Growing recognition of the need for Information Jungle skills
Friday, February 22, 2019 at 05:01AM 
In the wake of mass confusion caused by the internet and social media, there have been calls for a renewed commitment to teaching civics and instructing students in the foundations of democracy. But if we think this challenge is only about civics, we’re deluding ourselves. Bringing education into the 21st century demands that we rethink how we teach every subject in the curriculum. ...
A new course in media literacy or a half-day presentation by the librarian is a Band-Aid. Ushering education into the digital age will demand the educational equivalent of the human genome project ... Sam Wineburg, The internet is sowing mass confusion. We must rethink how we teach kids every subject. USA Today, Feburary 12, 2019.
I am always happy to read editorals like the one above. (Thanks, Larry Cuban, for sharing it.) Many educators, librarians especially, have recognize this need for a new set of information literacy skills for a rather long time, and have been helping others (Band-Aid solution or not) gain those skills.
Way, way back at the turn of the century, I published Survival Skills for the Information Jungle: Problem-Solving Activities Are More Important Than Ever in the September 2001 issue of Creative Classroom magazine. In it I wrote, in part:
Most jungles ...can be confusing and even dangerous to the inexperienced traveler. The sheer abundance of resources and multitude of paths in them demand explorers have special skills if they are to be used in constructive ways. Find below six Information Jungle Survival Tips for teachers and students.
Information jungle survival skill 1: Know where you are going and make sure the trip’s worthwhile.
Information jungle survival skill 2: Learn to stay on the main trail to avoid the quicksand of irrelevant information.
Information jungle survival skill 3: Learn to tell the good berries from the bad berries.
Information jungle survival skill 4: Don’t just gather sticks. Make something with them.
Information jungle survival skill 5: Learn to play the jungle drums (and remember, others are listening)
Information jungle survival skill 6: Prepare for the next journey by learning from the last.
Teachers who help students formulate and answer meaningful questions and solve real problems take chances. Critical thinking often leads to messy solutions, information literacy activities are tough to time, and higher-level thinking by students often leads to genuine intellectual challenge for the teacher. To be successful, teachers may need to collaborate with technologists, library media specialists, and assessment experts in order to design effective projects. And the results of such projects can be both spectacularly good and spectacularly bad.
But these teachers have the satisfaction of knowing that their students are using technology as a real world application; that basic skills are being reinforced through their application, that they are providing meaningful, motivational experiences for their students. And as one media specialist puts it, “The activities that require originality and creativity and the use of technology in order to solve a problem are just plan fun for both students and teachers.” Getting students excited about learning powerful skills is the best reason of all for trekking in the Information Jungle.
Reader Comments (2)
My theory of how most people learn technology is two fold:
(1) They did something by accident and it worked, so they continue to do that
(2) Someone told them to do something, so they continue to do that
When I try to teach keyboard "shortcuts" I typically get backlash - why use the keyboard when you have a mouse? When I tell them there was a time when computers did not have mouse, I usually get a blank stare.
But I do like the look when I show them something that works!
I remember well the days before the mouse. I also remember the oohs and aahs when I showed them Open Apple A and especially Open Apple U for Undo!
Doug