Blogs, blogrolls, RSS, Comments, Trackbacks.... We live in an age where we have more data than we could ever wish for. However, all data has to be converted into information. That is to say, it has to be sifted, sorted, scrutinised, evaluated -- and either turned into something useful or discarded.

If we are going to encourage students to become connected to social networks, we must also teach them strategies for handling the deluge of data they are going to experience. At the end of the day, they still have examinations to pass, and they don't have unlimited time. Here are a few suggestions which may be of use. I've included books and other reading matter as well as blogs themselves.

Books
Children are taught to read, but they are not taught to read effectively. Most people read a scientific repport in the same way that they read the side of a cornflake packet. Effective book reading means:

a) Thinking before you even open the book: what am I likely to find? What am I specifically looking for? This approach provides a few hooks on which to hang the bits you read.

b) Look at the table of contents, to get an idea of what the book is all about. Then go back to (a). What if you're short of time, and the chapter headings give no clue about their contents, ie where the author has tried to be clever and show off how erudite and witty she is (eg "All that glitters..., It's an ill wind..., etc)? My advice? Dump it. Find a book whose author has enough respect for the reader's time to make the contents of each chapter obvious at first glance.

c) Decide if the whole book is relevant, or just a few chapters. Don't spend time reading stuff that is not directly relevant, unless you need the background.

d) Once you've decided which bits of the book are relevant, read the summary paragraphs at the beginning and/or end of each chapter.

e) Then, if you need to, read the first sentence of each paragraph in the relevant chapters.

f) When reading, learn to look out for key words. Keywords are not only the words related to the subject matter, but also pointers, like "However" or "Furthermore".

g) Skip the examples, or at least skip the examples once you're confident that you've got the picture: a lot of authors give several examples, but you really might need only one.

By the time you've done all that you should have a pretty good grasp of what's in the book without having to read it slavishly from beginning to end. And it won't take as long as it looks.

Newspapers
The trick is to read the first paragraph in each article. In a well-written paper this always contains the gist of the story. The remainder merely fills in the details.

Academic papers
Read the Abstract at the start, and the Conclusions at the end.

Reports and Government consultative papers
Read the Executive Summary at the beginning.

Blogs
a) Subscribe to an RSS reader like Bloglines or Google Reader. This will save you from having to visit lots of websites and blogs separately.

b) Set up the RSS reader to enable you read only the headline of each post. That gives you time to decide if you need to look further.

c) A well-written headline will make it obvious what the post is all about. If the headline doesn't do that, skip the post: life's too short.

d) If you're reading in order to complete an assignment, adopt the economist's approach: give yourself a time limit, and then ask yourself if the extra time you spend researching the assignment beyond that limit is likely to result in enough of an increase in your grade to justify the extra time. Put simply: it's much easier, as a rule, to raise your grade from a 'D' to a 'B' than from a 'B' to an 'A'. Ask yourself: is it worth the extra effort? Another consideration is this: if you do manage to get an 'A', but at the expense of your other assignments, was it worth it?

e) When you read blogs, read the comments also -- they may put a different spin on the matter, and give you another lead or two to follow up.

f) Read with awareness. That means, asking yourself questions like: does this person have a hidden agenda, like promoting the products of a particular company? Does what they are saying make sense? Can it be corroborated?

g) Be discriminating in the blogs you read. Just because a blog has 4000 subscribers, doesn't mean it's good for you -- it just means that 4000 people have found it useful for them.

h) Read blog posts quickly. Before you even start to read, take a moment or two to think about the keywords you're hoping to find. If you know anything about the writer of the blog, think about what angle s/he is likely to take. Learn to pick out key content words and key pointer words (like "however", etc).

i) If someone makes an interesting comment, by all means subscribe to their blog, or bookmark their website, for future reference. But don't spend time following up this new lead unless you think it is going to make a crucial difference to your finished assignment. Remember: a difference is only a difference if it makes a difference!

How do you find good blogs in the first place? You can search Google or AltaVista for blogs on a particular subject by using the form blog:subject. Another good service is Technorati, and another is Blogpulse. David Warlick has written a useful summary of blog searching, with details of other blog search engines.

Reading blogs may be interesting, but if you're looking for material to include in an assignment, or researching for an assignment, you don't have the time to read and read ad infinitum. But if you can learn the art of effective reading, this is an example of an activity where, you will discover, less really is more.

This article originally appeared in Computers in Classrooms #19. Click here to subscribe.

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