The irony is not lost on me that this reading about sense making was near impossible for me to make sense of. Too many years of reciting Dr. Seuss may have simplified my vocabulary. Yikes!
My first approach to understanding the reading was to skim it to try to get a general sense of the topic, but unfortunately that was of little help. I then needed to read through very slowly with pen and dictionary to try to translate her writing into digestible particles. Arduous, but effective. I then watched the video that seemed to simplify the concepts and I then realized that I probably should have watched the video first. I may have made this task much harder than need be. My meta-cognitive process was me being aware that I needed a concerning amount of breaks and distractions. The parts of the reading that I wanted to take notes on, or simply write about, were the parts that interested me or that I was able to understand. If I were to teach this to high school students I would definitely use visuals, team discussions, videos, and break the information into smaller amounts. Students would benefit from seeing a real life process of sense making and then to construct one themselves. In this article Dervin is teaching that humans through traditional research practices are limited because they are conducted by humans and with this humaness comes behaviors, views, experiences, all of which imprint upon us and make it difficult to be objective in finding solutions. The discontinuity that exists between all things, including reality and human sensors, intrigues me the most. To think that all information exists and we are simply trying to find paths to it seems to be our human condition. To find the best means to access information is the objective of sense making. In this information age we must be critical of our sources and communicate our needs to what Dervin refers to as the 'observer.' She teaches that sense making is the holistic process used to bridge informational gaps through framing questions, collecting data and data analysis.
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