Knowledge Management in Education

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all who gave their support throughout the process of writing this Seminar paper. I would also like to thank my beloved lovely wife Edith Lisalitsa and my son Macdonald Lisalitsa for giving me humble time to concentrate in preparing this Seminar paper. I would also wish to thank my classmates and session mates for their support. Special thanks, goes to my supervisor Mr. Abanti Cyrus Makori for his underlying support, patience, intellectual support and guidance.Most of all I thank the Almighty God for sustaining me through this process and giving me good health, sound mind and strength to carry on. INTEGRATING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN IMPROVING QUALITY OF EDUCATION IN TECHNICAL INSTITUTIONS By:Lisalitsa Fred Ambutsi E-mail: [email  protected] com or [email  protected] com Abstract. The new trends of use of knowledge management system in business organization have incr eased the need to integrate the knowledge management system in higher education sector.The current means used in technical institution in knowledge management is based on the experts in various fields. The creation and transmitting is through face to face interactions, mentoring, organization, and policies, routes and procedures, reports and staff development. This method does not conserve knowledge, does not allow standardization, neither does it allow uniform and maximum sharing of knowledge. Knowledge management system can be integrated in technical education in order to improve management and its utilization.Knowledge management system provides tools for capturing, organization, delivery, tracking and assessment of various types of learning and training. The knowledge management allows improved service capability of lecturers and students improve sharing of internal and external information and improved effectiveness and efficiency. The objectives of the seminar paper are: 1. To apply knowledge management system in teaching at technical institution level. 2. To examine the ways of capturing and sorting knowledge for utilization in technical institution. 3.To investigate IT support of knowledge management system and how it can be used in technical Education. 4. To investigate challenges technical institution are facing Key words Knowledge, Integrating, Systems, learning. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATIONI DECLARATIONII ACKNOWLEDGMENTIII 1. 1 IMPORTANT DIMENSION OF KNOWLEDGE2 2. CAPTURING AND SORTING KNOWLEDGE2 2. 1 STEPS IN KNOWLEDGE GATHERING3 3. SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGIES6 4. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE WORKS6 5. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS7 6. KNOWLEDGE BASED SYSTEMS8 7. BENEFITS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS9 CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS12 9. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE13 10. INTERNET AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT14 11. CONCLUSION17 REFERENCES18 1. .INTRODUCTION Oz et al (2006) defines knowledge management as the combination of activities involved in gathering, organizing, sharing, analyzing and disseminating knowledge to improve an organization performance. Information that can be gleaned from stored data is knowledge, much knowledge is accumulated through experience is in peoples minds, on paper notes, on discussion transcripts.Knowledge management is the attempt by organizations to put procedures and technologies in place to do the following: a) Transfer individual knowledge into databases b) Filter and separate the most relevant knowledge. c) Organize that knowledge in databases that allow employees easy access to it. Barnes(2002) made the following interesting comparison about knowledge , information and data he says that knowledge as a justified personal belief that increases an individual’s capacity to take effective action.Information is data interpreted in to a meaningful frame, whereas knowledge is information that has been authenticated and thought to be true. Data is raw numbers and facts, information is pr ocessed data and knowledge is information made achievable. According to Rainer et al(2007) The goal of knowledge management is to help organization to make most effective use of knowledge. it has the following benefits are: ? Makes the best practices, which are most effectives and efficient ways of doing things rapidly available to a wide range of employees ?Enhance access to best practices knowledge improves overall organization performance. ? Improved customer service. ? Most efficient product development. ? Improved employee morale and retention. Barnes(2002) says traditionally, knowledge creation and transfer has occurred through various means such as face-to-face interactions (planned or adhoc), mentoring, job rotation and staff development. Barnes(2002) observes that the concept of coding and transmitting knowledge in organization is not new: training and employee development programmes, organization policies routines, procedures, reports and manuals have served this function for years.These traditional means may prove to be too slow, less effective and need of being supplemented by by more efficient electronics methods. 1. 1 IMPORTANT DIMENSION OF KNOWLEDGE Data: is a flow of events or transactions captured by organization’s systems that by itself is useful for transacting but little else. To turn data into information a firm must expend resources to organize data into categories of understanding, such as monthly, daily, regional or stored based reports of the total sales.To transform information ito knowledge the firm must expend additional resources to discover patterns, rules and context where the knowledge works. Finally wisdom is thought to be the collective and individual experiences of applying knowledge to the solutions of problems. Wisdom involves where, when, and how to apply knowledge. Knowledge is both individual attribute and collective attribute of the firm. Knowledge is stored in libraries, and records, shared in lectures and store d by firms in the form of business process and employee know how Laudon and Laudon (2006). . CAPTURING AND SORTING KNOWLEDGE (a) Online questionnaires: According to Oz et al (2006)[3] knowledge can be captured through the use of online questionnaires. Some of the questionnaires provide multiple choice answers, which make the input structured and easy to sort and analyze, but some of the most valuable input is in the form of free text. Knowledge can also be done by use of software such as polygamist to analyze data form (Megaputer intelligence). . A good example is Watson an application created by intellect.It is installed in a PC and embedded in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. It analyses and employees’ document as it is being written, creates an automatic query about the subject, reaches out onto the knowledge management program and pulls information that might be applicable to the task at hand. (b) Software Tools: Oz et al(2006) also describes that Knowledge can als o be captured by use of software tools that search for such information and derive valuable business knowledge form it. For example Online Audience Analysis software that was developed by Accenture Technology Labs.Such tools help organization add to their knowledge base especially in terms of what others say about their product and services. The tools take into account factors such as its industry, context in which an enquiry works to select and deliver the proper information. (c) Knowledge network systems: Laudon and Laudon (2006) say that knowledge network systems also known as expertise location and management systems, provides an online directory of corporate experts in well defined knowledge domains and use communication to find the appropriate expert in the company.Some knowledge network systems go further by systematizing the solutions being developed by experts and then storing the solutions in a knowledge database as best practices or frequently asked questions (FAQ), repos itory e. g. AskMe, inc offers a widely adopted enterprise knowledge net system. (d) Employee Knowledge networks: facilitates knowledge sharing through intranets. Tacit systems activates tool continuously process email, documents and other business communication and automatically ‘discover’ each employee work focus, expertise and business relation ship.This tool ‘mines’ this unstructured data to build a profile of each employee in terms of topics and interests. The goal is to ensure that two people who might benefit from creating a connection in a work place do so, so that one can learn form the expertise of another about issues. According to Oz(2006)some companies have developed software tools that search for such information and derive valuable business knowledge form it. E. g. Accenture Technology labs developed audience analysis such tools helps organization add to their knowledge base especially in terms of what others say about their product and servic es.The tool takes into account factors such as the industry and context in which an enquirer works to select and deliver the proper information. (f) A web portal: also known as a links page, presents information from diverse sources in a unified way. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and entertainment. Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and databases, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether.Examples of public web portals are MSN, Yahoo! , AOL, iGoogle and Netvibes. 2. 1 STEPS IN KNOWLEDGE GATHERING The first challenge in the knowledge-gathering process is simply deciding what knowledge to gather. For example, while identifying the most frequently asked questions is critical for a self-service web site implementation, call centers will also need to know the m ost frequently escalated questions. Moreover, while management goals may center around ROI issues, the system must be designed with users in mind, or it will not be successful.According to paper published by eGain Communications Corporation [2004] that appeared in the internet and internetworking here is a step-by-step review of the knowledge-gathering process. Step 1: Building the team There are four roles in the knowledge management team:  ¦ Lead expert: The individual (or individuals) who decides how the knowledge base will be organized, which topics will be covered, and to what extent.  ¦ Users: Call center agents who have good performance records and can provide suggestions. Knowledge authors: Individuals who are technically trained in using authoring tools.  ¦ Project manager. The individual who keeps the project on track. Depending on the scope of the project, one person may play several roles. Step 2: Assessing the value of knowledge The best way to determine what know ledge should be gathered is to estimate what the value to your enterprise would be if every agent managed service interactions by effectively using that knowledge Step 3: Setting content boundariesWhen defining the scope of the knowledge base, the most common mistake is to try to include too much. Overly ambitious deployments almost always result in what’s called â€Å"the Swiss cheese problem†Ã¢â‚¬â€a knowledge base that is solid in places, but full of holes. This is a recipe for failure, because if users can’t find the answers they want most of the time, or get the wrong answers, they will quickly stop using the system. It is better to be thorough with a limited area than to cover a broad area superficially.For instance, for an enterprise that sells printers, scanners, fax machines, and copiers, the best approach would be to cover one product line thoroughly, rather than all products at once. Step 4: Prioritizing objectives Establishing the value of knowledge enables prioritization, but this process may involve trade-offs. For example, in a technology subscription environment like cable TV, Internet service provision, or mobile telephony, there are typically three competing goals:  ¦ Speed of problem resolution (the â€Å"right answer† focus): The shorter the average duration of a call, the ower the cost to the enterprise.  ¦ Customer retention: Educating customers about unused features can result in greater customer acceptance and lower churn.  ¦ Up-selling and cross-selling: It may be that the best solution to a customer’s problem is selling that customer a higher tier of service or an add-on product. Enterprises must match their knowledge systems and processes to the service priorities. Step 5: Setting time boundaries In our experience with many deployments, a time-boxed approach to knowledge gathering works best.If the deployment appears to be falling behind schedule, narrowing the scope of the knowledge base (to avoid the Swiss cheese problem) and finishing on schedule is the way to go. The reason has to do with ROI—the main reason for the deployment to begin with. The longer it takes to get the system up and running, the longer it takes to achieve the ROI. If the knowledge scope has been correctly identified and prioritized, the most important questions will be covered. Furthermore, it is always possible to expand the scope later.As a rough guide, a typical enterprise deployment should not take longer than three months (after planning is done), with three or four full-time people engaged. This period includes software installation, knowledge gathering, and testing both the quality of the knowledge base as well as the performance of the system. Step 6: Selecting and managing experts Obviously, the people who contribute to the knowledge base must be technically competent, but it is equally important that they not be too far removed from day-to-day customer contact.Successful knowledg e management depends as much on the questions as the answers, and it is sometimes difficult for subject matter experts to â€Å"stoop† to the level of ordinary customers who may not know complex details like the baud rate of their modem or whether their mutual fund is front-loaded or back-loaded. There is another very important issue with experts: the reluctance to share knowledge and the fear of being â€Å"replaced by a machine. † It is important, therefore, that enterprises plan and communicate how the role of the experts will change once knowledge management has been implemented.Moreover, enterprises should create incentives for domain experts to share their knowledge with the rest of the organization. Step 7: Controlling content Once the knowledge gathering process has been completed, results must be reviewed in light of strategic objectives. It is critical for organizations to set up a review process for approving the final content of the knowledge base. This inc ludes determining who (beyond the experts) should review the content, and who has the authority to make final decisions. There are good reasons for not leaving these decisions to content experts alone.For example, any material an enterprise presents to the public can have legal or safety implications. One good approach to quality control is the use of workflow authoring software where agents (or customers and partners, in the case of self-service) can suggest additions or changes, but only authorized individuals can approve them. 3. SUPPORTING TECHNOLOGIES According Laudon and Laudon (2006) major commercial knowledge management systems vendors has integrated their content and document management capabilities with powerful portal and collaboration technologies.Enterprise knowledge portals can provide access to external sources of information such as news feeds and research as well as to internal knowledge recourses along with capabilities for e-mail, chat, instant, messaging, discuss ion groups and video conferencing . Laudon and Laudon (2006) further states that companies are now staring to use consumer web technologies such as blogs, wikies and social booking marking for internal use to facilitate the exchange of information between individuals and teams. E. g. Intel COE Paul; Otellini has a Blog for conveying his thoughts.Learning management systems provides tools for the management, delivery, tracking, and assessment of various types of employee learning and training. Contemporary leanaing management system support multiple modes including CD-ROM, downloadable video, web based classes live instruction in cases or online and group learning. In online forums and chat sessions. Learning management systems consolidate mixed media training, automatic the selection and administration of courses, assemble and deliver learning content and measure learing effectiveness. (Laudon and Laudon 2006). 4. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE WORKSOslon(2000) describes the following as types of knowledge works. a) Diagnosis and problem finding These are knowledge work because they depend heavily on knowledge and expertise of the analyst or diagnostician. The work of diagnosis tends to be semi structured and unstructured b) Planning and decision making Many people who engage in knowledge work may contribute to the decision making process. Staff professions such as financials analyst or market researchers are responsible for collecting and analyzing data before results are presented to the person responsible for decision making.Planning and decision making are knowledge work because they depend on expertise of the decision maker and manipulation of data using decision model. Highly structured programmed decision making has less knowledge work content than unstructured decision making. c) Monitoring and control Many monitoring and control activities can be structured and made fairly routine. Analysis of the meaning and of monitoring reports and analysis of variances often require expertise and judgment on the part of the reviewer, these monitoring and control activities are knowledge. ) Organizing and scheduling Organizing is critical component of knowledge work productivityand scheduling is a structuring activity which establishes a time sequence to other activities including personal activities and meetings. e) Authoring and presentation The objective of this class of knowledge to to progress from an idead through multiple media transformation to a final presentation form, whether document, diagram, or a set of visual aids for a presentation. 5. TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS a) Structured knowledge systems: Some knowledge exists already somewhere in the form of structures text documents and reports or presentation, and the central problems organizing this existing structured knowledge into a library and making it accessible throughout the firm. (b) Semi structured knowledge systems: Managers may also need information that exists somewhere i nside the firm in the form of less structured documents, such as e-mail, voice mail, chat room exchangers , video, digital pictures, brochures, bulletins boards.This knowledge can be stored in knowledge repository. Knowledge repository is collection of internal and external knowledge in single location for more efficient management and utilization by the organization. 6. KNOWLEDGE BASED SYSTEMS McLeod Jr(1998) describes artificial Intelligence, Expert systems as knowledge based system. He further expounds as follows (a) Artificial Intelligence: Is the activity of providing such machines as computers with the ability to display behaviour that would be regarded as intelligent if it were observed in humans.A. I represent the most sophisticated form of human reasoning. According to O’Brien(2004) Artificial Intelligence offers the following advantages of knowledge systems. †¢ Reducing training time †¢ Reducing training costs. †¢ Replication valuable expertise †¢ Reducing operation response time. †¢ Presenting valuable knowledge (b) Expert system: Is a computer program that attempts to represent knowledge of human experts in the form of heuristics. Expert system is expected to: †¢ Better performance for the firm:As the managers extend their problem solving abilities through the use of the expert systems the firms control mechanism is improved. The firm is better able to meet its objectives. †¢ To maintain control over the firms: Knowledge expert systems afford the opportunity to make the experiences employees knowledge more available to new, less experiences employees and to keep that knowledge in the firm long even after the employee have left the firm The expert system outputs through: †¢ Explanation of questions: The manager may desire explanation while the expert systems perform its reasoning.Theses is done through questions as the expert system provides the explanation †¢ Explanation of the problem solution af ter the expert systems provides a problem solution, the manager can ask for an explanation of how it ws reached. The expert system will display, each of the reasoning steps leading to the solution (c) Decision Support System: Decision support system provides information and models in aform to facilitate tactical and strategies decision making. They are information system that support management decision making by integrating: †¢ Company performance data Business rules based on decisions tables. †¢ Analytical tools and models for forecast and planning †¢ Easy to use graphical interface Decision support system tends to be used for adhoc queries rather than regular reporting. The technology varies particularly rapidly in this area and the newest development such as data warehouse attests to this Bocij (2009) (d) Executive Support Systems: provides senior management with system to assist them in taking strategic and tactical decision.The purpose is to analyze compare and highlight trends to help govern the strategic direction of accompany. They are commonly integrated with operational systems giving managers the falilitioan â€Å"drill† to find out further information or a problem Bocij(2006) (e) Hypermedia system: Provides computer based storage of documents composed of text, graphs, diagrams, sound, schematics, pictures motion, video and the link. Hyper documents include not only document but also indexes for cross references its materials Kroenke and Hatch(1989). f) Interactive Video: Is atype of knowledge system, video segments integrated via a menu processing application. Interactive video application overcome on of the biggest disadvantages of video media. The requirements of sequential access instead users are presented with video segments that they can control through a menu Kroenke and Hatch(1989). 7. BENEFITS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS a) Improves service for students b) Improves services capability of faculty and staff c) Improve d effectiveness and efficiency of advising efforts. ) Improved ability to identify improvement efforts. e) Improved sharing of internal and external information to minimize redundant efforts and lessen the reporting burden f) Reduce turn around time for research. g) Facilitation of inter-disciplinary research h) Increased competitive and responsiveness for research grants, contracts and commercial opportunities. According to by Jillinda J. etl (2000) the benefit of Knowledge management in the area of research which is the key to learning especially in higher education is as outlined in table 1 below.Table 1: Application and Benefits of KM for the Research Process |Knowledge Management Application |Benefits | |A repository of: |Increased competitiveness and responsiveness for | |Research interests within an institution or at affiliated institutions (potential |research grants, contracts, and commercial | |Subcontractors). |opportunities. |Research results (where possible) and funding organizations (federal agencies, foundations, |Reduced turnaround time for research. | |and corporations) with easy search capabilities to facilitate interdisciplinary |Minimized devotion of research resources to | |opportunities. |administrative tasks. | |Commercial opportunities for research results. |Facilitation of interdisciplinary research. | |A portal for research administration procedures and best practices related to: |Leveraging of previous research and proposal | |Funding opportunities. efforts. | |Pre-populated proposals, budgets, and protocols. |Improved internal and external services and | |Proposal-routing policies and procedures. |effectiveness. | |Award notification, account setup, and negotiation policies and procedures. |Reduced administrative costs. | |Contract and grant management policies and procedures. | | |Technical and financial report templates and policies and procedures. | | |Overview of internal services, resources, and staff. | Jillinda J. etl (2000) also derived the following application and benefits of management as stated in table 2 below. Table 2: Application and Benefits of KM for the Curriculum Development Process |Knowledge Management Application |Benefits | |Repository of curriculum revision efforts that includes research conducted, effectiveness | Enhanced quality of curriculum and programs by | |measures, best practices, lessons learned, and so forth. identifying and leveraging best practices and | |Repository of content modularized and arranged to facilitate interdisciplinary curriculum |monitoring outcomes. | |design and development. |Improved speed of curriculum revision and | |Portal of information related to teaching and learning with technology, including faculty |updating. | |development opportunities, outcomes tracking, lessons learned, best practices, technology |Enhanced faculty development efforts, especially | |overviews, and so forth. for new faculty. | |â€Å"Hubs† of information in each disciplina ry area, including updated materials, recent |Improved administrative services related to | |publications, applicable research, and so forth. |teaching and learning with technology. | |Repository of pedagogy and assessment techniques, including best practices, outcomes |Improved responsiveness by monitoring and | |tracking, faculty development opportunities, and research. incorporating lessons learned from the | |Repository of analyzed student evaluations updated each semester for lessons learned and |experiences of colleagues, student evaluations, | |best practices for all faculty. |and corporate or other constituent input. | |Portal for new faculty with guides for developing curriculum, working with senior faculty, |Interdisciplinary curriculum design and | |establishing effective teaching styles, advising do’s and don’ts, supervising PhD students, |development facilitated by navigating across | |and so forth. |departmental boundaries. |Repository of corporate relati onships to identify curriculum design advisory task forces, | | |guest speakers, adjuncts, case study sites, and so forth. | | 8 CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS According to a document posted on internet by Kristy Annely (2006) Most of the challenges in knowledge management primarily stem from the types of knowledge reuse situations and purposes. Knowledge workers may produce knowledge that they themselves reuse while working.However, each knowledge re-use situation is unique in terms of requirements and context. Whenever these differences between the knowledge re-use situations are ignored, the organization faces various challenges in implementing its knowledge management practices. Some of the common challenges resulting due to this and other factors are listed below. (a) Willingness to share Knowledge: The employees may not be willing to share their personal tacit knowledge:. This call for a scheme to reward employees who add expertise to the knowledgebase . Knowledge base must be continually maintained and updated.New knowledge must be added and old, outdated knowledge must be deleted. (b) Data Accuracy: Valuable raw data generated by a particular group within an organization may need to be validated before being transformed into normalized or consistent content. (c) Data Interpretation: Information derived by one group may need to be mapped to a standard context in order to be meaningful to someone else in the organization. Data Relevancy: The quality and value of knowledge depend on relevance. Knowledge that lacks relevance simply adds complexity, cost, and risk to an organization without any compensating benefits.If the data does not support or truly answer the question being asked by the user, it requires the appropriate meta-data (data about data) to be held in the knowledge management solution. (d) Ability of the data to support/deny hypotheses: Does the information truly support decision-making? Does the knowledge management s olution include a statistical or rule-based model for the workflow within which the question is being asked? Adoption of knowledge management solutions: Do organizational cultures foster and support voluntary usage of knowledge management solutions? e) Knowledge bases tend to be very complex and large: When knowledge databases become very large and complex, it puts the organization in a fix. The organization could cleanse the system of very old files, thus diluting its own knowledge management initiative. Alternatively, it could set up another team to cleanse the database of redundant files, thus increasing its costs substantially. Apart from these, the real challenge for an organization could be to monitor various departments and ensure that they take responsibility for keeping their repositories clean of redundant files. . TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE (i) Tacit and Explicit Knowledge The distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is critical in appreciating the scope of knowledge mana gement and how it differs from information and data management. Nonaka8 refers to the spiral of knowledge where new knowledge always begins with the personal. For example, a researcher has insights that lead to a new patent. Explicit knowledge deals with more objectives, rational and technical knowledge. Consist of policies, procedures, guides, reports, products strategies, goals, core competencies and it infrastructure.Is the knowledge that has been codified (documented) in a form that can be distributed to others or transformed into a process strategy? Tacit knowledge is a cumulative store of subjective or experimental learning. In organization Tacit knowledge consists of experiences, insights, expertise, know-how, trade secrets, skills sets, understanding and learning. It also includes the organization culture, which reflects the past ans present experiences of the organization peoples and processes as well as prevailing and costly to transfer.It is also highly primal because is unstructured, it is difficult to formalize or codify Rainer etl (2009). Nonaka(1991) identifies four basic patterns for creating knowledge in any organization: (a) From Tacit to Tacit. When one individual shares tacit knowledge with another in face-to-face contact. (b) From Explicit to Explicit. When an individual combines discrete pieces of explicit knowledge into a new whole, such as a finance manager collecting and synthesizing information and opinions from different parts of the organization then putting this into a financial report.. c)From Tacit to Explicit. This extends the organization's knowledge base by codifying experience, insight, or judgment into a form which can be reused by others. (d) From Explicit to Tacit. When staff begin to internalize new or shared explicit knowledge and then use it to broaden, extend, and rethink their own tacit knowledge. 10. INTERNET AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Blogging Himanshu (2009) says blogging is a greatest source to share things on Inter net. Slowly blogging taking place of online media; in fact Blogging is now an example of online media.Many news agencies buy news from blogging companies time to time. There are enormous advantages of Blogging. Some of the advantages of blogging which enhances performance of any blogger are: Blogging brings lots of knowledge. From Word press to blogger, server to host, blogging to make money online, resources to online tutorials, bloggers get aware of all the small to big things present on the internet. Also blogging teach people to use internet resources effectively. Why Blogging is so popular Duermyer (2008) explains that Blogging is very popular today because it llows people to interact with each other. Blogging has also become a popular search engine optimization (SEO) tool because search engines like Google and Yahoo know that a blog is frequently updated with content or visitor comments, so their spiders visit blogs frequently looking for new content to include in their index. Additionally, blog content can be delivered automatically via electronic RSS (Really Simple Syndication) data feeds. Visitors subscribe to a blog's feeds in order to stay up to date with content that's being posted on subjects that interest them.Cassanova(2007) say that blog templates are coded in a way that they're well viewed by the Google's search engines. So we can consider this as an advantage since your blog will get much traffic from google if you're using his templates. He further explains that a blogger is flexible with all kind of entries like the bookmarking tools in footers and RSS subscription like FeedBurner. Blogger also allows for easy comments moderation and posts edition. However they have some Drawbacks e. g The dot blogspot subdomain can affect the image of your blog when it comes to advertisers to choose where to advertise for their products.Actually, it's not only about Blogger but it's the drawback of having a free domain name and Unlike other Blogging templa tes themes, blogspot's aren't really beautiful. You can do a better presentation with WordPress. Moreover, the columns are difficult to manipulate; you can hardly get three columns with blogspot while it's easy with wordpress.. (a) Word Press: Site ground knowledge base defines Word Press as an open source blog publishing application and can be used for basic content management: According to an article presented in the internet it is the most popular web blogging software because it provides   Ã¢â‚¬â€œ Ease of use.WordPress is suitable for just about anybody – from the absolute novice to the advanced programmer. – Feature-rich interface. WordPress has a rich text editor with advanced multimedia support; – Expandable. WordPress's community distributes a large number of modules for almost any popular website feature; – It is Open Source. This means it is free to install, use and distribute WordPress on your site. (b) Face book: According to the web site p age on http://www. vfw. org Face book is a social networking service that lets you connect with friends, o-workers, and others who share similar interests or who have common backgrounds. Facebook enables users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of books given at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students get to know each other better. Agnes(2008)says Clients or users can make groups and conversation or discussion topics. This assemblage or group can cultivate, or be gone alone to pass away, depending on the clients or users and their involvement..Facebook is a one-stop shop or supermarket for imparting blogging, media, calendaring, communicating, sharing ideas or information and others. Facebook can provide â€Å"Cooperative Extension† abilities or capabilities to work together and construct our networks in a single place by giving one pl ace without difficulty, imparting ideas or information and discuss subject or topics of interest. Face book brings jointly more than a few online apparatus. Furthermore to being capable to impart ideas or information and pictures, you can append applications few examples are: Flickr ,   del. cio. us, Twitter, your blog, news feeds to your Facebook home. (c) Youtobe: Geller(2008) defines YouTube as an online public communications site. The site allows for registered users to upload and have available for the public their videos for viewing. Anyone who goes to the site can view the videos that are posted on this site. The videos are anything from beginner videos to more professional videos. McGrath (2008) suggest using the technology (video) to capture knowledge dumps that can be prepared and stored for distribution.Face it, a video capture of someone's thoughts and actions delivered with their passion or emotion of the situation is far better (and a lot quicker) than trying to capt ure the same knowledge in writing. More specifically, he had several great ideas †¢ Use video to capture knowledge and a YouTube-type repository for storage and distribution. †¢ Use Blogs for day-to-day capture of activities and what is being worked on. †¢ Use a Wiki for collaborative projects. †¢ Use a  delicious-style tagging system for classification.McGrath's suggesting the utilization of today's most popular technologies for knowledge management purposes is strong and useful advice. (d) Wiki: According to Tech Terms Computer Dictionary (http://www. techterms. com/ ) A wiki is a Web site that allows users to add and update content on the site using their own Web browser. This is made possible by Wiki software that runs on the Web server. Wikis end up being created mainly by a collaborative effort of the site visitors. A great example of a large wiki is the Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia in many languages that anyone can edit.Wikis can be used for a number o f purposes: †¢ On public Web sites to enable end users to easily contribute information. †¢ In teaching. Wikis can provide an opportunity to learn about team working, trust, etc. A good example is provided by Queen’s University Belfast . †¢ By researchers. Wikis are by Web researchers to make it easier to develop collaborative documents e. g. the FOAF Wiki . †¢ On Intranets, where departmental administrators with minimal HTML experience may be able to manage departmental content. †¢ Wikis can be used at events for note-taking e. g. in discussion groups . ) Flickr : Hendricks (2009) explains that An easy way to share videos and pictures of the people you love has brought about a social media networking site called Flickr. In a society of overwhelming social media networking sites, it is refreshing to find a website like Flickr with a specific purpose. Flickr was designed in February 2004 and has been growing since. It is in more ways than one a media s ite for the people. Members are able to upload their favorite pictures and videos to share. Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present but soon added are the abilities to separate your pictures.You can mark some as favorites, or separate them into groups. Tagging provides to be a helpful addition as well in order to keep the pictures organized and document people and dates. It is also possible to share your pictures with friends only or publicly. 11. CONCLUSION Technical education institutions are in the knowledge business, since they are involved in knowledge creation and dissemination and learning. Knowledge Management can transform technical schools to new levels of effectiveness, efficiency, and scope of operation. Through advancements in technology, data and information are readily available.The technical institutions lecturers and students able to discover and learn new measures, new technologies, and new opportunities, but this requires the ability to gather inf ormation in usable formats and disseminate knowledge to achieve the organization’s objectives. 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