Inside View

My AI Says My Workflow Starts with My Notes

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

I'VE STARTED MOST MORNINGS with prompts to my favourite AI. Today I asked Mem.ai to guide me in a process that ensured the results of my questions would include trustworthy evidence from high quality sources. Its first set of answers drilled down into my personal knowledge management (PKM) system.

What if the King could just turn a wheel

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

WHILE CHATTING WITH Larry Maguire, he scrolled back before the Industrial Revolution and asked a thought-provoking question, "What would it mean for humanity if the King of England could just sit on his throne and turn a wheel to produce whatever he needs for his kingdom?" I thought of the time I walked the crypt of Canterbury (above) where I snapped a shot of a window that appears to be a representation of cogs on a wheel.

Factoring AI into UX Design

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

After one semester of integrating AI into my daily lab sessions, I can assuredly say AI has made a profound impact on the way our UX designers work. Leveraged purposefully, AI enhances creativity, improves personalisation, and trims workflows. As I review my early 2023 teaching practice, I want to offer a few observations about using AI while teaching creative media students in a university setting.

Aiding Accessibility and Inclusivity

Without even coming close to ChatGPT, people can take some simple steps to ensure their use of AI can enhance accessibility. It starts with reviewing the alt-text tags that Microsoft generates inside programs such as Word and PowerPoint. Microsoft's AI technology tries to make digital experiences more inclusive by automatically creating text descriptions of images. The content creators should review that AI-generated content. To be truly accessible, web sites should have alt-text for images that are optimised for screen readers. This is happening behind the scenes already which means AI contributes to a more inclusive design approach. I'm a big fan of adding meta data to online folders and directories because those ReadMe files help me locate locations of files I've saved since the 90s. I've discovered the Markdown files I'm adding to OneDrive and Google Drive locations help me locate information faster when I ask the respective mobile apps questions by using my mobile phone.

Back into Notion h/t @redgregory1

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

I'VE RESTARTED  my daily flow with Notion as part of my Personal Knowledge Management, spurred on by Larry G. Maguire and helped massively by Sarah Brennan's excellent YouTube tutorials. I'm writing this blog post to remind myself I owe RedGregory at least five coffees because of her free templates and excellent online teaching style.

Learning How to Read Better

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel, Ireland

MY TEENAGED DAUGHTER inspires me to read more because I see her perched in the corner with a paperback nearly every evening. She is a smart person because she reads a lot.

There's something about reading that makes you smart but the smartness isn't measured by how many pages you scroll on your Kindle or how many books you buy in the shop.

Simply reading doesn't make you smart.

If you don't think about the words you've read, you don't learn from the pages you've seen.

I can clearly remember the name of the book I've read most recently. It was Tom Crean The Brave Explorer. I read the book with my primary school son. Unfortunately, besides remembering where Tom Crean grew up in Ireland, I don't remember the specifics about his role in exploring Antarctica, a place I supported as a C-141 pilot. (Photo below was taken in Greenland, another cold part of my flying experience.

I've looked into what smart people do when they read. They think about what the author is saying. They take time to reimagine sections of the books they've just read. This is an important process because when you're reading, you're just following the narrative set by the author. You're letting the author offer a mental map but you often don't know where the map is taking you.

At least that's what I think is happening when I'm just flipping pages and scrollling text. I believe to read better you need to read actively.

Highlight as you read

I highlight parts of paragraphs that resonate with me. Sometimes those sections are items that cause me to think. Other times, the highlights are sections I need to remember for classes I teach. I see my daughter highlighting parts of her school books and then using those highlights as points of reference. My highlights often fold into Readwise where they resurface as part of a daily routine.  I get to see the highlights as part of email summaries and inside the Readwise app. I know that this mass exposure effect cannot be used in isolation because simply scannining hightlights doesn't make you more intelligent.

Annotate your highlights

I think it's important to know why you highlighted an item. For that reason, I add short notes to most of my highlights, either when initially saving them in Readwise or when I spot them inside Obsidian, my personal knowledge management system. It's very important to read why you hightlighted an item and then to review the words you wrote about the highlights. Writing in your own words (instead of copying and pasting the original text) forces you to think about ideas more thoroughly. Seeing your perspective about someone else's idea improves your thinking.

Review your highlights

I spend a lot of money on paid subscriptions, e-books, and traditional books. This could easily be money I flush away without even opening the cover of the book I bought. Most of the people I know will at least read cover notes of the books they own but they don't take notes on what they read. That's a recipe for forgetfulness because I know that I need to review my notes constantly because when they resurface, I'm often in a different place or I need additional support material provided by the notes. Reading my perspective from years ago helps me improve my perspective.

 

I hope to improve my reading because I want to develop better and enhance my insights. At this mature stage in my life, I know my notes will never be complete because I can always update and enhance them. Good notes are like green shoots that grow and cross-pollinate. But this growing process never happens if you do not regularly review notes you make from items you read.

I'm looking at a way of being able to share notes that I've made through Craft.do, a top-rated well-designed iOS app that's also on my Windows 11 Surface Book. Click here to see my shared notes about this blog post.  I treasure the ideas I've shared online. I get excellent follow-up ideas from friends who often blast me for my unformed thoughts. The thought leaders I hear on podcasts tell me that they have built their audiences and grown their opportunities by sharing ideas. And I know that oftentimes the most-discussed items aren't original thoughts because well-read people keep notes about things that have evergreen characteristics.

Now it's time for more deep reading and note-taking. And if I'm successful with this goal today, I'll crank out a Topgold Audio Clip to share what I've annotated during today's 100 page reading session.

If you're a deep reader too, let me know if you would add to these tactics that I'm using while learning to read better.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches digital transformation on the Clonmel campus of the Technological University of the Shannon.]

Moving to Obsidian

By Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

AS I RAMP UP teaching materials for a module I'm teaching about digital transformation, I've decided to migrate my Personal Knowledge Management process from Notion and Roam Research to Obsidian. I'm migrating because I believe I can teach principles of Zettelkasten and PKM with a series of hands-on tutorials that students complete with their own instances of Obsidian.

Blogging during Zoom Call #RUN_EU

by Bernie Goldbach while on a Zoom Call in Clonmel.

I REVERTED TO FORM and started blogging during the four hours I spent on a Zoom call with 113 others who expressed an interested in learning more about how to successfully apply for research funding under RUN-EU. I saved my rough notes as part of this blog post (see link below) because I think it's important to establish open and distributed nodes of communications between researchers who are scattered throughout the EU.

Lovely User Experience with Napkin

by Bernie Goldbach in Clonmel

NAPKIN IS ONE OF THE MOST visually appealing writing apps I've ever used. Its subtle awareness of content that I've saved makes simple work of creating written course material for use by my students.

Tweet Talking with @gregbd About Keeping Notes #pkm

WHILE TRYING TO follow a workflow that incorporates smart note-taking linked to a viable system of Personal Knowledge Management, I shared some thoughts with business advisor Greg Dickson in Canada.

Listen to "About Bear and Roam and Notion E584 #pkm" on Spreaker.