Why #10: Finds Information
Dec 22, 2008 Selling Social Learning, Verbs of Social Learning
WHY #10: Finds Information
Social Learning FINDS what you are looking for. Or at least helps you find how to find.
What are the most common ways to find information? Did you notice that I did not say “search for information?” This is because searching is only one way to find information.
The four major ways to find info are:
- Search
- Hierarchy
- Tag (Machine is using us)
- Personalization
Search is the most use. Probably because it is most common and we are used to that. But it may not be the most effective. How many times have we searched on Google and found a whole bunch of results that have the term(s) we wanted but didn’t have anything to do with what we wanted? All too many times.
Hierarchy is good, but it is limited. For example, I may be able to save a document in a folder on my hard drive. Oh, but wait. It could also live in another folder. And another. It realistically live in all three. Which do I put it in? And when I go to find it next time, will I remember where it lived? Yet it is another effective way to organize information. A director of IT mentioned to me that one time he searched his network folders – which were not really THAT huge – and found 15 separate versions of the same document all with different information. Now, which one was the correct version? Which was most up to date?
Tagging gives subjects to a bit of information rather than trying to pigeon-hole it into on label (which is what a hierarchy does). For the best video on this, see Information R/evolution.
The Personalization was pioneered by Amazon. It can ’see’ what you are looking for and give you suggestions on similar pieces of information. The system does the work for you. Also, it can help you find others who might know what you are looking for. Many times what you want is not in a system but in someone’s head. The system will connect you with that person.
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Tags: amazon, personalization, search, tagging
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
You missed the most common–and most ancient–way of finding information: ask someone. Ever since a two people came together and asked “How ya doin’?”they’ve been asking each other for information. Think of how may times our students ask questions, even simple questions like “When’s this due?” in our classrooms. Or even when a 2-year old asks “Kitty?” Kids are wonderfully unabashed about asking people for information. SL may be able to connect kids to the people whjo can answer questions. But we’ll have to solve our worry about letting kids be online for this to happen.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Good point, Brad. I was speaking more toward the technology aspect, but we CANNOT forget the traditional verbal as well.
The opportunity for this in education is HUGE. I think we are all in a ‘feeling out’ stage, trying to understand how best to use it in curriculum before we all launch it. But MANY teachers have successfully done so. They are great examples.
March 13th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
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