- A visual exploration on mapping complex networks:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ - Interactive Knowledge Maps of Tools, Books, Researchers, Success Factors, and Methods in the Visualization Field
http://www.visual-literacy.org/pages/documents.htm - Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html - Visualization Methods from the Periodic Table:
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/xmldb/rest/db/Visualization/showAll.xql - Information Visualization (methods and software)
http://infoviz.pnl.gov/technologies.html - Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/
September 15, 2008
Visualization Tools
Looking for ways to visualize information and meta-levels I found the following websites:
September 01, 2008
Accelerated Learning Techniques
For more than 10 years I have been interested in education and the systems used for education. My primary focus and intention was to satisfy my personal curiosity and because of that I have been a strong supporter of student oriented modular education which is now also known as the ' cafetaria' model, education a la carte or pick and mix education.
As a student I wrote a paper (thesis) about developments and possibilities of education using the Internet. When you study didactic material about learning and teaching you will come across learning preferences in the form of learning styles: auditory (learning by hearing), visual (learning by seeing) and kinesthetic (learning by doing). But also the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) originally developed by Howard Gardner. The intelligences are:
In todays Information Society we also have to look into enhanced forms of literacy, not only the ability to read and write, the conventional or functional Literacy but also Computer Literacy (the ability to use computers for writing and E-mail communication), Information Literacy and Media Literacy.
Accelerated Learning Techniques have been investigated for several years. I found really good resources at Win Wenger's Project Renaissance. Following the recommended links I found a generations overview of Accelerated Learning Techniques:
Although this is a preview (dated 2004?) by Matthew Turco; this accelerated learning overview offers me a nice opportunity to combine and position tricks, creativity, NLP, Psychology and Energy work.
Any other overviews on the subject are really welcome.....
As a student I wrote a paper (thesis) about developments and possibilities of education using the Internet. When you study didactic material about learning and teaching you will come across learning preferences in the form of learning styles: auditory (learning by hearing), visual (learning by seeing) and kinesthetic (learning by doing). But also the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) originally developed by Howard Gardner. The intelligences are:
- Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
- Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
- Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
- Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
- Musical intelligence ("music smart")
- Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
- Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
- Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
In todays Information Society we also have to look into enhanced forms of literacy, not only the ability to read and write, the conventional or functional Literacy but also Computer Literacy (the ability to use computers for writing and E-mail communication), Information Literacy and Media Literacy.
Accelerated Learning Techniques have been investigated for several years. I found really good resources at Win Wenger's Project Renaissance. Following the recommended links I found a generations overview of Accelerated Learning Techniques:
The First Generation – Tricks And Tools That Really Work
| Memory Systems Creativity Strategies | | | |
| | ||
Speed Reading | | | Math Strategies |
The Second Generation – Tapping The Unconscious
| Freenoting | | | Image Streaming |
| | ||
Improvitaping | | | Photoreading |
The Third Generation – Aligning The Unconscious
| Hypnosis | | | Energy |
| | ||
Modeling | | | Hypnosis |
Although this is a preview (dated 2004?) by Matthew Turco; this accelerated learning overview offers me a nice opportunity to combine and position tricks, creativity, NLP, Psychology and Energy work.
Any other overviews on the subject are really welcome.....
August 19, 2008
EFT as complementary Health Powertool
Tapping Techniques
About two years ago someone in my network mailed me about a book he was reading "Tapping The Healer Within" by Roger J. Callahan. In this book Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is introduced as healing technique which uses tapping on specific (meridian) points on the body. When I was investigating this TFT therapy online I came across another 'tapping' therapy named EFT which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques developed by Gary Graig. The EFT technique is based on the TFT-techniques but is easier and does not use diagnosis. Instead it has a basic tapping routine which is like a total overhaul which can be used for all possible issues. You start by giving your issue a SUD score from 0 to 10 (10 being very strong feelings or emotions) normally after a round or 2 of tapping you have a much lower SUD score on this specific issue or it could even be gone forever.
EFT is a psychological version of acupuncture, EFT is a simple tapping procedure that gently realigns the body’s energy system, without the discomfort of needles.
The EFT Discovery Statement (premise):
About two years ago someone in my network mailed me about a book he was reading "Tapping The Healer Within" by Roger J. Callahan. In this book Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is introduced as healing technique which uses tapping on specific (meridian) points on the body. When I was investigating this TFT therapy online I came across another 'tapping' therapy named EFT which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques developed by Gary Graig. The EFT technique is based on the TFT-techniques but is easier and does not use diagnosis. Instead it has a basic tapping routine which is like a total overhaul which can be used for all possible issues. You start by giving your issue a SUD score from 0 to 10 (10 being very strong feelings or emotions) normally after a round or 2 of tapping you have a much lower SUD score on this specific issue or it could even be gone forever.
From the emofree.com FAQ:
What is EFT?[How does EFT differ from Thought Field Therapy (TFT)?]
TFT uses similar principles as EFT but asks the student to learn 10 or 15 different tapping routines (called algorithms), each of which is designed to cover a specific issue such as trauma, phobias, depression, etc . Anything not covered by those individual routines (e.g. insomnia, TMJ, dyslexia, etc.) requires a diagnostic process. EFT, by contrast, uses only one comprehensive tapping routine to cover all issues (not just 10 or 15) and doesn't require diagnosis.
EFT is a psychological version of acupuncture, EFT is a simple tapping procedure that gently realigns the body’s energy system, without the discomfort of needles.
The EFT Discovery Statement (premise):
"The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system."
And because our physical pains and diseases often appear to be connected with our emotions the following statement has also shown merit...
This common sense approach draws its power from (1) time-honored Eastern discoveries that have been around for over 5,000 years and (2) Albert Einstein, who told us back in the 1920's that everything (including our bodies) is composed of energy. These ideas have been largely ignored by Western Healing Practices and that is why EFT can work where nothing else does."Our unresolved negative emotions are major contributors to most physical pains and diseases."
EFT has a very large community and has lots of cases and information available on the website and in the newsletter. The EFT Manual can be downloaded for Free and you can get started immediately. If you are autodidact like me, you can order one or more DVD sets from seminars and live sessions to learn and even become an EFT professional yourself.
You can use EFT as a complementary technique in your practice (Coach, teacher, health-professional). EFT can be applied to just about anything which is also encouraged.
I haven't seen a therapy yet which has such profound and powerful results so quickly.
Why am I convinced about the integrity and positive intentions of Gary Graig? First, the manual is free, and the DVD-sets are very cheap [see EFT Store], especially if you buy more sets. Also, you are allowed to copy and give it away to 100 people.
What really convinced me is that even coaches (like Carol Ann Rowland from ZenSight) who developed their own therapy or intervention style still acknowledge the value of EFT. EFT is highly recommended for personal and professional use. Since this has a lot of potential I'm sure we will see and hear a lot more from these emotional freedom techniques.
In the meantime I have studied most of the EFT series DVD's (it takes some discipline and a long time watching) and I practiced the techniques a lot. Now it feels much more comfortable using and sharing EFT with others. The only remarkable thing is that I fall back to English (instead of Dutch) for the Basic affirmation: 'Even Though I have this [...] I deeply and completely accept myself'.
I am planning to make a compilation DVD with EFT material to watch and learn the basics.
Fortunately even with only 'the basic EFT recipe' most people get results. Just contact me if you have a specific issue you want solved with EFT; EFT can work even if I talk you through it over the phone or with Skype. Great tool for anybody. [Toine Fennis]
August 14, 2008
Libraries and our information society
Libraries are the cornerstones of our information society. It is very important to have accessible independent information resources available to preserve our knowledge. National Libraries like the Dutch Koninklijke Bibiotheek have an important task in the long-term preservation of national cultural heritage. Internationally (for English-oriented resources) does the the US Library of Congress have a good record; for example the facts for 2007:
Holdings
3,5 million items = more than 68 km of library materials, including 49 km of books (2.5 million), 18 km of periodicals (including 15,000 current periodicals) and more than 1 km of microforms
Acquisition
The deposit collection grows by an average of 40,000 books and 120.000 electronic publications annually. The research collection grows by an average of 19,000 items annually
Special collections
The KB also houses some 30 special collections including: medieval and modern manuscripts, old and rare books, pamphlets, book bindings, marbled papers and books on the history of paper, chess- and draughts, newspapers, cookery books and children's books
Personally I have always had a thing with libraries and bookstores. The wealth of potential information is immense. Knowledge and wisdom stored in all those books and media.
The last 10-15 years Internet has been filled (or better: connected to webservers) with websites containing documents, pages and data from several sources including unreliable ones. The need to find good reliable information becomes higher and higher. Truth and reality becomes popularized and personalized in Blogs as Truthiness ("the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination.") and Wikiality ("together we can create a reality that we all agree on — the reality we just agreed on."). See more discussion about the Truth on Internet in the VPRO documentary Wiki's Waarheid (Dutch subtitles).
Besides the trustworthiness issues, strictly speaking, searchengines like Google and Yahoo have taken over the initial information exploration function of conventional libraries and may as such be considered a fully digitized library. In this new situation does not the content itself, but the way this content (within a automatically interpreted context) is linked, indexed and categorized defines how it shows up in search results.
Google also made an effort to scan, OCR and index books from libraries to make full text search possible, this is what conventional libraries until recently couldn't do. This service is called Google Book Search. An extension of that is starting your own Google library.
I already have a selection of my library online as an exported list: Toine Fennis Bookcollection with currently 521 books. I just looked into importing my library into My Google Booklibrary [my example] to enhance searching possibilities within my books which gives many benefits for research.
From the 521 books on my list, 51 were not recognized, so I guess it is safe to say roughly 10% gets lost. This might be due to the fact that a large part of the list is in Dutch but since I can find the info elsewhere on the Internet through library catalog's and my catalog software MyGoogle Library still needs some tweaking.
I made my initial booklist with Collectorz.com Bookcollector Pro which supports the Flic barcode-reader (now sold as ROV) and other barcodereaders, to scan the ISBN on the back of most books. The program automatically searches in online libraries and bookstores and downloads most meta-data including the cover (if you use Amazon as a source). I did have to classify the Categories and Subjects from most books, it would be nice to also have the UDC or other classification or subject oriented keywords (automated) added to these books.
Since information becomes more and more important in our network-economy, online libraries (and of course searchengines) will become our guides in finding reliable data and resources. For the future innovation is to be expected as full-text searching and content-analyzing within books becomes available through services like Google Book Search. Optimizing connections between databases of conventional libraries with loads of meta-data stored and search-engines will not take long. New Internet applications including community created content is to be expected for searching and finding books and documents. Personal reviews, ranking and keywords combined with Web 2.0 namely Tagclouds, semantic webs, and shared booklists within a community setting including data mining (find similar books, related books, and booksuggestions) will become common practice.
Online Bookshelf's
On the low end you will have pure commercial initiatives like Shelfari* which has some nice Gadget-plugins with Networking sites like Hyves with a business model based on Google Ads and Amazon affiliate sales. Shelfari only imported 226 of 521 books, = 43% from my original booklist (due to the fact they only use Amazon [upd. aug. 28 2008 Shelfari was acquired by Amazon] ). Other online bookshelf's are Goodreads.com with only 214 books imported in my Goodreads library (sorry, this is not good enough). I got pleasantly surprized by aNobii.com with 451 imported books [see My Collection] (same number as Google!?). aNobii is more community oriented and does good suggestions about new books to investigate, it is also about what books you are reading at the moment.
On the high-end (very promising) you have Librarything.com which imported 471 books [my Librarything booklist]. Librarything is free till 200 books or membership based; I bought myself a lifetime membership for $25. Librarything is really about the love of books and libraries and it shows: lots of community features like comparing booklists, interestgroups, and lots of external connectivity. There is even a keyword tagmirror based on keywords others gave to the books in my list (it's like a 360 degrees keyword feedback based on my booklist). In the near future I would like to see a combination / connection of the features seen in MyGoogle Library, Google Book Search and of course Librarything, if the full-text search and keyword features of these online library webservices synergize this would make my research library heaven....
Finally some general resources about libraries for librarians or information professionals:
Total of 138,313,427 items in the collections, including:
- 20,854,810 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system
- 11,478,022 books in large type and raised characters, incunabula (books printed before 1501), monographs and serials, music, bound newspapers, pamphlets, technical reports, and other printed material
- 105,980,595 items in the nonclassified (special) collections. These included:
- 2,955,493 audio materials, such as discs, tapes, talking books, and other recorded formats
- 61,432,879 total manuscripts
- 5,317,279 maps
- 14,833,797 microforms
- 5,517,882 pieces of sheet music
- 14,364,982 visual materials, including:
- 1,204,781 moving images
- 12,520,442 photographs
- 92,960 posters
- 544,142 prints and drawings
Holdings
3,5 million items = more than 68 km of library materials, including 49 km of books (2.5 million), 18 km of periodicals (including 15,000 current periodicals) and more than 1 km of microforms
Acquisition
The deposit collection grows by an average of 40,000 books and 120.000 electronic publications annually. The research collection grows by an average of 19,000 items annually
Special collections
The KB also houses some 30 special collections including: medieval and modern manuscripts, old and rare books, pamphlets, book bindings, marbled papers and books on the history of paper, chess- and draughts, newspapers, cookery books and children's books
Personally I have always had a thing with libraries and bookstores. The wealth of potential information is immense. Knowledge and wisdom stored in all those books and media.
The last 10-15 years Internet has been filled (or better: connected to webservers) with websites containing documents, pages and data from several sources including unreliable ones. The need to find good reliable information becomes higher and higher. Truth and reality becomes popularized and personalized in Blogs as Truthiness ("the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination.") and Wikiality ("together we can create a reality that we all agree on — the reality we just agreed on."). See more discussion about the Truth on Internet in the VPRO documentary Wiki's Waarheid (Dutch subtitles).
Besides the trustworthiness issues, strictly speaking, searchengines like Google and Yahoo have taken over the initial information exploration function of conventional libraries and may as such be considered a fully digitized library. In this new situation does not the content itself, but the way this content (within a automatically interpreted context) is linked, indexed and categorized defines how it shows up in search results.
Google also made an effort to scan, OCR and index books from libraries to make full text search possible, this is what conventional libraries until recently couldn't do. This service is called Google Book Search. An extension of that is starting your own Google library.
I already have a selection of my library online as an exported list: Toine Fennis Bookcollection with currently 521 books. I just looked into importing my library into My Google Booklibrary [my example] to enhance searching possibilities within my books which gives many benefits for research.
From the 521 books on my list, 51 were not recognized, so I guess it is safe to say roughly 10% gets lost. This might be due to the fact that a large part of the list is in Dutch but since I can find the info elsewhere on the Internet through library catalog's and my catalog software MyGoogle Library still needs some tweaking.
I made my initial booklist with Collectorz.com Bookcollector Pro which supports the Flic barcode-reader (now sold as ROV) and other barcodereaders, to scan the ISBN on the back of most books. The program automatically searches in online libraries and bookstores and downloads most meta-data including the cover (if you use Amazon as a source). I did have to classify the Categories and Subjects from most books, it would be nice to also have the UDC or other classification or subject oriented keywords (automated) added to these books.
Since information becomes more and more important in our network-economy, online libraries (and of course searchengines) will become our guides in finding reliable data and resources. For the future innovation is to be expected as full-text searching and content-analyzing within books becomes available through services like Google Book Search. Optimizing connections between databases of conventional libraries with loads of meta-data stored and search-engines will not take long. New Internet applications including community created content is to be expected for searching and finding books and documents. Personal reviews, ranking and keywords combined with Web 2.0 namely Tagclouds, semantic webs, and shared booklists within a community setting including data mining (find similar books, related books, and booksuggestions) will become common practice.
Online Bookshelf's
On the low end you will have pure commercial initiatives like Shelfari* which has some nice Gadget-plugins with Networking sites like Hyves with a business model based on Google Ads and Amazon affiliate sales. Shelfari only imported 226 of 521 books, = 43% from my original booklist (due to the fact they only use Amazon [upd. aug. 28 2008 Shelfari was acquired by Amazon] ). Other online bookshelf's are Goodreads.com with only 214 books imported in my Goodreads library (sorry, this is not good enough). I got pleasantly surprized by aNobii.com with 451 imported books [see My Collection] (same number as Google!?). aNobii is more community oriented and does good suggestions about new books to investigate, it is also about what books you are reading at the moment.
On the high-end (very promising) you have Librarything.com which imported 471 books [my Librarything booklist]. Librarything is free till 200 books or membership based; I bought myself a lifetime membership for $25. Librarything is really about the love of books and libraries and it shows: lots of community features like comparing booklists, interestgroups, and lots of external connectivity. There is even a keyword tagmirror based on keywords others gave to the books in my list (it's like a 360 degrees keyword feedback based on my booklist). In the near future I would like to see a combination / connection of the features seen in MyGoogle Library, Google Book Search and of course Librarything, if the full-text search and keyword features of these online library webservices synergize this would make my research library heaven....
Finally some general resources about libraries for librarians or information professionals:
- http://www.libraryspot.com/librariesonline.htm
- LibWeb Library Servers through WWW http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/
- over 30.000 Free Books http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
- Resources about Library http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum45.00.00/
- The European Library Portal http://search.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/en/index.html
August 13, 2008
Improve Social Intelligence and Relations
Individual
The quality of your relationships is the quality of your life. This advice is primarily meant for you and the relationship with your Significant Other (SO).
- You get into a relationship to give something rather than to go to get something out.
Empowering Question: How can I give more to this relationship? - Avoid anchoring your negative emotions to the people you are with
- Keep arguments / discussions short and resolve them as soon as possible
- Be playful and adventurous in the growth of your relationship
- Show you love and care in the way that fits the need of the person involved. How does this person know someone loves them? Say it, show it, touch in a specific way. (find out the primary representation system) How do you know you are most loved by me? Is is absolutely necessary that I show you that I love you by buying you thing, taking you places or looking a certain way? (visual) Is is absolutely necessary that I say it (auditory) Is it absolutely necessary that I touch you in a certain way (kinesthetic)
- Create key-moments that are fun or special
- Enjoy where you are right now, do not fear the (possible) end. Act as if the relationship is going to last forever. Mutual commitment is the identity of every lasting relationship.
Identify exactly what you want in a relationship and what you don't want.
What do you want your relationship to be about?
What unique things can you do to enhance the relationship?
Resolving Conflicts
International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict Many problemcategories and reflections on several wordwide conflicts.
Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA.
General Social Problems
SIMPOS: Netherlands foundation for information on social problems and occult tendencies. A somewhat critical view on social themes related to New Age, religious cults, etc.
Although it may seem contradictory to refer to critics about information I presented earlier in articles and books but I feel it is your personal responsibility to be fully informed about people, systems and methods presented on MetaMagazine. Just keep an open (positive) mind...
[Toine Fennis]
Information problem-solving
Successful information problem-solving encompasses six stages with two sub-stages under each:
1. Task Definition
1.1 Define the information problem
1.2 Identify information needed in order to complete the task (to solve the information problem)
2. Information Seeking Strategies
2.1 Determine the range of possible sources (brainstorm)
2.2 Evaluate the different possible sources to determine priorities (select the best sources)
3. Location and Access
3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)
3.2 Find information within sources
4. Use of Information
4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch) the information in a source
4.2 Extract relevant information from a source
5. Synthesis
5.1 Organize information from multiple sources
5.2 Present the information
6. Evaluation
6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)
6.2 Judge the information problem-solving process (efficiency)
This method is used by Big6™ to teach information literacy in schools.
Applied to Information Literacy: [Virtual Library Source]
1. Defining your problem and asking the good questions
Remember: Try to make the most out of any research problem. The better your question, the more you will learn. For more information about defining a problem and asking good questions, read http://www.joycevalenza.com/questions.html and Dr. Jamie McKenzie's Questioning.org | |
2. Information seeking strategies?
Follow these links more information on searching and appropriate internet search tools and our catalog and licensed databases. | |
3. Selecting and evaluating your resources
| |
4. Organizing and restructuring information
| |
5. Communicating the results of your research
| |
6. Evaluating your work
|
MetaMagazine Reading Instruction
| Exploration and context | |
| The way these texts and pages of my research-process are presented are more or less a logical construction of following thoughts which may help to understand it better. Your personal way of reading or the hyper textual (non-linear) order might be totally different. Feel free to do so. When you read a text or notice a concept that interests or triggers you, you associate that with your previous experiences. Wandering off in your mind and creatively combining new thoughts creating knowledge, or the eureka-experiences as I like to call them. These pages are intentionally multipurpose: to explain concepts, to share experience and especially to inspire and motivate you in finding your life's goal. What you do in the context could be a personal way of doing research. For example: I usually play some background music or listen to the radio, eat some fruit, or drink some tea. While reading books I sometimes burn flavored candles or incense. When I see a specific word or concept I think is worth looking at I write it down and frequently look for other references through search-engines on the Internet (in a different browser-window) or I might check a dictionary or encyclopedia. This is a personal context-example for doing research which works for me. Just a comfortable chair might be your necessary context-condition for learning. Use and experiment or at least pay attention to context conditions as long as your senses and curiosity are satisfied.... | |
| Tools & Sources for exploration | |
| Life lessons are learned by practice; any mistake you make (or action you classify as mistake) is an opportunity to learn and change habits or behaviors. Sometimes just looking at a situation or position from a different perspective is revealing. Several (science- & labor-) disciplines have techniques for analyzing and solving practical problems. Most disciplines use the conventional systematic approach but creativity- and conceptual solution techniques can also be very resourceful, especially for visualizing unwanted or hidden patterns. The interaction and communication with others makes it possible to reflect upon personal beliefs through dialogues. The pure content of multi-reflected dialogues (sometimes over several generations) and multi-reflected visions results in the form of wisdom-concepts and 'general' rules for life. | |
| Research Procedure | |
| I started my research with the origin of knowledge. With a philosophical basis researching several subjects: - Education (Learning, E-learning, Open Source education, Information and Communication Technology & higher education) - Development of a vision - Spiritual paths - Classification systems - Problem-Solving (Models, Techniques, Training & Workshops) - Communication The thing most texts have in common is that it is related to empowerment, growth and balance within areas of life. Although some pages are more theoretical and knowledge oriented, I try to keep focused on adding value to you, the reader. Please make suggestions on how to improve this site or give me personal feedback by mail: toine (at) metamagazine.com [NB. Most articles on this blog were originally published in 2001-2002 on MetaMagazine.com] | |
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