This summer I have been blogging less. That’s largely because I have been reading more and also been spending more time thinking about some of my favorite topics. All of this has me more convinced than ever that we need to invest heavily in elucidating the interconnections of knowledge. Way too much of our teaching and learning occurs in highly fragmented pieces. I have written about this before but now I have an idea for what to do about it.
I want to help organize knowledge around basic concepts such as trees, waves, growth, etc. What do I mean by this? Take trees as an example. A tree is a structure that has roots, a trunk and then branches. From that basic concept one can explore knowledge in all sorts of directions. There are of course the different varieties of trees, such as deciduous and evergreen varieties. Then there are famous trees in literature such as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis. Tree related expressions in language would be covered, as in “going back to ones roots,” which link over to the use of the structure of a tree in other fields, as in a family tree. From there it is just a small step to trees as a data structure in programming.
With relatively few basic concepts like trees can cover a lot (all?) of knowledge and make its interconnections visible. I am not yet sure what the right format for this is. Maybe it is a web site of its own but it could also be a kind of overlay on the existing web possibly using a service such as Wayfinder. If anyone is aware of other efforts like this I would love to hear about them as well as any thoughts on how to best organize this.
