An aggregator is like a personal information filter. Without it the web is a big and scary place. Having a well stocked, well fed aggregator is like having a personal guide. As a teacher, I consider one of my main jobs to be serving as a personal guide, helping kids to fill their aggregators with content that is relevant and useful for them. They also need to learn most importantly to separate signal from noise.
In the days of information scarcity, we told students that everything was important. When they asked what they needed to know for the test, what was going to be on the exam, we told them simply "everything." Now it is much more important that they think about these questions themselves. Students need to learn to separate useful information from that which can be quickly and easily deleted.
Information triage.
Disposable information.
What is important enough to keep, aggregate, synthesize and work with? What can be trashed as irrelevant? As we increasingly ask students what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and what resources they need to help them answer their questions, they need solid foundational skills in information management as an essential piece of being considered literate in this century.
technorati tags:information, management, aggregator, learning, literacy
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