with Guides in a Museum Gallery space metaphor. Participants have the opportunity to bring together information objects to improve the understanding of a subject area. These objects can be commented on and improved to further refine what would otherwise be unrelated information into a structured area of understanding on a particular subject.
Curatr uses colored nodes to represent Learning Objects. Learning Objects can be anything from a document to an interactive animation. Every piece within Curatr is given a specific Reliability Rating, which is then used to position the node on the Gallery. It will be important to understand and track the factors used for the Reliability Ratings as the objects grow in the system.
Learning Objects with a higher Reliability Rating are shown closer to the middle of the Gallery, with less important objects gradually floating to the outer regions of the visual space.
People objects are also part of the learning system.
Using the 'Peer View', you can get a picture of the group you are operating within; see who the big contributors are, locate friends and highlight Subject Matter Experts.
Curatr is one of the new web based visual approaches to engagement, connection and collaboration around people "objects" as holder of ideas and expertise and dynamically growing content objects as nodes which one can connected guided by the desired purpose of the learner.
Ben Betts, creative director for Curatr, explained the underlying philosophy and operation.

I am hopeful that some of us can use this for a real collaborative learning-work project. Any candidates?

Aardvark--new learning tool using your network

Collaborative networked learning can be real-time. New opportunities for finding and forming CNL's are taking shape in the real-time Web of people, not content repositories. One such application which shows promise is Aardvark. Aardvark provides a preview of tools in the making.

Working on a learning task, missing critical information to formulate a hypothesis or test out your hunch, you can connect in real-time with Aardvark. You can post any question, and Aardvark will attempt to find a person in your extended network who knows about the topic and is available to answer at the moment.


"Aardvark facilitates these conversations through a very polite IM bot, an iPhone app with push notifications, the company's website, Twitter or email. Instead of broadcasting your question to every one's stream of information, Aardvark delivers the question only to people who are relevant and available."
The Aardvark mission is to get you current answers, not previously published text from repositories, from persons in your own network. Expanding one's network of course increases the possibility of locating someone with knowledge who is available. CNL today is not limited to asynchronous conversation as groups emerge into the real-time conversational web.

Web of identies and forming collaborative learning networks

Social Web of identities and collaborative networked learning
As we move more and more into the world of emerging and rapidly changing information availability and knowledge creation we turn more and more to collaborative networked learning and networking. When we engaging in the creation of networks for learning we want to make sure that we network with others who can help us learn or who might be a vessel for knowledge to facilitate our particular learning.
As social networking in its many forms becomes more accessible and transparent so do the identities and social graphs of the participants. With interchangeable, open social web identity data to accompany the more static stored knowledge data available today we have the identify data necessary to form networks for learning which include the right mix of persons contributing dynamic knowledge along with supporting repositories of more static, stored knowledge. For a brief overview of recent trends in making web identities machine-accessible see the recent entry by Alexander Korth from Read, Write Web.

Knowledge Economy and Search Economy:dynamic processes and processing

I was just reading blog entry from Robert Gringely (March, 2008), which adds an interesting twist to Judy Breck’s thoughts on findability and knowledge. Gringely explains that we have moved past the knowledge economy to the search economy. I think of the knowledge economy as more static something that you can hold onto or possess while search is more dynamic and in process. In my work on collaborative learning-work, I have talked about the process of creating new knowledge; perhaps in the work place we are moving to a dynamic world of meta-knowledge creation as the work and the worker enables dynamic finability for the ever changing purposes of the user.

Gringely in War of Worlds: The Human Side of Moore’s Law explained:

Andy Hertzfeld said Google is the best tool for an aging programmer because it remembers when we cannot. Dave Winer, back in 1996, came to the conclusion that it was better to bookmark information than to cut and paste it. I'm sure today Dave wouldn't bother with the bookmark and would simply search from scratch to get the most relevant result. Both men point to the idea that we're moving from a knowledge economy to a search economy, from a kingdom of static values to those that are dynamic. Education still seems to define knowing as more important than being able to find, yet which do you do more of in your work? And what's wrong with crimping a paragraph here or there from Cringely if it shows you understand the topic?
This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained - a view that doesn't work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we're getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.

With this philosophical view in mind, I think about knowledge as the snapshot which freezes the dynamic process of searching.

Planning--findability implicaitons for design and development

I was recently looking over the seven characteristics of findability formulated by Judith Breck. The seven principles have implications for how one plans and implements CNL today and in the Web 3.0 learning future. I do believe that “findability” is a critical global challenge for the on-going activity of collaborative networked learners. I want us to take a learner or user centered focus and on the ways to support the learner and learning-worker. Freeing or unbundling the info-chunks for learners' access is the first challenge for the planner/information architect; it presents opportunities to create paths for learners who need more guidance as well as freeing experienced learners to direct their own paths.

Findability--Implications for the planning, design and development processes

Learner driven design and information chunking.

1. Consider the implications of learner or user driven design in the learning and work environment.
In order to design information to meet the needs of different users directly it is important to understand the nature of the work of the users and the tasks they perform. When one focuses only on content, the "logical" order of the content guides the development. When one designs for the user, the users needs and tasks form the basis for ordering, labeling and presenting information.
2. Consider the new skills required to chunk content.
Designing architectures for multiple paths of access, which are controlled by the user rather than primarily the designer, require knowledge design skills and domain knowledge. Designers need to develop not only a knowledge of the particular tasks and content of the discipline from the user perspective, but they also need experience with object-oriented, modular design. A designer needs to understand the underlying structure of the field and the corresponding logical relationships between the content chunks, and how to design for flexible, "random" access by multiple users from different entry points.
Static and dynamic modeling of information and users
1. Consider both static organization and display of information units and dynamic modeling and display.
• Static organization requires less time and effort for design and development than dynamic modeling; however, dynamic modeling is more likely meet the precise needs of the user, reducing search time and increasing productivity. One notices static organization where there is one pattern and set of relationships defined by the designer(or packager) of information. The order of presentation of the information will always be the same. For example, in paper based Text Based Instruction the relationship between units such as paragraphs on a page is static; the implicit order on the page is "before" or "after" with minimal opportunity to explore other relationships easily such as "related to" links as in cross referencing. Static organization is also evident in hypertext systems in which the 'links' are created at the time of packaging and displayed as defined when selected by the user. Although the chunks may be randomly followed if the user chooses, they go to the same content chuck.
• Dynamic modeling as planned for Web 3.0 collaboration and other model based systems involves specifying the nature of each chunk of information as an object in a knowledge base. The types of relationship of one object-chunk to any other chunks are defined as "variables." Depending upon the model of the user/learner and its current state at the time of search, the "value" of the variables will changes, and the information displayed to the user could change. The tools and skills required to model are different from those for creating static organization and again are different from those required for cross referencing within a static organizational structure.
2. Consider the learner and the learner model as an important aspect of the environment.
Initially the user/learner model might handle only three identifiable groups: the experi¬enced expert, the new-to-the-domain leaner, and the experienced self-directed learner in a related domain. The designer would need to understand these users and their needs in order to develop the user models. The knowledge made available to each user could be different depending upon the model for the user at the time of access.
Ultimately, if the system is to be designed to support the user based upon "learner profile" and the "learning environment", then dynamic modeling is the design strategy of choice. It affords the opportunity to model the user(s) and continually update the model of the user in order to provide access to the information needed at the moment.