This module certainly has me thinking about the information society. I think it means we, as a society, are now dependent on information. We crave it, create it and seek it 24/7. Our lives are documented on social media and because I have ready access to this information on my school mates, I now wonder why we need to attend the twenty year reunion planned for later this year. The information overload is real and an event that once would have had me excited by the chance to gain information, now fills me with dread.
This of course is a small scale example from my personal life that is indicitive of a larger phenomenon. The world is now a much smaller place thanks to the digital age. Where once only the well travelled/educated would have heard of such things, images and information from events across the globe are available to a worldwide audience instantly.
The fact that we are all citizens of this information society is both exciting (I love being part of a global community) and worrisome. We can all contribute information (very easily) and thus the issue of integrity comes to the fore. The plethora of information available can make it hard to know what is reliable, relevant and useful; cue the teacher librarian.
It is imperative that the teacher librarian has an understanding of the information landscape in order to understand what skills they need to develop in their students. Being able to use search filters effectively and decipher ‘fake news’ are skills that becoming more and more essential to being active citizens that can make valuable contributions to our society.
There is no arguing that technology is synonymous with the information society, it simply would not be so without it. It is an ever changing landscape with constant updates and innovations that once again, the TL must be abreast of in order to pass on the most timely skills to students.
2.3 The information Society
