#2

          Synthesizing the information presented in these four sources reveals the true depth that lies in information overload. Gordon Price’s (2010) video concerning the amount of readily available digital information provides a nice introduction to the concept, posing hypothetical questions to get viewers thinking about analyzing information to get the most from it and teaching students to do the same. This information comes from a multitude of sources, as Bryan Alexander (2013) notes in his piece. He uses Jane Hart’s flow chart of “information curation” (Alexander, 2013), listing the steps that he takes to consume, analyze, and re-share information. Alexander’s work doesn’t seem like its intention was to be repurposed in the field of education, as he uses a fair amount of jargon that many students may not find easily comprehensible – ad hoc and RSS aren’t exactly terms that my students would find engaging. This terminology as well as Alexander’s (2013) discussion of social networks such as Diigo and Pinboard (and his reference to a Tweet as a “Twitter ping”) addresses digital information from a very technical, somewhat sterile approach, much different from the more accessible format of Price’s (2010) video. Still, he provides more depth than the video’s surface-level approach.

            Like Price’s video, Karen Lirenman’s (2012) article provides food for thought concerning digital literacy. Without giving any specific methods to bridge the gap between literacy and fluency, she poses questions and ideas that initiate the process in readers’ own minds: “I feel quite confident in the fact that it will be a slow and painful (although exciting and invigorating) process to move from being digitally literate to digitally fluent” (Lirenman, 2012). In this way, her style is more inviting than Alexander’s. It provides less actual information about how to get from point A to point B, but her writing mirrors my own learning goal: to become digitally fluent.

            The source that was most informative and most accessible is Barseghian’s (2013) article on inquiry learning. Price’s (2010) video mentions the idea that students need to ask effective questions to get good answers, but Barseghian’s (2013) work provides actual advice on how to increase students’ learning through inquiry. Her eight steps are very helpful for me as a teacher, as she takes the idea presented in Alexander’s (2013) article – the concept of digesting media from various outlets – and adds a focus on drawing student interest to the most information media. In today’s world, with so much information readily available online, as Price’s (2010) video notes, it’s important to make information for school exciting and shiny. Barseghian’s (2013) article effectively gives teachers advice on how to follow through with the steps that it takes to accomplish their learning goals – or, at least, my own goal to become more digitally fluent.

References

Alexander, B. (2013, December 26). My daily info-wrangling routine. Retrieved from https://bryanalexander.org/2013/12/26/my-daily-info-wrangling-routine/

Barseghian, T. (2013, March 11). Creating classrooms we need: 8 ways into inquiry learning. Retrieved from https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/11/creating-classrooms-we-need-8-ways-into-inquiry-learning/

Lirenman, K. (2012, April 23). The journey from digital literacy to digital fluency. Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2012/04/23/the-journey-from-digital-literacy-to-digital-fluency

Price, G. (2010, August 11). InfoWhelm and Information Fluency. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkQq5qmdmc