On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 6:39 PM, valerie <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Maria > > Yes, my students are authoring learning materials - mostly as > collaborative research projects > http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2008 > http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/CIS2_Summer_2008 > > I would very much like to have access to some tools that would allow > them to build out materials around hubs in a way that isn't linear > wiki pages, but rather some more complex network / hub representation.
I think the wiki structure, in and of itself, is quite wonderful for complex networks. The parent-child page creation promotes it, for example. Wikis are frequently used as an example of the structure contrasting with hierarchical, taxonomic ones. Ironically, a lot of people are drawn to simplistic structures in wiki authoring, due to psychological reasons. It makes the cognitive load lighter, basically, and wikis don't always have other tools for lowering cognitive loads in non-linear structures. What I am trying to say: let's figure out how to integrate WE with some of the tools we at Natural Math are building for helping communities navigate non-linear reusable learning object structures. The "planet mapping" specifically can be of use. I probably need to be talking with techie people about it. "Planet" can be a metaphor for a navigation/authoring system helping people aggregate and create wiki pages. Several people mentioned a need. This is very much in the early brainstorming stage. > > The idea being that these could be combined with the work of others. > Then anyone interested in the topic would be guided around the > learning space by these connections. > > Another use would be to enter the space with a specific link, then be > able to see the connections and follow paths that went off from > there. > > The general purpose Google search can do this sort of. If there is a > link to a specific site in a page, you could search for other pages > that contained that link. However, it doesn't address the idea that > students are finding these paths as they learn and are the best source > of this information. Capturing this information and then leveraging > that in combination with many students' paths is important and > interesting. I think the idea is similar to "semantic web" ideas: not a top-down static link farm, not a completely history-free search, but an integration of the two, through the community's actions of capturing their "paths." Many people are working on this now. > > > Wishing you the best for 2009 > ..Valerie > -- > > -- Cheers, MariaD Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
