Teaching in Higher Ed

Personal knowledge mastery

Stop yourself from becoming a digital hoarder

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How do we know when we have truly gained the trust of a colleague in academia? For some of you, it may be when you are asked for advice. For others, perhaps it is when your help is requested. For me, it seems to be when people are willing to confess that they have become digital hoarders.

Digital hoarder

This first happened about four years ago. My friend admitted that she had been letting people down and not following through with her commitments. Let's call her Laura. I'll admit to having been sometimes frustrated that she didn't get back to me on stuff, since we were on committees together and our paths crossed regularly in our work. It was easy to forgive her, though, because I know Laura cared so much and had so much on her plate. What I didn't realize at the time was her big secret as to why she was getting increasingly worse at managing her life as a professor.

We were in my office and she finally broke down and cried one day. Laura had forgotten about a meeting she was supposed to attend and had no idea how on earth she was going to get things together for an end-of-the-year event. She said she just couldn't keep up with it all, particularly the email. We talked around the issue for a few minutes, but then got to the heart of the matter. She had more than 7,000 emails in her inbox, much of which she associated with unfinished business.

The costs of having a lot of digital clutter aren't immediately evident. Storage costs for data have come down so much that IT departments keep raising the storage they make available to us and it is easy for us to buy another hard drive or sign up for another cloud service. The costs come when we think about how much time we spend trying to find what we need, or having to start over again with something. There's also the stress of having a system we don't trust.

Here are four steps to stop yourself from becoming a digital hoarder:

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How to leverage the bookmarks you've saved

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I've been teaching the practice of Personal Knowledge Management to my doctoral students this term. One thing I didn't anticipate was just how challenging it would be for some of them to select tools to use in the process. I didn't want to dictate that they had to use particular apps, but I'm thinking that I need to create an “essentials” or “basics” set to provide for those on the lower end of the digital literacy spectrum.

computeroutside

 

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How to leverage the bookmarks you’ve saved

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I've been teaching the practice of Personal Knowledge Management to my doctoral students this term. One thing I didn't anticipate was just how challenging it would be for some of them to select tools to use in the process. I didn't want to dictate that they had to use particular apps, but I'm thinking that I need to create an “essentials” or “basics” set to provide for those on the lower end of the digital literacy spectrum.

computeroutside

 

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Personal knowledge management online modules and articles

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As a part of a doctoral class that I’m teaching, we’ve been engaging in the subject of personal knowledge management (PKM). I created three modules for the course, which I’ve made available to anyone who cares to watch, in the open spirit of PKM.

connections

PKM Module

1) An introduction to personal knowledge management

PKM Articles and Blogs from Students

The doctoral cohort is beginning to explore PKM on their own, now. They have found some terrific blogs and articles on the subject, which really exemplifies the positive attributes of the final stage of PKM. Below are some of the articles they shared that caught my attention.

“Working out loud”: Your personal content strategy, by John Stepper (www.twitter.com/johnstepper)

http://johnstepper.com/2012/05/26/working-out-loud-your-personal-content-strategy/

Stepper challenges people to work beyond the two most common objections to implementing a PKM: lack of adequate time and uncertainty as to what to post. He provides a definition for “working out loud” (originally introduced by Bryce Williams) as: “Narrating your work + observable work.”

“Being able to work out loud allows employees to make connections – finding people and content relevant to their work – like never before. (Stepper, 2012).

Why PKM? by Harold Jarche (www.twitter.com/hjarche)

While I link to many articles and videos by Harold Jarche in the class, this is one I hadn’t referenced. The student who posted it said it really filled in the holes for her and helped bring new understanding to the practice of PKM. Jarche argues why PKM is essential in today’s networked era. Work is no longer standardized, but instead customized, and requires people to “constantly improve their talents and focus on initiative and creativity” (Jarche, 2014).

Let me know if you have any good resources on PKM in your archives, or if you enjoyed watching the online modules.

Visualize your network connections #CCK11

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LinkedIn just came out with an experimental feature on their site this week: InMaps, which allow you to visualize your network of connections on their site. The connectivism class I'm taking is focused on networks this week, so I found it perfect timing for this feature to be released.

Network

I started the first decade of my career with a global, franchised training company, represented in dark blue on my network map. More recently, I've spent seven years teaching in higher ed, with my full-time position at Vanguard University, represented in dark orange on the map. Considering the length of time at both of those institutions, it isn't surprising that they make such a mark on the map.

I also was amused by the large orange dot in the middle (shown below). That is Dave, my husband, who I met while we were both getting our MA at Chapman University. We went on many years later to get our doctorates at Pepperdine University, which is represented in light orange on the map. We have a lot in common and it isn't surprising that our network connections overlap to such a high degree.

Dave

Here's a video with one of LinkedIn's engineer's describing this new, highly visual tool:

Check out your network InMap and share (in the comments) what observations you have about what it conveys…