Personal Knowledge Management

Personal knowledge management was the topic in this week’s Digital History lecture. We looked at leaning environments beyond the formal structure of lectures and note taking which dominate at secondary and third level education in Ireland. Harold Jarche calls this Formal Structured Learning, where the method in which people learn and work within this set out structure.

I can remember this formal learning structure from secondary schoo. A class that particularly stays in my memory was Irish. For the Leaving Cert  Irish exam  students must writre a short essay or aiste. Rather than letting us write out the essay ourselves, everyone in class was given the same essay to learn of by heart and regurgitate it come the Leaving Cert. I think this example epitomises a lot of the problems of the Leaving Cert. Considering that I and most people cannot speak Irish fluently after thriteen years of learning the language, this says a lot about the way Irish is taught.

           

Moving on from Irish, at Postgrad level in college, the learning emphasis is entirely different. Learning structured differently as formal lectures make up only a fraction of the time you have in a week. Learning is up to and directed by yourself. Jarche would call this Personal Directed Learning which forms part of his informal learning structure.

           

There is a wide range of resources to help people in knowledge retrieval process such as blogs news and commentary websites. People can use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter beyond just as a leisure activity and connect with online communities with a common area of interest with discussions or links to interesting. Jarche outlines how people can create a new level in the learning process of sharing knowledge through their own social networking or commenting on other people’s blog posts.

Reference links on JStor

Looking at my own Personal Knowledge Management(PKM) process, up to now I must admit I was certainly rather limited. Throughout my time as an undergrad, it involved using the UCC library catalogue and gathering

 relevant books to the topic. From there I would take notes as I read relevant chapters from those books. In terms of digital media I use the databases that are available on the UCC library website. An aspect ofthe JStor site which I had not noticed before was the reference links that

appear on the right had side of the article you are reading from the site. This is a very useful link that gives you the location of where your article has been referenced elsewhere in JStor and on Google Scholar.

I find digital media useful for getting access to interviews with people on topics of interest. Last year when doing my dissertation on the Workers’ Party I found an interview on Youtube with prominent member Séan Garland on a Dublin radio station and I a found video of a panel discussing the party’s newspaper the Irish People in the Irish Left Review website. Similarly RTÉ radio has a good archive of interviews with personalities even on shows that no longer broadcast. For a second year essay I did on the IRA split in 1969 I found a Tom McGurk interview with Ruairí Ó Bradaigh.

Since I started as Postgrad this year this class has informed me of the vast array of resources and tools on the internet which I was not even aware of before. Zotero is a tool I use much more to manage books and articles, rather than having to go through masses of notes taken in my copy. Blogs, a tool I didn’t even consider in my previous three years in college, are something I use much more now. As well as my own blog I can follow the blogs of commentators or historians relevant to the area of my research. I came across the blog of historian Tim Pat Coogan, who incidentally was not impressed by the RTÉ shortlist for Ireland’s Greatest and I also am following the Politico website. This website follows social and political issues and is linked to the work of journalist Vincent Browne. The website also has articles from an array of contributers and links to their blogs.

As well as blogs, I have started to use the CAIN web service. This is a brilliant website, which is an invaluable resource for anyone researching around the history of the Northern Ireland conflict. CAIN has a detailed chronology of events as well as links to digitised document from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. The website also features many important articles and links to numerous other useful websites.

           
From a rather limited base at the start of this academic year I have tried to expand my PKM process as I learn more about the possibilities available in what Harold Jarche calls the 'informal learning' environment. This Digital History class has opened my eyes to the range of resources there is, beyond the traditional lecture and notes system.