Organising Information

Let’s move to the second of our three concepts:

Organising information

Gathering can be a chore, especially if the stuff you’re gathering has no purpose but to fulfil a teacher-directed question or assignment.

The student needs more focus, and either does not complete the task or hands in something half-baked.

Even if the assignment is a student-focused activity, many kids are great at compiling and collecting information. They tend to jump over the organising section and head straight for the media to begin communicating.

It could be why the poster, PowerPoint, or podcast features a great title, background slide colours, or intro music but is short on detail and doesn’t address the original task.

Organising information is a discrete skill that needs to be explicitly taught. And, it is truly where the magic happens. I’ve had students who prefer organising over the other two. Of course, you can’t organise without information, so they accept that gathering is a necessary evil.

Students will expend more effort in the gathering phase if properly engaged with organising. They apply their organising skills to the gathering process. And, you’ll find they apply their organisational skills to the communication process.