For the past two years I've been using Web Assistant - a complex knowledge space that spans the spectrum from personal publishing to community collaboration. - a true knowledge ecology (KE)
Personal publishing:
Most of the key affordances for personal knowledge management (PKM) are supported. Ability to collect, sort and cluster ideas, an easy way to publish and receive feedback, a facility to gather, sequence and display passing thoughts. Web Assistant makes it easy to capture memes, annotate links, upload files and publish for private or public access via their digital element. These elements can be gathered into themes and published as a web page - sites or they may be sequenced for display in an e-presentation - a great way to present content for self-driven learnig.
Webdesks - offer a wrapper to categorize and index digital elements. Links to important Internet sites, uploaded files and e-presentations are displayed in a frame on screen giving quick access to key content. Webdesks can be published and allocated a permanent URL. Here is an sample PKM webdesk
Collaborative activity:
Dialog, conversation and discussions can be added to web desks or used on their own. Web conferencing (using WebCrossing) adds IM, chat and internal e-mail to the mix allowing synchronous and asynchronous communication in 1:1 and many to many modes.
Plans ahead:
WA has recently updated to WebX 5.0 and plans to add blogs, polling and Wiki functionality shortly. This will make for a very rich ecology.
Example of a training webdesk
As I move deeper into this 'knowledge space', I've come to appreciate the key role of facilitation. Newbies are overcome with navigation difficulties and have trouble grasping the subtle linkages between content and conversation that help to build deep knowledge spaces and wrestle with identity issues associated with persistent conversations.
Web Assistant is indeed a rich environment with a long learning curve. It will be instructive to compare the tradeoff between this mound of functionality and ease of use when comparing Web Assistant to SocialText - combination of Wiki, blog and e-mail.
Stay tunned!
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