digitalknowledgeworker.net

I have been interested in how people aggregate information for quite some time now. In particular, it has always fascinated me how people connect information-units to other units or broad topics, how they structure and how they display information. The display of information is most critical to learning - not surprisingly, mind mapping and other techniques have become very popular. A visual display of signs, signals, semantically enriched connectors or shapes of any kind seem to have a great impact on the efficiency of learning. The use of visual elements allows shaping a representation of a mental model.

Here is an interesting bit by Jim Collins: 

Executives should read fewer management books. I don’t mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.

That may sound odd coming from an author of three management books, but I’m convinced that you can improve your leadership capabilities by drinking deeply from the well of great books that have been published in a wide variety of disciplines. For one thing, the business and management genres offer precious few superb books with new insights, good writing, and timeless value. I can think of fewer than 10 published in the last 50 years.

To read on: Find the original article here: http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/articles/01_96_a.html

From THE COMMONWEALTH of LEARNING, 2000, reproduction permitted.

Copyright does not protect the underlying idea or facts, but only the content and form in which they are presented. There is no copyright in a conversation. However, if that conversation is recorded in some way, then the ‘record’, whether it is audio or written, is protected by copyright.

Simply, copyright is the right to control the use of one’s own work. This work might be literary, artistic, musical, or dramatic. Creators or owners of materials have the right to reproduce their material for whatever use they see fit.

Note the following definitions and note also that items such as computer programs, sound recordings, typographical arrangements, databases, compilations, and adaptations are specified only in some national legislation:

· author – has two meanings: the author is the writer (creator); the author gives authority (permission);
· literary – written down: letter, word, list, course, novel, poem, translation, compilation, edition, computer program, database;
· artistic – anything crafted by an artist in a two- or three-dimensional form: painting, sculpture, photograph, illustration, chart, cartoon, typographical layout, drawing, technical drawing, map;
· musical – notes, words, sound of the notes, performer’s interpretation, a recording or broadcast of music; and
· dramatic – written words of a play, actor’s performance, a recording or broadcast of it.

1. Some basic background

Learning is an issue that mostly psychology as a science has been observing and researching. As such, the acquired results are by definition not universal applicable, they must be interpreted as findings of empirical testing. Be it behaviourist psychology, that completely ignores the cognitive functions of the mind or the cognitive psychology that specifically tries to open that black box, the formulation of concepts of learning and knowledge has not come to a rest.

Let us first start by defining "learning". We shall use the following definition of Zimbardo (1992):

"Learning is a process that leads to relatively stable changes in the behaviour or potential behaviour and that builds upon experiences. It cannot be observed, it must be inferred from the observable behaviour."

From that definition we can draw two basic consequences:

1. Learning can be identified by amelioration of performances
2. The performance does not reflect all learning

The latter consequence stresses, that there are believed to be conscious and subconscious learning processes that both form not explicit but rather potential ameliorations in behavior. We shall call this kind of learning latent learning.

2. Behaviorist and cognitive theory

What can be said about this approach to the conception of a persons learning, is that it focuses on the exterior conditions in learning situations. Behaviourism explicitly leaves the cognitive processes out of the picture. As such, the focus is on the triggering of reactions through impulses, especially on punishment and gratification of ones behaviour. Behaviourist theory is strongly founded on Pawlovs Experiments with so-called conditioning. The following links discuss his findings in more detail: