The Goldilocks effect: getting information JUST RIGHT

The Goldilocks epic hinges around the struggle for humanity to get things 'just right' (and living with bears). Many of us are having this struggle with managing information. The internet is delivering better and better access to more precisely targeted information which presents us with the problem of processing all this great stuff. Our eyes are bigger than our ability to process it all.
For a brief moment it looked as though rss would solve all this. But it just delays the problem. Once my rss feeds were set up there is the nagging pressure to sort through the feeds, and then of course go and look at a selection of the material that lands on you plate. Otherwise, why am I browsing it?

This problem presented itself nicely quite recently when I started using echalk, the very lively WA based discussion list in edna. Half a dozen or more interested emails plonked in my inbox, which is irritating because I then had to click on each and scan the contents to see if it was interesting. The irritation disappeared when most turned out to be interesting. The processing options are simple: read, or skim, or delete, or mark for later attention, or follow a link to further detail. If archived, I can search for remembered topics later on.
Then along came a message saying that email is for the elderly - a tired and inadequate format to the really information literate. A group of echalk people have set up an alternative and potentially richer site to share information: a Ning social networking site.

So off I went to this new place, and rapidly became overwhelmed by the detail and clutter and numerous options. Should I add to the blog, should I attach myself to 'friends'. So I set up an rss feed to keep track of the echalk Ning site. The list to the right is what the rss told me: not terribly exciting or informative, so I had to go to Ning to see what was there of interest. So I am left wondering how much is enough. How much information is 'just right'. The people in Ning echalk are the same people as those on the email list, in the main, so the suppliers of information are not changed. It is the time taken to find out whether their contributions are interesting to me that is the question. There are a lot more tools and opportunities on Ning than I have tried out yet, so can't decide yet what is best. But I am not writing off email yet. It is simple, but it works. Do I want information or do I want a relationship?

It all depends.......

* Image: flickr DaveC71 Glodilocks

Computer literacy/illiteracy Year 6, 10 National Test

The national ICT Literacy Years 6 and 10, 2005 assessment was conducted by ACER and completed in July 2007, but was not published until Jan 2008. Media reports describe almost 50% of students being "computer illiterate", a term not actually used in the report. The full report can be downloaded from here.

The assessment attempted to move beyond a simple measure of skills related to operating the software and hardware.

A sample of Year 6 and Year 10 students did hands-on tasks that set up a number of meaningful tasks involving common computer tasks such as searching and choosing information, creation of a presentation and so on. Students were then assessed against these and placed in one of 6 profile levels illustrated by the graph below. [click to enlarge image]



The profile standards expected for Years 6 and 10 are marked on the graph, with a large proportion of students from both year level assessed at Profile level 3. [click to enlarge image]




I have not read the report in detail but it seems that the writers have made their best estimate at expected year level proficiency and divided the students into a small number of profile levels. It is striking that there is such a large overlap between the year 6 and 10 students at level 3.