Traveling to Ohio this Thanksgiving gave me opportunities to muse (traffic was a mess) and interact with extended family members. Well my father-in-law just purchased a handheld GPS navigation system by Garmin that he was "showing off". Incidentally my father-in-law is 81 years of age - still has the gadget bug in him. At any rate we were playing around with it - exploring different routes and walking around where there were no roads and seeing what the readout was like.
Got me thinking about a device that would "map" my own learning and compare my "routes" with others who were wanting to arrive at a similar location. How would this unit function?
Say I want to find out more about alternative fuel options for powering automobiles? I pull out my personal learning GPS and enter the destination. Now this unit knows that I have particular learning preferences (I like to watch movies) and so it is biased toward locations with these characteristics. It also knows where I have been before and automatically makes "connections" to my explorations of wind turbines last year when I was traveling in Denmark and noting the many windmills around the country. Do some of my previous discoveries have any bearing on this new route.
Now I have some "friends" who I keep in touch with regarding their learning travels, so Sally has explored some issues with alternative energy and my GPS downloads her "route" and compares this with my travels. Where has she gone and does this give me any "stop overs" that pique my interest? I discover that she has looked into personal hovercrafts that use magnetic energy - fascinating! I decide to briefly look into this on a detour, but plan to return to other topics that include more common technologies of power cells, hybrid technologies, etc. which are more common travels for many (analogous to our Interstate road system).
I can save my learning route, share this with other friends, document this with tags, save it later (actually this is automatically done on my learning GPS system) and re-join the journey next week when I have more time.
Ok - what do you think? Does this tool have any potential for development? Again, just another musing along the way. (maybe there were too many traffic jams on the way home...)
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I think this personal GPS is already underway, only you are not operating it. Web browser home pages are personalized by you and then the advertisers track your past interest and send you e-mails or pop-ups that match your past browsings.
It would be a good idea for it to be personally controlled. Maybe then when I do a search for something I would not get 200,000 sites. But, on the down side is if I am looking for something totally new would my past tags and links limit my search?
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