Topic Maps, Dashboards and Sensemaking

Knowledge Gardening with CALO Jack Park SRI International, Menlo Park, California And Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K . Topic Maps Research and Applications TMRA 2008 Leipzig, Germany 15-17 October, 2008

Image copyright Paul Bourke and Gayla Chandler, used with permission. http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/ Childhood’s End From: Document Centric To: Subject Centric Computing

Goals
Move CALO discussion from Document-centric computing to Subject-centric computing
Introduce social computing to CALO
Show benefits of collective sensemaking with CALO
Illustrate a Dashboard component for DocAssist

Agenda
Background Ideas and Concepts
Knowledge Gardening Overview
CALO’s Knowledge Gardening Tools
Knowledge Gardening with CALO

From Documents To Subjects CALO My Subjects

Subject-Centric Collaboration with CALO Groups of CALO Users share and evolve subjects they harvest CALO My Subjects CALO My Subjects CALO My Subjects CALO My Subjects CALO My Subjects Knowledge Garden Our Subjects

Background: Documents
Are organized in a linear topology
Are Unstructured
Contain references to:
Subjects
Relationships
Ideas
Are harvested by
Finding structure
Finding subjects within that structure
Federating with subjects found in other documents

Background: Subjects
Are defined as anything you want to think or talk about
Include concrete things
People, places, events, goals, …
Include abstract things
Ideas, concepts that don’t have concrete examples
e.g. “shoe-ness”—the notion of what it is to be a shoe
Shoes are concrete and ephermeral
“ shoe-ness” is just a term we invent when we need it

Finding Structure
Documents can be mapped
From unstructured, linear text
To structured representations: issue maps
Teasing structure out of linear text After Jeff Conklin: http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =pxS5wUljfjE

Example OpEd Document Food Crisis Related to Competing Uses of Crops

Issue Map of OpEd Made with Compendium

Key Node in the Issue Map And Entailed Subjects Subjects related to production of crops that feed beef Many subjects are found in every document, every story. A task for CALO is to facilitate capturing and representing those subjects and their relationships. A later task is reminding with the Dashboard.

Knowledge Gardening with CALO Image Courtesy Katy Borner Large-scale Discourse: Sharing and discussing subjects

Knowledge gardening is… Collaborative problem solving in rugged fitness landscapes Images: http://www.turbophoto.com/Free-Stock-Images/ Focusing on details and working together Understanding big pictures

Knowledge gardening is… Facilitating large-scale discourse
Towards a cultivated ecosystem…
ordered gardens wild borders ordered gardens wild borders Structured but emergent networks of claims and arguments Informally expressed claims and arguments, awaiting ‘proper linkage’ Source: Simon Buckingham Shum

Knowledge Gardening is…
People
Collecting
Organizing
Discussing
Cultivating
Knowledge
Federated Information resources
Blogs
Emails
Stories
Dialogs
Tags
Annotations
…
Tools
Web portals
Knowledge maps
Processes
Sensemaking
Hypermedia Discourse
Federation
Image copyright Alan Jaras, used with permission http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanjaras /

Knowledge Gardening is based on Douglas Engelbart’s Dynamic Knowledge Repository (DKR) Software Infrastructure Memory, Collaboration DKR = People + Tools Learning Communities

Knowledge Gardening as Federated Human Knowledge Subject Domains Related to CALO Projects Learning Cultures Politics History Religion Simulation Wellness Nutrition Addictions Aging Cancer Knowledge Garden

Knowledge Gardening: Subject-centric Federation
Federation:
bringing heterogeneous information resources together
Subject-centric organization:
Co-locating representations of the same subject together in a knowledge map
A map is not the territory it represents
Provides well-organized collective memory

Knowledge Maps as Collective Memory A Topic Map lies above information resources (documents) and weaves that information into a fabric made of subjects and their relationships that serves as a collective memory Source: Steve Pepper

Gardening with Tagomizer A User asserts a Tag on a Resource A tag is a reminder that associates the resource with CALO projects, or subjects, relationships, or other ideas mentioned in the resource “ Semantic Desktop”

Tagging and Annotating Bookmarking with Tagomizer facilitates Tagging and Annotating. An annotation is fully addressable, editable, and can be tagged or annotated.

Gardening By Connecting A User asserts a relationship between ideas expressed at two different resources Semantic Desktop concept “ is exemplified by ” OpenIris.org

Connecting with Cohere

Gardening through Dialogue Users Ask and Answer Questions, and Discuss the Answers Compendium Screenshot

Dialogue with DebateGraph

DocAssist: CALO’s Knowledge Gardening Tools
Assist in Document Preparation
Serves to assist in mapping subjects and relationships back to documents for distribution or use in events
Three (present) components
Tagomizer
PowerPoint Harvester
Dashboard (in preparation)

CALO’s DocAssist
First project
Tagomizer
Support Social Tagging
Learning in the wild
Contributes to Subject Map
Second project
Harvest PowerPoint presentations
Cluster them
Select and organize slides for a new presentation
Third project
Dashboard
Supports document preparation with
Well-organized subject-related information resources
Copy and paste
Reminding
Works with
Tagomizer
Subject Map
Issue maps
CALO PrePak
…

DocAssist PowerPoint Harvester Find and recombine subjects from PowerPoint slides

DocAssist Dashboard
Provides
Mashup of selected information resources
Copy and Paste resources into document
Reminding of key concepts
Rapid access to related resources

Knowledge Gardening With CALO
Stages of Basic Research Behaviors
Forage  Filter  Analyze  Synthesize
At each stage
Capture results
Dialogue where appropriate
Behaviors part of a larger Sensemaking Strategy

Forage Stage
Information seeking
Goal directed
Thematic vagabonding
Processes
Search
Tagging
Leave trails, scents, markers
Tagging principles
Direct association with projects
Direct association with subjects and ideas found in resources
Annotating
Represent ideas found in resources
Link ideas with coherence relations

Filter Stage
Tagging approach
Tag retrieved resources according to opinions of value/contribution to a project/goal
Dialogue approach
Ask and answer questions related to value/contribution of a resource to a project/goal
Annotation approach
Use coherence relations to assert relationships of resources to project/goal

Analysis Stage
Create documents
Reports, slides, etc
Reveal new/discovered subjects
Reveal new/discovered relationships
Publish documents
Dialogue details of the documents

Synthesis Stage
Tie results to the larger picture
Find and declare meanings of results
Find and declare values of results

Sensemaking Strategy
From starting goals
Iterate on these elements uncovered through research behaviors :
Actors
Relations
States
Rules/laws
Ask questions
Seek answers
Gowin’s Vee Diagram * * Novak, J. D., and D. B. Gowin (1984). Learning How to Learn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Contributions of this work
Provide a candidate on-line collaboratory for CALO users
Provides a topic map that maintains the subject-centric federation of CALO users’ resources
Adds value to Tagomizer
Turns it into the full topic map it was designed to be
Supports the new DocAssist Dashboard
Provides a new framework for further learning research
Transfer learning through federation
LITW through emerging discoveries based on collective sensemaking

Questions? Thank You! [email_address]

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Topic Maps, Dashboards and Sensemaking

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