Week two is all about information (anyone else feeling information over load).

What is information?  Well after my reading, information is both a very wide and very narrow term dependent on who is using it.  Information means many different things to many different people. I like one of Brenda Dervins’ concepts of information that it is “sense-making” (Case, D., 2006).

We use the information we perceive, whether it is actually sent to us, or is just ‘there’ to make sense of our environment.

I learnt about things like the Deep Web (which I had heard of and had an idea of) and Internet2 (which I had heard of but had no idea what it meant!).  And sat nodding over the concepts of Decontextualisation of information, how in today’s society of Twitter and News Tickers we only get part of the information (I heard last night about some disturbing events near where my sister lived and my first though was to call her to make sure everyone was ok, however a quick “Google” made me realise they were talking about an event that happened in 2015 – this was not made clear in the news grab!).  We need to teach our students to make sure they are getting the whole story, not just the interesting, provocative part.

I also really like the comparison of the story of Chicken Little and how it relates today.

We need to teach our students to be aware, critical, thinking users of the information presented.  We need to make them aware of the laws governing information – how we use it, what we can access (and why) and where it has come from.  Information on the web is often opinion rather than fact and we need to be aware of and teach how to tell the difference.

References

Case, D. (2006). The concept of information. In Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs and behaviour