Saturday, August 25, 2012

Tools to Collect & Cull (reflection week 3)

Last week we read about following websites, blogs and wikis to stay current on the topics of our interests.  It can be extremely overwhelming to find the time to continually visit these sites to read the new information.  Using an Aggregator and subscribing to the various sites I like to follow has been a great time saver.  Now, I have one place to go to get current information.  I can even group my subscriptions into categories. So, if I am looking for new ideas about technology I can focus on just the updates from the sites I have categorized as technology sites.  I have setup Google Reader as my one-stop-shop.  YEAH!

I had setup a Twitter account long ago, but I wasn't really using it.  Now that I have begun to follow various people on Twitter, as well as created my own Tweets based upon great information I've found, I find that I really like this communication tool.  I downloaded the app onto my iPad, so I am always close to this tool.  I still need to investigate TweetDeck, or a similar tool, to group and display the tweets for quick and easy review.  You can follow me:  @onegall.

Having this large amount of information easily available at our fingertips, anywhere, anytime, brings issues!  Too much information!  Not enough time to read it all!  Stress....anxiety....tears.....hair pulling....sleepless nights!

Like everything else, we had to learn (and we will continue to learn) how to handle this mountain of information.  Over time, we become more accustom to the amount of information and have developed ways to process it.  As educators, we need to remember the feelings we experienced with this information overload and help our students come to terms with it.  We need to arm students with the skills to scan the mountain of information and cull the important pieces (important is in the eye of the beholder) for further review and ignore/trash the rest.  We have to know when to scan, read in detail, and move on.  It is a skill developed over time and it will take practice.  In the words of Kenny Rogers (The Gambler Lyrics at http://www.lyricsfreak.com/k/kenny+rogers/the+gambler_20077886.html) "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away and know when to run."

Happy reading to all, and to all a good morning!

1 comment:

  1. I am feeling overwhelmed by the "mountain of information!" You are right that we need to make sure to remember this when presenting all of these wonderful tools to our students. I know for me, I am slowly learning which of my original sites I followed on RSS are not that great, so I am starting to filter those out and try new ones. I am so happy we are learning all of this, though, because we have such awesome tools to become better teachers! What's better than that? :-)

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