Students of All Ages Must be Trained to Curate Content

From Daily Edventures:

Educators often see the Internet as a double-edged sword. While the Web provides nearly limitless information on any given topic, that information is often unfiltered, unedited and unfocused. That’s where Marc Rougier and his company, Scoop.it, come in. While their tools were originally created to help marketers and entrepreneurs increase their online visibility, the company quickly discovered that teachers and students found the curation tool invaluable.

“Since the explosion of Web 2.0,” Rougier says, “we live in a world of information overload: everyone has become a producer of information.” This abundance of information, according to Rougier, has generated a double problem: “If everyone can speak, to whom should I listen?” (a problem of qualification of information — extracting the signal from the noise), and “If everyone can speak, how can I get heard?” (a problem of acquiring visibility, reputation, and a voice).

Here, the mission is to get students aware of the importance of information management — to let them really touch, first hand, the challenge of qualification and organization of data – whatever their subject of study. We live in a world of information abundance and (almost) information democracy. Yet, if we are not prepared for it, we can be force-fed by a very small amount of data (a unique video seen a billion times…) and even by false information, and let a vast amount of valuable data be wasted. Students of all ages must be trained to search, select, qualify (and therefore disqualify), then enrich with their own thought, and then use and share information.