We are in the Learning Age. By using social tools, anyone can easily begin an active training course by developing its PKM. A first step in Social Learning.

Effective learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them and PKM (personal knowledge management) can be your customized surfboard.

I constantly go through a process of looking at bits of information and trying to make sense of them by adding to my existing knowledge or testing out new patterns in my sense-making efforts. The Web has given us more ways to connect with others in our learning but many people only see the information overload aspect of our digital society. Effective learning is the difference between surfing the waves or being drowned by them and PKM (personal knowledge management) can be your customized surfboard.

For example, a sense-making routine can be regularly reading certain blogs and news feeds, capturing important ideas with social bookmarks and then putting ideas out in the open on a blog. The power of this process is realized after many iterations results in the creation of a personal knowledge base. PKM takes the notion of a personal journal and extends it significantly.

In looking at how we can make sense of the growing and changing knowledge in our respective professional fields, I see two parallel processes that support each other. One is internally focused, as in “How do I learn this?” and the other is external, as in “Who can help me learn this?”.

On my own, I go through a process of Sorting; Categorizing; Retrieving and Making Explicit. Here is an example. I aggregate (Sort) various news sources and blogs that I have pushed to me via an RSS aggregator (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines). When I find something of interest or useful for some work I'm doing I either tag and file it (Categorize) with a social bookmark (e.g. Delicious) or I stick it on my Web browser's toolbar to come back to later. I can find (Retrieve) these items much easier as social bookmarks because they are tagged in a fully searchable online database. Finally, I have developed a regular routine of blogging (Making Explicit) as this forces me to develop my thoughts into a more coherent form of communication. The blog posts themselves become a database of knowledge artifacts that are unique to me and can be retrieved to further develop ideas.

The real power of doing this sense-making online is that it is social. By making my bookmarks and blog posts visible and shareable I am extending an open invitation for other to create a conversation. I am able to Connect with others; Exchange ideas and observations; and Contribute to other conversations. Contributing is part of the reciprocal engagement that occurs when several people are discussing similar ideas online and link or comment on each other's blogs.

By taking an age-old process of making notes, filing observations and then extending it digitally so that it can be easily shared and copied, we can engage in powerful networked learning. The key is using tools that let the information flow. Putting up an article as a PDF does not encourage linking or comments while a blog post can be easily quoted or commented upon. For me this is a constant series of iterations of moving from implicit to explicit knowledge by observing, reflecting and then putting tentative thoughts out to my networks.

Here are some examples of PKM process and their graphical representations:

http://www.jarche.com/2009/07/creating-your-pkm-processes/

http://www.jarche.com/2009/07/other-pkm-processes/

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