It is indeed true that not everybody finds relevant information in the same way. Indeed there are many students that still miss the skill to come up with relevant tags, screen options that pop-up. The difficulty might be related to understanding what makes meaning or what will deliver personal, relevant results.
Maybe the way students use tags to describe learning objects, and to search through them, can give an idea on how the first steps the semantic web are taken? At first tags and things do not really match sensitive differences in meaning, but as time goes by and linguistic semantics are fine-tuned, the tags linked to object become more precise.
I would think that this precise tagging and finding the most relevant key words related to a certain subject, is linked to the novice or expert state that a person is in. The more expertise, the easier it is to provide specific and accurate key words or phrases, the more one is a novice, the more those choices might be colored by popular nouns or hyped words.
@Laurence: I also really like your idea that human beings have the tendency to go above and beyond. If this urge to move beyond could be put into an algorithm, learning analytics would provide us with cognitive or other laws that we would not even have imagined (or proven).
Re: How will (could) linked data and the semantic web impact learning?
Number of replies: 3
In reply to Inge Ignatia de Waard
Re: How will (could) linked data and the semantic web impact learning?
"I would think that this precise tagging and finding the most relevant key words related to a certain subject, is linked to the novice or expert state that a person is in. The more expertise, the easier it is to provide specific and accurate key words or phrases, the more one is a novice, the more those choices might be colored by popular nouns or hyped words. " - IIdW
I agree with you 100% and, anecdotally of course, I've seen this in my own personal information organizing behavior. Back in the early days of Del.icio.us use, I didn't really pick tags well, as a result some of my bookmarks were not so easy to find later on. As I used the system more, I actually ended up coming up with terms that were general enough to point a category out, but specific enough so that not everything was "web2.0" (Now if only I had the time to put in an abstract/description for each URL :-) )
I agree with you 100% and, anecdotally of course, I've seen this in my own personal information organizing behavior. Back in the early days of Del.icio.us use, I didn't really pick tags well, as a result some of my bookmarks were not so easy to find later on. As I used the system more, I actually ended up coming up with terms that were general enough to point a category out, but specific enough so that not everything was "web2.0" (Now if only I had the time to put in an abstract/description for each URL :-) )
In reply to Apostolos Koutropoulos
Re: How will (could) linked data and the semantic web impact learning?
oh, I so follow you on the 'adding an abstract/description' into delicious :-D
And I must confess, it also feels like an effort to take out those tags that I only used once (similar in my blog, I should clean house, but I keep putting it forward to ... later). I wonder if there would be people willing to clean up the messes that are made, or maybe a cleaning algorithm?
And I must confess, it also feels like an effort to take out those tags that I only used once (similar in my blog, I should clean house, but I keep putting it forward to ... later). I wonder if there would be people willing to clean up the messes that are made, or maybe a cleaning algorithm?
In reply to Inge Ignatia de Waard
Re: How will (could) linked data and the semantic web impact learning?
A cleaning algorithm would be useful...but...I wouldn't trust it :-)
a year or so ago I undertook a project to clean up my music, re-rip it into iTunes, scan cover art and have appropriate meta-data. I was almost 90% when my hard drive died. Haven't gone back to it yet :-)
I think it would be worthwhile for me to go back through my delicious bookmarks and retag and add abstracts. I "only" have about 2000 bookmarks. I think that what I will find is that about 500 of those links are dead, which makes it a good excuse to clean things up ;-)
As far as going back to old blog posts. I have considered it, but with about 3000 posts (across 3 blogs), that could be an issue. For blogs, I think it doesn't matter as much (the retagging) since one could do a forensic analysis on our blogs and could tell things about the evolution of our thinking. I write blog posts to outwardly communicate with others. Bookmarks on the other hand, I keep because I find them useful for my own personal use, the outward sharing is just a nice side-effect :-)
a year or so ago I undertook a project to clean up my music, re-rip it into iTunes, scan cover art and have appropriate meta-data. I was almost 90% when my hard drive died. Haven't gone back to it yet :-)
I think it would be worthwhile for me to go back through my delicious bookmarks and retag and add abstracts. I "only" have about 2000 bookmarks. I think that what I will find is that about 500 of those links are dead, which makes it a good excuse to clean things up ;-)
As far as going back to old blog posts. I have considered it, but with about 3000 posts (across 3 blogs), that could be an issue. For blogs, I think it doesn't matter as much (the retagging) since one could do a forensic analysis on our blogs and could tell things about the evolution of our thinking. I write blog posts to outwardly communicate with others. Bookmarks on the other hand, I keep because I find them useful for my own personal use, the outward sharing is just a nice side-effect :-)