Page 218 - Foundations of Learning, 4th Edition (Revised)

Step 4—Develop a Plan for Organizing Information

After you determine which information meets the criteria set in the previous step, you must develop a
plan for storing and organizing this information. It is important to know what information you already
have and where to find the information you need. Refer to the needs analysis for insights which might
influence how you choose to organize the information.

Information sources are rarely organized in ways that exactly match your end use of the content. As
you create notes, create them in a way that meets your original need. This classification scheme may
evolve during the quest and probably will closely approximate the final structure or outline. While
the original questions led to the desired information, they might also lead to much repetition if used
in a presentation of the findings. In some cases, it may be advantageous to create a new structure or
outline. This aspect of the Information Processing Methodology will be explored again, in the context
of researching skills, in Chapter 10.

You can benefit from a variety of experiences in applying information; written reports are only one of
them. You need to reach conclusions and to prepare for activities that are the outcomes of your quests
for information. Presentation formats can include papers, dramatizations, panel discussions, multimedia
presentations, models, demonstrations, or school-wide projects. Each application has its own set of
skills required for success. For some, interpersonal skills are as important as language skills; in others,
visual skills are as important as verbal skills.

Step 5—Retrieve Information

Gather and obtain the needed information, while at the same time making evaluations as to the usefulness
of the information you collect. Interpretation skills are important as you retrieve information.

Interpretation skills start, but do not end, with reading. As you have learned and practiced in Chapter 3,
a strong reader makes use of context clues, discerns the structure of a piece of writing, draws inferences,
and perceives relationships. Such skills are also essential to such diverse activities as reading maps,
interpreting tables of statistical data, reading schematics, studying photographs, and viewing films or
videos. During any information quest, you must have the interpretation skills required by each format
to retrieve the useful pieces of information or else the whole process becomes meaningless.

Organize and integrate the fragments of information into a comprehensible whole to create personal
meaning. With practice and assessment of your performance, your knowledge of sources will grow, as
will your searching and organization skills. The plans you create will improve, as well.

Step 6—Assess and Review

Assess what you have done up to this point to determine if you have adequately met the needs analysis
stated in Step 1. Determine if more or different (useful) information is needed. If so, repeat the steps
of the methodology starting with Step 2. Incorporate the new useful information with the information
found the first time through the process.

“Information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the Foundations of Learning
most important part of information’s journey is the last few
inches—the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the
various regions of the brain.”
David Brooks, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times.

212