Information is worthless today! With Internet access, it is at our fingertips — wherever we are. Not that many years ago (maybe 20–25), I attended a presentation that was making the point about access. The speaker noted that an effort was underway to digitized the Library of Congress. When completed (must be by now…), the speaker estimated that anyone could put the storage media for the Library of Congress in a closet in any of our homes!!! Think about how the storage has changed… We could have it on our cloud storage!!! As I noted, information is worthless!

But we do have to know how to organize that information, to understand it, to assess its value, to develop what I’ve called its vision — how it fits with other information, and then to use that information and the associated skills to address situations of importance to improving our lives. That’s the deeper learning that Will Richardson is talking about — what I’ve referred to as Effective Learning in my posts and comments such as these.

It’s more than that… Remember that the significant jobs, dealing with key situations, five to ten years from now aren’t even identified as yet. Therefore lifelong Effective Learning is never going to be an option!!! As Will Richardson points out so clearly, the individual learners are adapting in many cases. Schools and organizations are doing the same in more isolated locations. We educators must have as our main goal the development of Effective Learning skills by every student. Indeed, we must go further by developing defining questions for student control in addressing — to insure those skills become habitual!!!