Frustrating day

Yesterday Estates came and pulled the plug on my computer. For Health and Safety reasons, they were meant to provide me with an extension cable and close the socket hatch that was open beneath the foot of my desk. I'd left my computer on while I photocopied something; they arrived, and pulled all the plugs out. I walked in, found two men under my desk. I thought:

"Oh! My computer's off."

and wandered off to do something else. When I got it working again, I was relieved to find my two most important databases, Endnote and Nvivo, were still okay. But this morning when I switched on, it had lost all my personal settings:

• no signature file,
• no Firefox add-ons,
• no history,
• no bookmarks,
• no network directories and
• no printers.

So sending an email meant manually adding contact details, printing wasn't immediately possible.

Thank goodness for the OUBS cheerful techie, who not only sorted it around lunch time muttering imprecations on Estate's head as this is not the first time they've done this, but also commented that he could make my machine work much more quickly and when was I going to be out so that he could clean it up?

I'm out tomorrow - and forgot to get my train ticket for the meeting. I left the office early to get it. So having planned to proof read a transcript and code another, I've only proof read about 5 minutes of a transcript. Frustrating.

Typical research day

• Make tea as soon as I get into the office
  
• Read emails
• Play jigzone
• Follow my Zetoc alerts to new papers
• Use OU library site for electronic access to journals and to search databases like EBSCO
• Coffee with colleagues
• Write notes in my bibliographic software (Endnote) or blog
  
• Check PhD comics
• Remember to open Twirl - a feed for my Twitter updates
• Avoid Facebook
• Check academic networks like academia.edu or the OU Ning site

By lunch time I've used an email package, rss feeds, a web browser, word processing software and perhaps a drawing package like Inspiration. If I've been working on data I've collected, then I've also used analysis software, and perhaps transcription software.

What I don't do enough of, is reading and writing, slow careful thoughtful reading, and academic writing. I suspect the technology distracts.

Technology I use for research

Research uses technology:

• Microsoft Office (though I could use Open Office - it's Microsoft available on campus). I use Word for writing, reports, chapters and Excel for my plans.
• Phone - not Skype though
  
• Blogging software - this, and I have tried the OU's Assistive Publishing System (APS) to create an internal web site.
  
• NVivo for qualitative analysis
• SPSS for statistical analysis, though not much since I completed the Master in Research Methods.
• Virtual Private Network(VPN) - very useful for accessing my files on the server at the OU when I'm working at home
• microfiche - once for a PhD thesis that the library got hold of for me.
• Digital recording software - for recording data and playing it back
• Digital photography software - used to edit photographs for the poster I created for the competition.
  

Internet, death and sex

Internet, death and sex is a possible title for a unit in an exciting new OU course now in the making. It'll have quizes, and magic and computing, and the number TU100, being a technology course. The U in the number means it's a universal course that people doing any degree might want to follow even if they never touch technology or computing again. It's going to be a sixty point course, so lots of work, but the original foundation courses were also sixty points - it's a shock when you start studying, but it's what you have to do to get used to having study time in your life, along with work, and family (forget about friends other than fellow OU students for a few years).

Why Internet? Because it's about computing without using so much power from your home computer, but doing cloud computing, storing your work on some remote server, and using applications from some server rather than on your home computer.

Why death? Because of the death of the home computer. Computing power's all in the clouds now.

Why sex? Do the course. It's due out in 2010.

Knowledge creation

Marwick quotes Nonaka

"the key to knowledge creation lies in the mobilisation and conversion of tacit knowledge".

For example, a particular contractor would learn much from Internet sources or the local BCS. He would share this knowledge in a two page document that other team members could then work with and expand to a 15 page report. The contractor mobilised knowledge.

Nonaka has a matrix of four forms of knowledge conversion. One form is tacit to tacit knowledge conversion, which is socialisation and can be done in meetings and discussion between people sharing a common culture. "Thus tacit knowledge sharing is connected to ideas of communities and collaboration, Marwick argues. So far okay, but I'd argue that you need more than collaboration. Collaboration is where people have to work together. Collaboration is about groups of people, organised groups of people who've agreed to work together. You can have such groups in a meeting but they don't engage because engagement is different from collaboration. It's more personal and involves respect for what other individuals have to say, and what their experience is. If engagement is lacking then the tacit knowledge won't get shared. For example, consider a project that runs over time, perhaps because resources for testing are not available. One group, the users, tell another group, those allocating resources that there'll be a problem, but without engagement between the two groups, the words will go unheard. There's a lack of client-client engagement.

Of course this could all be hogwash if you don't believe Nonaka. I see Gourley has critiqued his work [1].

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Marwick, A. D. (2001) 'Knowledge management technology', IBM systems journal, 40 (4). 994
[1]

Knowledge Management Technology

I have a [1] paper by Marwick about knowledge management technology. It's interesting now that I have some case studies because I can see where it applies. For example, Marwick writes

"explicit knowledge is represented by some artifact" (p814)

Explicit knowledge gets kept in documents, project documentation, service requests, opening and closing project documents, programme plan on a wall, minutes and agendas. All these contain information that a team shares between its members.

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[1] Thanks to Shailey Minocha who drew my attention to it.
Marwick, A. D. (2001) 'Knowledge management technology', IBM systems journal, 40 (4). 994

Ada Lovelace Day

March 24 is to be Ada Lovelace day.



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