Monday, January 16, 2006

RTI and cognitive assessment EWOK

I'm trying an experiment in knowledge development and sharing.

I'm currently working on a literature review (for a journal article) related to the role of cognitive assessment in RTI (response to intervention) special education assessment models. As a known Gv guy (aka Dr. Gv), I make frequent use of a mind map program called Mind Manager (from Mind Jet). It is a great tool for storing notes, copies of articles, etc,. in a visual map. Then, as I continue to read I rearrange the map as my thinking evolves.

Given the recent interest in RTI and the role of cognitive assessment, and given my interest is ascertaining if people would find dissemination of information via web-based maps (what I am calling EWOKS - Evolving Webs of Knowledge :) ), I thought I'd post my current working notes for people to view. This accomplishes two goals.

1. Sharing the literature (on this important topic) I've located to date.
2. Demonstrating how this information dissemination strategy mechanism works....and to see if folks might find it useful as a means to build living and breathing EWOKs on topics.

Take a peak at this URL.

[Note to fellow Gv folks....click on the "overview map" link if you want to see the entire visual map]

Be gentle...all I've done is cut and past text from various PDF copies of articles into branch nodes. I've made no attempt to format anything to look pretty. I've not yet started the step of taking the notes and starting to write. I'm not done with my literature acquisition and
review. The cut-paste notes (with some bolding for me to think about) are presented "as is." This is NOT any kind of finished web product...it is just an attempt to present something "in process".......these are my working notes.

What is really cool (re: this product as a tool for writing and dissemination) is that once you save it in web format and upload via an ftp program, all the links work....and the links to the original articles, if they are also uploaded, are active.......so folks can click on the links and view the articles themselves.

Enough geek self-revelation for now. I'd be interested in feedback regarding the perceived value of EWOKS (much more polished, of course). Remember that the concept would be for special topic EWOKs to be constantly updated, revised, extended, etc.

A nicer example (without the pdf article links) can be found at this link.

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2 comments:

Chris Tregenza said...

The EWOKS are an interesting concept and I like the positive spin 'Evolving' implies . (As an aside, is EWOKS a deliberate Star Wars reference [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewok ]?). I'm very keen at the moment on Wiki's as a way to organise and share knowledge. If you are not familiar with Wiki's check out the Wikipedia link above for an example or this link for more background [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia].

What I like about mindmaps is the big picture / overview it gives (Gv?). This preference for visual intelligence is something that I've become more conscious of since my dyslexia treatment. Is there any evidence to suggest that Gv is a function of a more mature or developed brain? Or are individual preferences for visual or kinetic learning effectively randomly distributed amoungst the population?

Anonymous said...

I love the overview map!