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The Information Tsunami is upon us

old wave

Robert Morgan

That’s just what it is – a tsunami – a great wave of information swelling and rolling toward us, surrounding us and compelling us. From the multiplicity of cable and satellite channels, to the bulging magazine racks, and, perhaps most obviously, to the Internet and its crown jewel, the World Wide Web.

It doesn’t matter who you teach, you’re forced to deal with a world in which your students are surrounded and bombarded with so much information, they hardly know they’re being bombarded and influenced.

It doesn’t matter who you teach; you’re in competition with seductive media information forces trying desperately to shape culture for commercial gain.

It doesn’t matter who you teach; you’re faced with students who need the skills to deal with rising swell of the information tsunami.

But the sky isn’t falling

Educators are reacting in many ways to the tsunami of information. Here are some typical responses:
  1. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Teach as we always have and continue to keep schools an insular setting.
  2. Resist its intrusion into learning. Board up the buildings so they won’t get wet as the tsunami sweeps around and over us.
  3. Embrace it wholeheartedly and welcome all aspects. Remember that it’s only water.
  4. Find a way to make it useful. Tsunamis can be predicted, even controlled.
    It’s pretty obvious that educators preparing to take on number 4 show some judgment. Every time a new technology is introduced into society – the 16 millimeter projector, the VCR, the computer – we find not only those who greet it as a panacea, but those who see it as the end of civilization as we know it. Our track record for assimilating technology into our society is good. So, educators would serve their constituents well by making the best of the continuing tsunami. Well thought out approaches to the various information technologies, particularly the Internet include:
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  1. Listening to all points of view regarding the use of information technology. No viewpoint should instantly be viewed as invalid.
  2. Teaching students to filter information. They need to know what constitutes a reliable source, how to recognize biases, and how to sift through the tumult of information.
  3. Teaching students good research skills is more important than ever.
  4. Reasonable protections against the outlandish or inappropriate need to be in place. These might be software, parental guidance, clear written guidelines, teacher direction, school policy, or all of the above.
  5. Taking the best of what’s available and using it to educate! The information tsunami does not bring a panacea, but it brings much that is valuable to education.

And for those wishing to teach creatively, the tsunami, to mix metaphors, is a gold mine!

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