Consider if you will the phenomenon of overwhelming information that the development of the Internet has presented us with. Try to imagine life before the fountain of knowledge threatened to waterlog all of us—how much has changed since that time? And even more importantly, how much will things continue to change? Massive free access to practically anything we want to know about has done a few pretty radical things in our present age.
For one thing, this distinct privilege we have to access increasing waves of digital knowledge has completely upended the notion of what it means to learn. No longer is it necessary for the student to be forced to concentrate in a sweltering summer classroom while the real world waits outside to be discovered. Thanks to InfoWhelm and all the devices we use to penetrate deep into its reservoirs of revelation, learning happens on the go, and anywhere we’re comfortable with it happening.
We have any number of uses for information acquisition, be it professional development, personal betterment, statistical analysis and comparison, or what have you. But the fact is, the information we use for our purposes still needs to be relevant, accurate, and useful. This requires a keen eye and mind geared toward proper analytical techniques, with a dash of instinct, and good dollop of common sense. It is one of the most valuable skills we can teach our students today, and that's why it is also one of the five 21st century fluencies.
The 21st Century Fluency Project’s stance on the importance of information fluency as a skill in the standard digital age survival toolbox applies to students, teachers, and everyday people just like you and me. It focuses on the skills we need by illustrating them in the 5 A’s—Ask, Acquire, Analyze, Apply, and Assess. We’ll use these as a foundation for strategies you can use to find what you’re really looking for in the age of InfoWhelm. Here’s how you can be “In the know.”
1. ASK—Know What You’re Looking For—Having specific and critical questions about your subject matter or informational quest will lead you on the right paths. Asking good questions trains your mind to think critically and search for the relevant in a sea of irrelevancy. It also helps you unearth the most valuable information sources in your personal knowledge quest.
We have any number of uses for information acquisition ... but the fact is, the information we use for our purposes still needs to be relevant, accurate, and useful.
2. ACQUIRE—Know where to look—Your information won't always be in one location. In addition to one viable source, be sure to utilize as many others as you can. The Internet, ebooks, articles, libraries, videos, and people affiliated with your chosen area of knowledge will provide you with many different avenues along which to seek information. Multiple sources are a key part of the next phase of the 5A’s which will show you things like common patterns and threads within all the information you collect.
3. ANALYZE—Know good from bad and right from wrong—With InfoWhelm comes an inherent danger. Basically, a percentage of that free information on offer can be pretty useless. This is where the idea of building a strong base of acquired knowledge comes into play, and all your data will require thorough scrutiny and organization. Think of it as a “background check” on each bit of data you look at. From there, various sources will display things like similar threads between them, which in turn point to repeated experience and commonalities in that field of knowledge that are accepted across a broad range of those sources. Some sources will share more threads than others, and the less often-seen facts start to take a back seat to the concepts that are more often agreed upon by multiple sources during your analysis. This isn't foolproof, but is just one of the many ways in which the truths of what you seek can begin to reveal themselves. Depending on the scope of the project or task, one can spend a lot of time shuttling between Acquiring and Analyzing—and that's a good thing.
4. APPLY—Know what to do with what you’ve learned—All that valuable information isn’t worth anything if you don’t know what you need to do with it. After all your hard work asking, acquiring, and analyzing, you’ve got to make that knowledge work for you by applying it to your original problem or challenge. If your question isn’t answered or your challenge isn’t conquered in the final phase, it’s time to back up a few steps. Don’t be alarmed, because this isn't failure—it’s a process that sometimes has to be revisited. Keep going, and whatever you do, don’t give up.
5. ASSESS—Know what your quest and application of knowledge has accomplished—This is a reflective stage in your journey. Here you look back at the steps you took to find what you were looking for. You also take a look at what the proper application of your knowledge has produced. Is your problem solved? Is your question answered? Is your challenge met? How could you have streamlined your own process and made it more efficient? You see, even now when all is said and done, you’re still asking critical questions and finding new challenges. Good—don’t stop.
To help you make the most of your detective skills in the age of InfoWhelm, our book Literacy is Not Enough reveals a comprehensive view of information fluency and other vital 21st century fluencies for the digital age.