Why Don't You Just Tell Me What You Want to Learn?
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I can confidently say that without EME6414 I would have no exposure to the term "folksonomy". However, if you really want to understand how adults learn in the Information Age and this time of Web 2.0, things like folksonomy will be requisite in your exploration. Folksonomy, from what I gleaned from the article in week 4's reading, is the people-driven approach to gathering, classifying, and categorizing information. This at first does not sound intriguing - why do I care what another learner calls or categorizes other information? I have had this sentiment when made to create word-based diagrams for college courses. When reviewing others' work it feels like an amalgam of the same. It's governed by the source of information, right? It should look the same. What's the point?
Consider from the designer perspective. To do more than engage learners or create exciting edutainment, to get learners to retain the information, being aware of how they work together and create folksonomy becomes important. Otherwise, you could be Kramer faking being a Moviefone:
(If you are too young to remember Seinfeld, you might need the context that before the Internet in order to find out the times at our local movie theatre, we had to call an automated system...did I ruin the joke by explaining it?)
In other words, what learners call something becomes important in how the information is presented, processed, and learning assessed throughout a learning experience. If we learners have separated colors by warmth, the ROY G BIV distinction in a learning module for paint mixers might be problematic. The remedy is ultimately to understand the learner: use the discovery steps of the design process to meet and test learners.
There's an additional element that could be explored here: the DEI element of folksonomy. Who determines what the tags are in a truly democratized forum? If the designers or instructors are, are we ensuring that they are thinking through diverse lenses? The most sensitive dimension is in language: even with an assumed academic version of a spoken language, translation and non-native learners may change the landscape.
One of my favorite self-help gurus, Iyanla Vanzant, is infamous for the statement "let's call a thing a thing, people!" In folksonomy, that's important...but it can't be assumed to take place in a vacuum. How can we make the tools and the users do better in this space?
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