I follow 257 people on Twitter and am moving towards 500 tweets. Whenever I access Twitter I find a treasure trove of links and discussions. Twitter has accelerated for me the connectedness that Stephen Downes offers in his work. My access to Twitter, Stephen’s work and my aggregation of blog posts has transformed my reading, thinking and practice (CCK08 was my tipping point). Leigh Blackall’s arrival as a work colleague has added to this momentum.

It has led me to think how vicarious learning (ambient awareness) can promote reciprocal altruism.

This post is a twenty-four hour snapshot of some of the sharing that came through my personal learning environment.

On Sunday I came across a link to Tom Davenport’s post about Forwarding is the New Networking. I checked in to Twitter a little later to find Typeboard’s (1,011 tweets) link to Online Content Plagiarism at its Best.

Shortly after reading that article I came across Malinka’s (1,863 tweets) tweet about tag clouds. This post reminded me very much of Rose Holley’s observations about tag fog.

Kate Caruthers (26,180 tweets) tweeted about Social Media 2009 and Beyond. (I caught up with Steve Wheeler’s Networked Naughties too.) Shortly after following up Kate’s lead I found some tweets from Alec Courosa (32,697 tweets) about his students including Kelsi McGillivray and Bradie Mann. They demonstrate wonderful social commitments to reflection and sharing. (In the process I found their shared a Prezi.) I think Alec’s students exemplify some of the characteristics discussed by John Sener in his review (via Harold Jarche 6,792 tweets) of Disrupting Class:

individualizing instruction, situational research— as a means for building alternative systems which truly are student-centered and utilize online learning technologies, but also individualize student inputs and outcomes while enhancing the teacher’s role in the process, while utilizing rigorous and flexible assessment methods.

I noticed a link to the European Graduate School in another tweet and read carefully the disclaimer at the bottom of the front page that included:

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. Google Analytics uses cookies, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about the use of the website, including IP addresses, will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating the use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on the behalf of Google. Google will not associate IP addresses with any other data held by Google. The use of cookies can be refused by selecting the appropriate settings in the web browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Mark Drapeau (via Iggy Pintado 8956 tweets) provides some interesting insights about How to Win Friends and Twinfluence People. By coincidence I found a Graham Attwell (1.960 tweets) tweet drawing attention to Howard Rheingold’s (May 2009 post) Twitter Literacy. I have been following Howard Rheingold’s output since his guest appearance on CCK08. I liked his observations that:

• I think successful use of Twitter means knowing how to tune the network of people you follow, and how to feed the network of people who follow you.
• You have to tune who you follow. I mix friends who I know IRL (“in real life”) and whose whereabouts and doings interest me, people who are knowledgeable about a field that interests me, people who regularly produce URLs that prove useful, extraordinary educators, the few who are wise or funny.
• When it comes to feeding my network, that comes down to putting out the right mixture of personal tweets (while I don’t really talk about what I had for lunch, the cycles of my garden, the plums falling from my tree, my obsession with compost and shoepainting do feature in my tweetstream), informational tidbits (when I find really great URLs, that’s when Twitter is truly a “microblog” for me to share my find), self promotion (when I post a new video to my vlog share the URL – but I do NOT automatically post everything I blog on smartmobs.com), socializing, and answering questions.

Perhaps reciprocal altruism can transform the reliance on a small number of people to transform thinking and behaviour. George Siemens (4,016 tweets) links to this Onion post about ‘the four or five guys who pretty much carry the whole Renaissance’.

Just as I was concluding this post I received Stephen Downes’ OLDaily that contained an apology:

December 20, 2009

Better Late Than…
———————————————————————————–
Well – there’s a first. Though I wrote some posts on Friday, I actually forgot to publish the newsletter and send the emails. First time ever. So, here it is, a couple days late, but intact. Enjoy.

Stephen’s news is an important marker in my day and usually initiates the sharing that Tom Davenport extols. His news arriving was a great end to a day of thinking about learning and sharing. I am off to read Seth Simonds’ post Bye with a Warmly Huggs.

Photo Credit

Nature and Technology

Hidden Treasure Explored

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Mind-Brain Compass: Stress, Flood, Flow,
originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

Visualization is the art & science of making complex ideas easy to understand through visuals.

It is a design technique that is woefully underutilized on many websites but an area that I expect to grow in the future.

Here are my favorite visualization tools in 2009.

1.  Facebook’s Touchgraph Photo

This Facebook application allows me to see how my friends are interconnected.

In this photo, I’ve highlight my twin sister who is the most connected, of course, to the rest of my friend network.  The various colours represent different networks which on my map tends to be geography or former place of work.

While interesting, I haven’t found this much use in business life.  I can’t seem to apply this to Facebook corporate fan pages where it would be very interesting to have a tool to visually show which

READ MORE… Do go on.. there are five more excellent visualizations or sources that you should know about – the best for last.

Laurie Dillon-Schalk’s author note:

I apologize for the above redirect.  I’m one of 25 people chosen in the Community Marketing Blog’s international blogging contest.  And though I’ve never blogged as a competitive sport, I am excited at what I can learn through this experience.   If you like the above article – please comment in the final posting on the Community Marketing Blog!  Thank you!

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Honoré Jaxon,
originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

A Rhizomic Portrait through a Snapshot of Customized Folksonomy

Flickr. 2006-09 to 2009-11 . All Tags http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceanflynn/alltags/

Delicious Social Bookmarking service, post, tag, share and search and retrieve bookmarks online All Tags Sorted by Size

Adobe Photoshop

speechless 2006-10 through 2009-11

I am very proud of my TweetCloud!  I think it shows that I speak to and about good people, I am positive and student oriented.

But it’s not very focused .. so I am going to work on that.  No words are particularly large except thanks … Obviously I am not afraid to scream out for help! =) And I get it – so I am thankful for that!

This blog is intended to reflect the interests of the Delaware/Montgomery County (PA) Progressive Democrats of America and Main Line Peace Action.  Your comments, which are most welcome, can be posted on the blog directly, or you can contact the two people who do the posting:  Jane Dugdale, 610-527-4170, tjdugdale@Verizon.net,  or Walter Ebmeyer, 610-491-9549, ebmeyer6w@comcast.net.

Archives, a list of recent posts, and tag clouds to help you find your way around the blog are to your right.

A common strategy used by politicians is to subvert debates by simply claiming that their opponents’ world-views are based on ideology or utopia. Karl Mannheim (1929-31 [1997]) hoped to transcend the confusion and irrationality of empty arguments that he claims led to the crisis of mutual distrust, political poisoning and organized disorientation in Weimar Germany. He developed a Sociology of Knowledge to explore what was being done in the name of knowledge in political debates. Paul Krugman seems to be exploring similar themes in his New York Times Op-Ed article entitled “Paranoia Strikes Deep.”

“In its Mannheimian form, the concept of ideology juxtaposed situationally-contingent knowledge with situationally non-contingent knowledge. Where, if at all, that boundary could be drawn has been the subject of an ongoing debate within the discipline Karl Mannheim founded when he wrote Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (1929-31). The startling and subversive claim of his position was that knowledge has a sociology, that is, it is socially located and therefore contingent (pp. xxiii, 36,68-9, 185, 269). This undermined the notion that knowledge could be like natural science was supposed to be: neutral, objective, above the contending forces in society and culture. In the end, Mannheim believed that the sociologist of knowledge could find an interest-free vantage point. He adopted a position of ‘relationalism’ which eschewed the toughest epistemological questions (pp. 70, 71, 77, 166, 253). (cited in Young, Robert Cyborgs)”

“Mannheim developed his sociology of knowledge in a series of writings culminating in Ideology and Utopia, (1929, 1997) a volume of connected essays first published in Germany in 1929 (Mannheim 1929, 1936a). Through his sociology of knowledge, Mannheim attempts a social-scientific way of encountering and partly transcending the irrational elements in all thought bearing on social constitution. The hidden integrative force of such elements in structures of thinking, he argues, is evident from the disorientation effected by political strategies that expose the world-views of opponents as nothing but ideologies or utopias. While this subversive insight was first loosed on the political world by Marxism, it soon became common property among all parties in Weimar Germany, according to Mannheim, generating a crisis of mutual distrust and poisoning political processes dependent on self-confident reflection, inquiry, debate, and settlements that could be defended in public. The sociology of knowledge promises to break through the impasse by fostering among the parties a realistic assessment of the social situation common to all, paradoxically beginning with a sociological neutralization of the insight into ideology and utopia. If sociology can disinterestedly show how contrasting styles of practical social knowledge are without exception grounded in unacknowledged wishes derived from diverse social locations, the common consciousness among politically active strata about this piece of highly interesting theoretical social knowledge-itself based on a commitment to synthesis sociologically imputable to the intelligentsia as stratum-can gradually expand to grasp the wider social diagnosis that it implies. Universal awareness of ideology and utopia would undergo a decisive change in function, from a paralyzing political poison to organon for a knowledge-oriented but not conflict-free politics (Kettler).”

Keywords: Karl Mannheim, Robert Young, Marxism, liberalism:crisis of, ideology, utopia, world-views, sociology, consciousness, mutual distrust, Weimar Germany, transparent public inquiry, transparent public debate, political strategies, social constitution, social cohesion, situationally-contingent knowledge, situationally non-contingent knowledge, Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, SSK, Sociology:Knowledge, society and culture, knowledge and power, power and everyday life,

Webliography and Bibliography

Kettler, David. Karl Mannheim and the crisis of liberalism: the secret of these new times.

Krugman, Paul. 2009-11-9. “Paranoia Strikes Deep.” New York Times.

Young, Robert. Cyborgs

http://wp.me/p1TTs-j3

A folksonomy is the combination of the words “folk” (person) and “taxonomy” (organizing). Hence, the definition of folksonomy is generated from its direct meaning; an individual can categorize online content by creating labels called tags making it easier to retrieve information. It was created by Thomas Vander Wal, whose objective was to make the process of retrieving personal information less time consuming. Tag clouds are most often used to classify folksonomy. Tag clouds are often categorized by the most popular searches. In addition, folksonomy eliminates hierarchy and creates a flat system; it consists of terms that are related. For example, when a person wants to search for information related to a topic of their interest, they would type one or more words which relate to their area of focus. Through this system of clouding it is easier for that individual to find information related to that topic rather than having an overflow of information about irrelevant subject matters. Also, on a social scale folksonomy allows individuals to reflect on their needs and keeps up-to-date with things that are most frequently researched (popularity).

ocean.flynn.

This photo of Indian paintbrush, Castilleja affinis [1] was taken on June 18, 2007, just off the trail on the eastern slope of Creyke Point, East Sooke Regional Park looking out towards Campbell Cove (48°19′34.17 N, 123°37′50.38). The bright orange, showy parts of Indian paintbrush, Castilleja affinis, are actually bracts (modified leaves), with a flower inside each bract. Many members of the Orobanchaceae are photosynthetic root parasites (hemiparasites), such as Indian paintbrush. Paintbrushes Castilleja along with the rare Henderson’s checker-mallow (Sidalcea hendersonii), sweet gale (Myrica gale), sedges (Carex sp) and shooting stars (Dodecatheon sp) are among the rare plants of the tidal area of Metchosin.

Kingdom: Plantae > Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants > Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants > Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants > Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons > Subclass: Asteridae > Order: Scrophulariales > Family: Scrophulariaceae – Figwort family > Genus: Castilleja Mutis ex L. f. – Indian paintbrush > Species: Castilleja affinis Hook. & Arn. – coast Indian paintbrush > Subspecies Castilleja affinis Hook. & Arn. > ssp affinis

Notes

1. Thank you to Mark J. Egger from the Herbarium at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle for drawing my attention to my errors in classification which I have hopefully corrected. As an enthusiast – not a professional – I am always grateful to learn more about plant taxonomy.

Chuang, T. I. ; L. R. Heckard. 1991. “Generic realignment and synopsis of subtribe Castillejinae (Scrophulariaceae – Tribe Pediculareae).” Systematic Botany 16: 644–666.

Tank, David C.; Egger, J. Mark; Olmstead, Richard G. 2009. “Phylogenetic Classification of Subtribe Castillejinae (Orobanchaceae).” Systematic Botany. 34:1:182-197.

Egger, Mark J. 2009-03-13. “A New Species of Castilleja (Orobanchaceae) from Trujillo, Venezuela.” Brittonia. 61:1:44-5. Biomedical and Life Sciences. www.springerlink.com/content/n36p945m508747nl

see http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/reviewers_query?one=T&name=Mark+Egger

Mark Egger says:
This is not C. coccinea (which is not found west of the Rocky Mountains), but rather the somewhat similar west coast species, Castilleja affinis. This is the nominate form, var. affinis. C. affinis has a much longer corolla and especially corolla beak, and the secondary calyx clefts are relatively deep in C. affinis, rather than very shallow to non-existant in C. coccinea. Also, as you may have heard, Castilleja and other root-hemiparasitic Scrophs are now classified in the Orobanchaceae, based on both morphology and numerous recent molecular studies.

Genus: Castilleja; Family: Scrophulariaceae; Castilleja coccinea; bright orange; Indian paintbrush; snapdragon family; 3-lobed, scarlet tipped bracks all but hide the small 2-lipped greenish-yellow flowers;

Uploaded by ocean.flynn on 18 Jun 07, 3.17PM MDT.

C. V. (October 2009)

Wordle example of blog

I love seeing data in a Visual Data Diagrams almost as much as I love Augmented Reality.  It’s become my second biggest interest in emerging technologies lately.

Thank you IBM Research for allowing Jonathan Feinberg, the ability to reuse code he wrote on your dime to develop this awesome, fun, cool, educational application.

Try it – you too will fall in love – http://www.wordle.net/

<from the site>
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.</from the site>

It is starting to cold these days, I think winter is almost here.

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Synaptic Gasp,
originally uploaded by ocean.flynn.

I have been working on this Adobe Photoshop Image which seems to keep getting larger and larger. I first sketched out the movement I wanted using 2B Pentil on paper. I was working with several images of neural architecture as models but the movement and composition looked like dozens of images I’ve painted and drawn over the years. The I scanned the full-size image on a flat bed scanner. In Adobe Photoshop I inverted the positive/negative aspect under Image > Adjustments > Invert. Under Image>Mode I converted the image from RGB to Greyscale then to RGB again so I could adjust the colours to one I hoped would be easier to paint with. I deleted the background so I could have a transparent layer to work with. I used the Magic Wand tool to delete the spaces between neurons. (Some of this work must feel a little like users of video games where you target and delete). I like to use both the eraser, blurring and cloning tools at this stage with full ranges of Master Diameter and Hardness . I used the starry night wallpaper for the background. I tried to keep Michaelangelo out of this but I kept thinking of the layered image I made recently inspired by Charles Taylor’s response to William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience. Adam looks ridiculous on the neuron branch. I had fun with the shell turned into neuron around the image of Michaelangelo’s depiction of the Creator.
I keep making sketches of close-ups so now I am trying to imagine terminal nerve fibres entwined in neurofilament, proteins at the interface of the downstream end of neuron’s dendritic spine and an excitary synapse. I used Adobe Photoshop’s pattern tool to create the translucid cell membrane encasing the nerves along which electrical impulses flow. I am not satisifed with the detailed synaptic gap so I have started to examine more closely what goes on under the cellular membrane. The synaptic vesicle reminds me of pomegranite seed in some images so I want to play with that a little more. I continue to collect images of synapses and keep track of them on my del.icio.us and my Google customized homepage using .rss feed. I still need to use pencil and paper to understand the relationships. It is strangely relaxing. This type of layered image is never complete. As I learn more about Adobe Photoshop options I will try different tools. (Thank you by the way to the Orton Group. I haven’t tried their suggested tools on any of my work yet but I probably will at some time.)

The synaptic cleft in the human brain reminds me of the gap between the hand of God and Adam in Michaelangelo’s visualization of Creation. My mind is stuck on the image of the gap. That’s the leap of faith between that which we can know and that which is beyond our capacity to know. In the human brain this synaptic gap is so macroscopic no one has ever seen it. But there are amazing images that are somewhat like science fiction as artists attempt to compile scientific data into visualizations of what it might look like. I am not attempting to be a science illustrator. But I think somehow this image will be like a cartography of a way of thinking that resonates more with complex hyperlinkages than with the human brain.

The brain is a supersystem of systems. Each system is composed of an elaborate interconnection of small but macroscopic cortical regions and subcortical nuclei, which are made of microscopic local circuits, which are made of neurons, all of which are connected by synapses (Damasio 1994:30).

Neurons must be triggered by a stimulus to produce nerve impulses, which are waves of electrical charge moving along the nerve fibres. When the neuron receives a stimulus, the electrical charge on the inside of the cell membrane changes from negative to positive. A nerve impulse travels down the fibre to a synaptic knob at its end, triggering the release of chemicals (neurotransmitters) that cross the gap between the neuron and the target cell, stimulating a response in the target (Baggaley 2001:104).

Damasio (1994) describes the neural underpinnings of reason and challenges Cartesian dualisms of mind/body, emotions/reason. Feelings and logical thinking are not like oil and water.
The “body [. . .] represented in the brain [constitutes] an indispensable frame of reference for the neural process that we experience as the mind (Damasio 1994:xvi).”

Our bodies are the ground reference for the construction we make of the world. Our embodied selves construct the ever-present sense of subjectivity, our experience. The body becomes is the instrument through which we construct our most refined thoughts and actions (Damasio 1994:xvi).

Baggaley, Ann, Ed. (2001), “Anatomy of the Human Body,” Human Body, Dorling Kindersley Publishing: NY, p. 104.

Damasio, Antonio R., 1994, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Grosset/Putnam: New York.

Damasio, Hanna, (1994) “Gage’s skull, illustrations” in Damasio, Antonio R., 1994, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Grosset/Putnam: New York. p. 31-2.

Johnson, Graham, (2005), “The Synapse Revealed,” 23 September 2005, Science Magazine and the National Science Foundation.

The first place winner of the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge was Graham Johnson from Medical Media, Boulder, Colorado. His image is described on Science Magazine’s web page:
Deep inside the brain, a neuron prepares to transmit a signal to its target. To capture that fleeting moment, Graham Johnson based this elegant drawing on ultra-thin micrographs of sequential brain slices. After scanning a sketch into 3D modeling software, he colored the image and added texture and glowing lighting reminiscent of a scanning electron micrograph.

Uploaded by ocean.flynn on 29 Nov 2006, 9.59AM MDT.

Tag clouds were never my thing, but Jonathan Feinberg’s Wordle is a spectacular effort at making them look cool. Check it out at wordle.net - you can try inputting your RSS feed, CV, shopping list, love letter, anything will do! Here’s what this blog looks like so far:

Grilling tips and techniques for holding the best bbq ever?

Back to school time of the year. Many people are depressed at the idea, kids, teachers and everyone in general.

Another beautiful day in the computer world. With all our codes and technology.

I was playing with a new search engine tool tonight. It is called DeeperWeb Search. It has been around since May but I only came across it recently. It is free and very easy to use. I have again been into classes to discuss how to best search he web and I am always interested in tools that might help students get the most relevant information.

DeeperWeb is an innovative search engine plugin and an essential Firefox addon for Google. Start using us immediately at DeeperWeb.com or download a free search plugin and Firefox addons

This new tool can help Google users to find required information by allowing them to navigate through large numbers of web search results by employing Tag Cloud techniques (called DeeperCloud).

TagCloud techniques for improving search results include the following tabs:

 Tags: that allow you to add (or exclude) a keyword from the original query. Tag Cloud suggests keywords relevant to the search query.

I tried looking up “Cystic Fibrosis” and found it was ver useful have the different options available to narrow down my searching.

In addition to the above, DeeperWeb’s Topic-Mapping technologies help to reduce the sheer amount of information found by a search by helping to narrow down or refine the search by searching via topic and type (e.g. articles, videos, podcasts, slides, etc.). In the very easy to follow tutorial hey are called “Zoomies” and they act like mini search engines.

The options for searching include:

• Answers: Selected resources of “questions and answers”, support discussions and social forums. providing search results to a realm of questions and answers.
•  Blog: Offers current articles in the Blogosphere relevant to the search query.
• Metrics: Good if you are searching for relevant results with facts, statistics, percentages, market share, data, tables and graphs.
• Wikipedia: Provides users immediate access to relevant Wikipedia results.  
• Resources: For current (and relevant) articles, business articles, recent white papers, research studies or magazine articles.
• News: Latest relevant news articles 

It is certainly worth having a look and I think it will be another tool I will be recommending to some of the students I work with.

(Note: This post, originally uploaded last August, has proven to be among the most visited of all content on Write Livelihood. Hope you enjoy the re-post. –Liz)

I read the interview anthology The New New Journalism a couple of years ago, and one of the many things that struck me while reading it was how consistently the writers interviewed for the book said they didn’t use an “outline” when organizing the mass of material to write long-form narrative nonfiction. Just as consistently, immediately after that declaration, the writer would describe how they DID organize the material—which was frequently a list of topics, high points in the material, turning points in their pursuit of the story—and their approach would basically be an outline in everything but name.

That’s what reminded me how much most of us, writers included, hate our 8^th grade English teachers. In the pursuit of teaching us how to write the perfect five-paragraph theme, he or she was often the one who introduced us to the “outline”—that Roman numeral bit of antiquity that works a whole lot better after the piece is finished than while we’re trying to organize it. (I remember learning how to do an outline by studying the structure of finished writings, most often by professional writers, which just seems to buttress my point.)

So outlines are rarely the tool of choice when organizing material, but there are alternatives to a) making a list (and obsessing over it way more than twice) or b) just plunging into writing without structuring the material, which is a little like trying to do a do-it-yourself home improvement project without measuring anything.

I’ve found 3 structuring techniques that go beyond the humble list method, give your writing a visual boost, and can even prepare your finished piece for a world beyond print.

Tool #1: The Mind Map

Popularized by Tony Buzan, mind-mapping has spawned a cottage industry of software that will take your thoughts and provide a visual display of relationships between ideas and where the linkages are. It’s sort of like a 3-D list.

Mind mapping in action (image courtesy SXC).

Here’s a link on Tony’s site to a mind-map of a concept from a book by Edward De Bono, Six Thinking Hats.

And here’s a very interesting Flash-based instructional mind-map on how to use mind maps to write an essay.

A related type of mapping is Idea Mapping, based on a book of the same name by Jamie Nast. Her blog has great examples of conceptual maps from a variety of contexts, including maps of books.

The greatest advantage of mind-mapping a nonfiction story is that it makes the whole process less linear, and helps you see multiple relationships between topics and sub-topics in your story. As an editor, I often mind-map as I brainstorm story assignments for my writers; as a writer, it’s been an interesting way to supplement the “list method” of organizing my stories.

Tool #2: Storyboarding

I heard the wonderful journalism instructor Jacqui Banaszynski lecture three years ago at an editor’s conference, and she asserted that the generation coming of age write now has a far more visual, cinematic imagination. She reported that her college students at Mizzou have responded well when she asked them to plot out their nonfiction stories by conceiving each element in a narrative as a “scene.”

Taking that concept one step further is using storyboards to structure one’s writing. Borrowed from the world of filmmaking, storyboards force you to do several things with your writing:

¨ You have to determine a story arc to your material

¨ You have to be explicit about what point of view you are using in your writing, and how and why you shift it during the story

¨ You need to conceive of anecdotes or reportage as scenes, with a beginning, middle and end, that serve to drive the larger story forward

¨ You have to pay attention to the visual and kinesthetic elements of the scenes you are recounting

As one might expect, fiction writers have discovered how useful storyboarding is to their writing. For nonfiction writers, storyboards can help keep a large “cast of characters” organized, reveal gaps in information, uncover points where lesser storylines threaten to derail the main thrust of your article or book, and provide an easy at-a-glance reference for a long manuscript.

This newsletter article from a romance writers group discusses several ways to create a storyboard for a written piece. Lightning Bug’s article on storyboarding is also good, especially because it demonstrates how simple the pictures can be and still be effective. Frankly, spending time creating beautiful graphics isn’t the point—if you can understand what you sketched later, that’s enough!

Tool #3: Wordle/Tag Clouds

One last tool that can help you see patterns in your research is the concept of the tag cloud, which provides a visual representation of the frequency of words or topics in a given piece of writing. Popularized by blogs, tag clouds can be an aid to a user’s search of a site—if a tag that matches their search is big enough, they may be enticed deeper into an online site.

For those of you unfamiliar with tag clouds, here’s one from my delicious.com feed.

A tag cloud on the social bookmarking site Delicious.

Wordle is another interesting tool for finding patterns or repeating elements in your writing. It creates word clouds that look and function much the same as tag clouds.

Here’s an image via Wordle that was created from a newsletter article I wrote a while back about persistence and creativity.

Wordle tag cloud

My suggestion for using Wordle to structure your story is to do a free-form brain dump on your material, up to 500 words long, then drop the piece into Wordle and see what patterns emerge.