Dealing with the Data Dump.My colleague Geannie Wells carries the most unlikely of job titles here at AASA AASA American Association of School Administrators AASA Asian American Student Association AASA Association of Academies of Sciences in Asia AASA Aging and Adult Services Administration AASA Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army . She's our director of knowledge management, a moniker (1) A name, title or alias. See alias. (2) A COM object that is used to create instances of other objects. Monikers save programmers time when coding various types of COM-based functions such as linking one document to another (OLE). See COM and OLE. that's become quite common in the corporate arena but still a rather odd duckling duckling baby duck. in the world of professional associations. What is knowledge management? The most succinct definition I could find comes from the American Society for Training and Development, which says knowledge management involves "recognizing, documenting and distributing explicit and tacit knowledge The concept of tacit knowing comes from scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. It is important to understand that he wrote about a process (hence tacit knowing) and not a form of . in order to improve organizational performance Organizational performance comprises the actual output or results of an organization as measured against its intended outputs (or goals and objectives). Specialists in many fields are concerned with organizational performance including strategic planners, operations, ." Geannie's task as director of the AASA Center for Accountability Solutions is multifaceted, but much of it boils down to helping us all make better sense of the reams of data and bits of information that bombard bom·bard tr.v. bom·bard·ed, bom·bard·ing, bom·bards 1. To attack with bombs, shells, or missiles. 2. To assail persistently, as with requests. See Synonyms at attack, barrage2. 3. our desks and our brains daily. The center is working now with three dozen school districts to improve their use of student data in making decisions. Of course, we're also counting on Geannie, a former teacher and librarian and AASA's first webmaster, to figure out how the association's staff members can share what they know about members, internal processes, products and services and the competition in a free-flowing exchange of ideas to maximize organizationwide learning. Geannie and her assistant director, Michael Parker, played an important role in the planning of this issue. They also complemented the major articles this month on data-driven decision making by compiling a short list of potentially useful resources on the subject (page 10). My next request to them: Tell me how to cope with the mountains of paper creeping ever closer to my office ceiling. Jay P. Goldman Voice: 703-875-0745 E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org |
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