Sense-Making

https://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/sense-making-and-storytelling/

The link above will take you to the visual I found represents sense making methodology. 

     I am very appreciative to the fact we were given fair warning about the dense content of this paper. Like recommended I printed it out and had my highlighter, colored pen, sticky note pad and google dictionary ready. I used a close reading strategy that I believe was a combination of various kinds I've come across over the years. With the highlighter I highlighted things that were interesting to me and I wanted to now more about and I used a colored pen to underline repeated or similar ideas and the sticky notes were used to write out the definitions to the words I didn't know.
     When reading through the paper I tried to look for a common theme or something that kept being repeated and I noticed even though it was slightly restated a little different each time, the steps of what sense-making is and how a person begins to go through the process was the same. After I digested what the 25 pages were about and what I was looking for like how different methods can be used to conduct studies and seeing each study discussed time-line and questions it began to come together.
     What I basically got from Dervin was the sense-making methodology is the way individuals deal with a situation by identifying the "gap",(the problem or barrier) finding a "bridge"(using a resource) and then going on to get the answers they need to make a decision about the initial situation(solve the problem).  
     This paper and the more than 40 studies done to date are important because they provide insight on what people struggle with or want to know or need information about and if researchers, doctors, lawyers, law enforcement, teachers, etc are aware of these human behaviors in sense-making they can become the resource to bridge to help positive human life experiences.
     If I were going to teach this to a high schooler it would definitely take place over at least a weeks time period. I would use a Cognitive Dictionary to help with understanding new and difficult vocabulary and have the students view related images because the content is so word heavy to explain ideas. I also think less teacher talk and more student led-discussions would be more effective.