Tag it!
You want to integrate multiple sources of information to better understand a topic.
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Traditional means of organizing information rely on well-defined and pre-determined schemata such as simple controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, thesauri, and full-blown ontologies (Ernst, 2003).
Each of us sees and experiences the world in a unique way. Your personal frameworks, or schemata, are the means by which you classify, sort and store information. (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999).
“Ontology is a good way to organize objects…but it is a terrible way to organize ideas, and in the period between the invention of the printing press and the invention of the symlink, we were forced to optimize for the storage and retrieval of objects, not ideas” (Shirky, 2005).
Preset categories of information may not conform to your schemata.
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Electronically tag new information on the fly with your own categories.
Assimilate new insights and pieces of information into your existing and developing schemata, and have the means to exchange your schemata with others.
Sometimes you perceive information in a general way, other times more specifically (e.g. animal or cat). Sometimes information belongs to a single domain, other times it spans across several domains or contexts (cat and Egyptian mythology and term paper). Use whatever label(s) seem most relevant in the moment you tag it.
Free style tagging is a recursive process. Adjust tags on old information over time as your experience in a particular domain grows.
Because schemata are context specific and depend on your experience in a particular domain, if you are unfamiliar with the topic, you may have an inadequate schema to interpret new information.
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del.cio.us is a social bookmarks manager that lets you categorize websites with keywords and share your categories with others. I am trying out del.icio.us and furl tagging systems; the results are in the left column of this blog under resources
Flickr is a digital images manager that lets you categorize your photos for private use or for sharing with others.
Lifelong Learning design pattern map. Click to enlarge.
The “tag it!” pattern was originally published April 18th, 2005 on The Common Loon.
18 Apr 2005
