FRIT 7234 Post 2

I don’t mean to be Captain Obvious, but I’m sure we all have experienced the overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips when we are online. Having watched Infowhelm, I now have an understanding for why I have this feeling. This video shares an interesting perspective of the amount of information that is stored on the web. I3 stacks of books to Pluto if all was printed! (How many pages per book?) With so much “information” coming at us through social media, blogs, podcasts, emails, videos, etc., how do we discern facts from “alternative facts,” relevant from irrelevant, worthy of digesting from junk?

To some degree we all have strategies for guiding us through this process. As teachers with limited time, finding efficient strategies is necessary. To this purpose, I found Byan Alexander’s article regarding “info wrangling” extremely relevant. His system of receiving “inputs” from various sources, reflecting on that information, and then sharing thoughtful reflections tackles this filtering of information. However, his depth of “inputs” is extreme for me. Narrowing down these inputs to a handful of quality sources seems more effective. Karen Lirenman in The Journey from Digital Literacy to Digital Fluency discusses her success using Twitter. As Lirenman built her PLN on Twitter, she discovered a wealth of inspiration from like-minded educators. She also embraced one main element discussed in Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning, and that is that you should embrace failures.

Upon reading Karen Lirenman’s article, I found that she has ideas related to my goals. She states that she is “gaining knowledge, and looking for ways to tweak the growth of others to better suit my own growth,” and “trying to be the innovator instead of the follower.” I share the same desires.