Synergy - Cmaps and web2.0

Web2.0 is all about participation, community, knowledge sharing and web services - at least that is my take.

Look anywhere on the web and you will find references to blogs, wikis, mashups, VoIP?, podcasts, remixing, web platforms, AJAX, open APIs and more..... What is missing, is visual knowledge creation such as we see in concept maps. To my way of thinking this is a serious oversight.

Concept maps (Cmaps) are a key player in knowledge creation, learning, improving understanding, making links or connections and sharing insights. Joe Novak tells it all in this key article. There would seem to be a natural connection between Cmaps and web2.0 based on their many shared themes.

My partner Patrick Hindert first made the connection between web2.0 (mashups) and concept maps for me and has encouraged others to share and build on this insight. Barbara Bowen explores this relationship in her recent post. She mentions the visual affordances, cognitive help and utility of propositions connecting concept nodes when it comes to improving knowledge. This is illustrated with a well-defined knowledge model that walks one through the links between web2.0 and lawyers.

I would encourage you to explore her work, open the sub-maps, take the links and use this tool to increase your own sense-making and deepen your appreciation for what concept maps can do. Did you know you can use a free Cmapping tool to collaboratively construct your own concept maps?. There is no easier or deeper way to elicit tacit knowledge, capture evolving insights, and record relationships that contribute to a stronger shared understanding.

If web2.0 and lawyers make it onto your interest landscape, wander through our weblaw20 wiki, steal our filtered resources, visit our selection of technologies, apply to join the wiki and add to our  collective thinking and writing.

Do you have insights to share about the synergy that is concept mapping and web2.0?

Comments

[Denham Grey]

David,

Thank you for your comments.

I hold a very different view of the nature and value of knowledge. In a complex world, it makes sense to probe, sense and respond rather than sense, categorise and respond. (See Snowden). It helps and adds value to become a conduit and connector rather than a container or a vault.(Read Siemens)

Content is created during learning rather than in advance of learning. People do not want visit, posess or own YOUR content; they wish to mash, mix, amalgamate your content into THEIR creations, sites, programs and activities.

Help them on their way is my thinking

[David Locke]

It's not just mashups. Any software program encompases at least one domain, at least one paradigm, at least one ontology--all of which boils down to a conceptualization as a set of related concepts.

The scope of the conceptualization is a competitive issue around market segmentation. It is also a matter of what cultures are involved and the relative priority of those cultures as expressed in the enabled task performance and user interface. It is also the playground where requirements volitility is put in play, not because the requirements change, but because the relative priorities assigned to the cultures change as the politics and passive agressiveness of the customers play out.

Beyond the mapping of a concept is the insistence that a given concept not have a politicized definition, but rather be seen as a set of concepts tying back to their own ontologies, tasks, and interfaces.

A concept map should be drawn from the perspective of a single functional culture, rather than a generalist "mashup" that is stuck "on" a culture at its best.

[Artichoke]

Hi Denham,
Like visual mapping and think C-maps provide powerful pedagogical approaches to improving learning outcomes - but what I really wanted to do was thank you for your comment on Knowing Knowledge blog - is insightful and has been a catalyst for new thinking for me today
ULearn06: Mousetrap and pingpong ball communications

[David Locke]

Served C-maps would be problem for proprietary knowledge. I'm sure your business can prosper by sharing your knowledge with your competitors, and telegraphing your competitive moves.

It's wonderful that knowledge should be free, free as in cheap, easily accessible, and worthless. Only knowledge that isn't free provides any business value. By the time a deal is retail, the profits have been run out of it.

Eliciting knowledge isn't the same thing as explicating it. And, tacit knowledge is still waiting around for explication before it can ever become explicit enough to C-map.

Is the C-map capable of manipulation via XSLT?