apcampbell

Lila Efimova writes about ‘knowledge work’ in her latest paper entitled, Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case,
which I found personally very helpful for conceptualizing the current
state of the ever increasing complexity of interactive webpublishing
and the vast array of tools that support it.   The internet
is rapidly becoming a “smart” place.  How long will it take before
these tools become easier to use and more widely adopted throughout the
population of internet users?  I dream of that day.  Imagine
the grassroots movements that could be started - how empowering and subversive! 
We all know what the iceberg did to the Titanic.

Efimova mentions one use of a weblog as being a “living business card”,
a practice that could be adopted by university undergraduates to
showcase their skills, knowledge, experience, and academic work for the
purpose of social and academic networking and gaining meaningful
employment after graduation.  Especially in a global education
program like Friends World, there is so much reflective writing to do
and people and events to keep track of in different countries, I just
don’t see why all students aren’t running weblogs and using the
software to organize their contacts, knowledge, resources, information,
and work; not to mention photos and artwork?  If every student ran
a weblog and content was aggregated according to their interests, our
sense of community would be so much stronger and our students much more
in touch with each other and  ‘experts’ in their fields of
study. 

I wonder though, what’s the difference between ‘knowledge work’ and
‘learning’?  Could it be that knowledge work in corporate contexts
is profit oriented and therefore expected to produce measureable
outcomes?  Efimova describes knowledge work as invisible, meaning that very little of it (20%) takes place in formal settings.  The rest of it happens informally, following the Pareto principle. 
I would imagine that many university students would agree this as
pertains to learning.  In my case, much of what I know I learned
in my travels, through the internet and books, and throught conversations with
people - especially late at night.  Might personal wepublishing be
a good way to facilitate and validate informal learning in formal
contexts; a way to bridge the gap between what takes place outside the
classroom and what the syllabus demands? 
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