What is Information? Reflections on Module 2.1

As a secondary English teacher, information and communication, and how the two interact to create different forms of meaning, have always been something I have considered in my profession. The raw nature of information was something I have not.

This module, for me, revealed the interesting contradiction that defines information: It is static, dynamic, adaptive – but it also is. It is constant, and in that sense it is never changing. Yet information is constantly changing and transforming. It is untransferable, but it can be transfered in the sense that it can be shared. It is inconsumable because it will never cease to be, but it can be digested. Perhaps not like food, of course, but it can be taken in and understood by receptors. It is indivisible, but it can – and should, in the education profession – be ‘broken up’ so that it can be more readily understood.

And perhaps the most intriguing of all – information is, and yet information is not. It exists, but only because we, as consumers of such an unconsumable product, attach meaning to what might otherwise be a meaningless string or sequence of data. Yet even if we didn’t, it would still exist.

Despite it’s subjective nature, the idea of information as data was something that really resonated with me. When considering the dictionary of computing definition, the analogy of information being like data made as much sense as the idea of information being subjective. The brain, like a hard drive, takes and stores information (raw data) in schema’s, adding to them as we get more information, and locking them away for safe keeping whilst we sleep. But just like a computer, if we forget to revisit it, add to it, and don’t save it in a clearly labelled folder, it (or we) will discard it as meaningless.

In this sense, the nature of information as data means that, as a TL, the communication of it needs to be precise, manageable for students, and fit for purpose – a Stage 1 student won’t be able to receive it the same way a teenager can. In the same way, the sheer amount of it means that teaching students how to understand and communicate data/information won’t be the final frontier. We need to teach them how to access and acquire it critically in a world growing smaller and smaller with greater access to world wide knowledge. The data and information age, and the malleable nature of information, has therefore made the teaching of critical information literacy more paramount than ever.