Learning and PKM

Jeremy Hiebert found an interesting article about learning and personal "stuff" management.  Can personal digital knowledge artefacts' management and social networks enhance learning? by Riina Vuorikari:

This paper examines the use and management of personal digital artefacts as a possible enabler to create social networks for learning. The emergence of social networking applications for managing and sharing digital artefacts on-line from URL bookmarks to Web-feeds has facilitated the creation of social networks. This paper suggests that these tools could be used for education, and similar tools could become features of e-learning applications. The paper proposes that e-portfolios could become a suitable hub for integrating such tools for educational use. It will be argued that through sharing one's digital knowledge artefacts with other learners one not only brings on-line learning in a social context that it is sometimes missing, but also allows new paths of learning with peers to emerge.

The focus is education and learning, obviously.  It's interesting that they are taking the view of how personal knowledge management can aid the learning process.  When PKM is taken as both the management of stuff and the introspection about how the tools serve my needs, there is a world of opportunity for me to learn how I go about my work.  Add to this the various "social" tools and the extension of my toolbox out to others, and I get to see how others think and operate as well.