The Evolution of Knowledge Transfer

Andrew Hiskens from the State Library of Victoria shared about the Mirror of the World exhibition, the story of how we write things down and how we symbols to communicate, during Day 1 of the PLP Induction Program.

Andrew charted the evolution of written communication from scroll to books and from audio tape to CDRoms and digital recordings. Books and digital recordings allow the consumer to “dip into the information” in ways that scrolls and audio tape do not. Hypertext offers more. Hypertext allows additional connections to made. Blogs are not one-many publishing (as books are) but rather a broader community engaging in learning. The world has become the classroom.

Andrew shared How to talk about books you haven’t read - Pierre Bayard
There is too much read and too much too know, the libraries are full to the rafters, so focus on the connections instead. The relationships between ideas are far more important than the ideas themselves.

Andrew then demonstrated Wikimindmap which takes the information from wikipedia and structures it as mind map. From networks you can find the information you need and then come out again.

So where to now? Face to face still matters, although the technology is getting better at bridging the gap.

Souce: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/sxsw_interactiv.html

In closing, Andrew shared what makes the best learning experiences:

- actually doing something
- doing it with others
- having support from a teacher/coach/parent
- having an audience for the learning
- a sense of having learn
- a sense that the task was toug
- having some sense of personal progression
- some passion about the whole activity

Footnote: The State Library of Victoria is a partner with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, please contact the Innovation and Next Practice Division about opportunities for collaborative projects with the State Library of Victoria.