A Revolution in Knowledge Sharing
Geoff Collier,
EDUCAUSE Review,
Sept 12, 2003
This may be the most important article you read this year. The authors document the fundamental shift in the learning landscape taking place right now: the sharing of knowledge. And they nail it: what makes knowledge sharing inevitable and important is the nature of knowledge: "There is no simple, linear hierarchy and progression from data to information to knowledge. In reality there is a complex intermeshing, such as a continuous churning of insight, the meaning of which changes in different contexts and through conversations with different participants." Because of this, to work with knowledge, what you need are not some sort of linear "delivery systems" but rather "knowledge networks". The authors outline four major types: description, discovery and exchange of content; interaction with and tracking of content; applications systems interoperability; and infrastructure interoperability. If we look at knowledge today and tomorrow, what we see in general is a progression from static,independent, stand-alone, contextless knowledge objects to a network of dynamic, related, context-embedded flows of knowledge within a network. This produces what the authors call a "revolution in knowledge sharing" where "leading-edge individuals and institutions are on the threshold of major advances in their capacity to acquire, assimilate, utilize, reflect on and share knowledge." Read this paper, or better, share it!
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