IADIS

Slide 1: Apophenia: Understanding and meaning in information abundance George Siemens IADIS 2007 Lisbon, Portugal

Slide 2: Learning about Portugal Language • Culture • Customs • History • • Sites/locations reflecting traits

Slide 4: • Information sites • Skype (Portuguese) • Opinions of colleagues

Slide 5: Once here.. Tours • Walking • Sights, smells, sounds • Food, beverages •

Slide 10: What does it mean to “know” Portugal?

Slide 11: Gee, thanks George. We knew that.

Slide 12: We know, but is it reflected in practice? Ideology?

Slide 13: Multiple facets Multiple experience

Slide 14: To know is to connect multiplicity

Slide 15: We are giving our learners a one- dimensional experience

Slide 16: Beyond monochromatic approaches

Slide 17: Current methods ≠ needs Abundance – Destroys current linear, expert approach

Slide 18: “In a world of rapid change, quick access to knowledge becomes as important as knowledge itself” Daniel Rosenberg

Slide 19: New Old Ideas Conrad Gesner: “Confusing and harmful abundance of books” (1550) Journal of History of Ideas (Jan, 2003)

Slide 20: Humanity’s knowledge and our means to share it are increasing at an accelerating rate. Yet, our perceptual and cognitive abilities stay nearly constant. http://www.infovis.net/printMag.php?num=170&lang=2

Slide 21: Growth is accelerating • 800,000 scientific journal articles in 2002, 1 M in 2006 (Boyack) • IDC (six fold increase: 2010) • Berkeley – How much information • Data smog (David Shenk)

Slide 22: Not enough experts to make sense of it all…

Slide 23: Knowledge needs Requires: – New tools – New methods – New mindsets

Slide 25: New tools • Encyclopedia (aggregate) • Pageflakes • ManyEyes, data visualization

Slide 26: New methods • Patterning by software • Trails of “the many” • Networks

Slide 27: GDP http://www.worldmapper.org/

Slide 28: Population http://www.worldmapper.org/

Slide 29: Patterns, history

Slide 30: New mindsets • Bacon: taste, swallow, chew (1612) • Louis-Sebastien Mercier: Four books, eliminate the rest Interact with patterns, not with information

Slide 31: How are our students interacting? • Superficial (Wikipedia) • NEED multiple points of input… representations…facets • Need nodes to form networks

Slide 32: Exposure of periphery: loose connections http://www.quintura.com/

Slide 33: http://news.com.com/The+Big+Picture/2030-12_3-5843390.html

Slide 34: Tags: Web of meaning

Slide 35: Visualization • Grunt cognition • Move to meaning/sensemaking • Provides insight • New connections

Slide 36: Money Street World Health Chart

Slide 37: Mapping conversations, connections http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Slide 38: Yeah, ok, but what’s the use? • Network models of learning are adaptive • Multiple approaches…multiple experiences • Today’s information is tomorrow’s sensemaking • Complex, integrated understanding

Slide 39: Challenges • “Why of” education: transformative & reactive • Foster basics…but honor known (history as a conversation) (Spencer, Dewey, Piaget) • New research – rewriting monthly We need to question deeply the assumptions on which we are building tomorrow’s education

Slide 40: www.elearnspace.org www.knowingknowledge.com www.connectivism.ca