Archive for the ‘Information Literacy’ Category

Jessica Stillman at GigaOm creates a list of The 10 Key Skills for the Future of Work based on the Institute for the Future’s report titled “Future Work Skills 2020“. As a librarian this list really hit home as many of these skills are related to information literacy in the digital age. Here are just a few from the list:

• New-media literacy. The ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms and to leverage these media for persuasive communication.
• Transdisciplinarity. Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
• Computational thinking. The ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning.
• Cognitive load management. The ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.

The folks at the Kentucky Virtual Library have put together this great interactive map of the research process. Their How To Do Research map details a 7-step process from planning to evaluation to help students use library resources to achieve their research goals.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

The librarians at the Miller Library at McPherson College have developed a graphic novel titled Library of the Living Dead, a zombie-themed guide to using their library resources. This is an exciting and innovative idea for teaching patrons about library services and resources!

Ned Potter, Digitisation Coordinator for the University of Leeds in the UK guest posts at Libraries and Transliteracy with The Future of Libraries is Transliteral. This interesting article discusses various definitions and opinions of transliteracy as well as provides examples and discusses its importance to libraries.

“For me personally, transliteracy is an umbrella term that encompasses all the relevant literacies – information literacy, digital literacy, technology literacy, media literacy, and, crucially, any yet to be determined literacies that become relevant in the future. It is both the sum of, and the constituent parts of, the understanding you need to interact and function successfully across the range of platforms that shape modern communication.”

The LibrarianinBlack, Sarah Houghton-Jan writes for the ALA’s Learning Round Table about Technology Skills Library Staff Should Have. She suggests basic technology competencies that librarians should possess in the following categories:

• Terminology
• Hardware
• Software
• Security and Privacy
• Public Computing
• Ergonomics
• Library web presence
• Troubleshooting
• Personal Skills

Sheila Webber at the Information Literacy blog points to Two Free Books on Digital Literacies. Both of these books, A New Literacies Sampler and Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices, are available in pdf format for download here.

via Libraries and Transliteracy

The folks at the University of Phoenix Blog have gathered the Top 10 “Big Ideas” in Education. This succinct article discusses the most innovative trends having an impact on education today. Here are the ten ideas examined in the full post:

1. Teaching to Understand, Not Just to Memorize
2. Students Grading Teachers
3. Free Education
4. Supplemental Courses
5. Shifting Routines
6. Sleeping In
7. Educating the Individual
8. Studying Smarter
9. Considering Brain Function
10. Encouraging Creativity

Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg of the University of Washington present the report Truth Be Told: How College Students Evaluate and Use Information in the Digital Age. This is “A report about college students and their information-seeking strategies and research difficulties, including findings from 8,353 survey respondents from college students on 25 campuses distributed across the U.S. in spring of 2010, as part of Project Information Literacy.”

Key findings:

• Students in the sample took little at face value and reported they were frequent evaluators of information culled from the Web and to a lesser extent, the campus library. More often than anything else, respondents considered whether information was up-todate and current when evaluating Web content (77%) and library materials (67%) for course work.
• Evaluating information was often a collaborative process—almost two-thirds of the respondents (61%) reportedly turned to friends and/or family members when they needed help and advice with sorting through and evaluating information for personal use.
• Nearly half of the students in the sample (49%) frequently asked instructors for assistance with assessing the quality of sources for course work—far fewer asked librarians (11%) for assistance.
• For over three-fourths (84%) of the students surveyed, the most difficult step of the course-related research process was getting started. Defining a topic (66%), narrowing it down (62%), and filtering through irrelevant results (61%) frequently hampered students in the sample, too. Follow-up interviews suggest students lacked the research acumen for framing an inquiry in the digital age where information abounds and intellectual discovery was paradoxically overwhelming for them.

Online Colleges & Universities gathers up 50 Excellent Open Courses on Teaching With Technology. This is a mega-list of free courses on how to use technology such as blogs, wikis, instructional gaming, and more to reach out and engage students. It is divided into the following categories:

• Technology and Learning
• Online Education and Distance Learning
• Tech Tutorials
• Secondary and Higher Education

Jennifer Howard at Wired Campus talks with Mark McBride, Blended Librarian at Buffalo State College of the State University of New York, in A Blended Librarian Talks Information Literacy. The article discusses details of his innovative Library 300 Information Literacy course.

“So Library 300 runs more like a workshop than a sit-and-take-notes class. It doesn’t rely on real or virtual library tours but on flash drives loaded with portable applications. Students are introduced to Web apps, too, and how to use them. Part of Mr. McBride and Mr. Fujiuchi’s goal is to push students to think beyond the kinds of traditional software many are accustomed to using—although the instructors still encounter a number of students who haven’t logged much time on computers at all.”

Andrew Walsh has published an article in the latest issue of the Journal of Information Literacy titled QR Codes – using mobile phones to deliver library instruction and help at the point of need. This excellent article details how they have made use of QR codes at the University of Huddersfield. Here’s the abstract:

“With the rise of smartphones that contain integrated GPS (Global Positioning System) chips, increasing numbers of devices are aware of their own location. For most libraries, however, taking advantage of this functionality to introduce services which “augment reality”, that is overlay physical reality with a virtual layer of information in users own devices, is unfeasible.

An easier alternative to full augmented reality is to use QR (Quick Response) codes in places that link to location or context appropriate information and resources, using information embedded in the codes that is translated and acted upon by a mobile device such as camera phone. QR (Quick Response) codes are matrix codes, like two dimensional bar codes, that are easily readable by the majority of camera phones using a freely downloadable or occasionally pre-installed application.

Within the library at the University of Huddersfield we have used QR codes to deliver context appropriate help and information to blur the boundaries between the physical and electronic world. We have developed mobile friendly resources to deliver information skills materials directly to our users at the point of need, linked by QR codes on printed materials and in appropriate locations in the physical library.

This article outlines the practical uses we have found for QR codes, gives preliminary results of how those have been received by our library users in our pilot study and highlights the reluctance of many students to engage with this technology, which may need further investigation. It also looks forward to the potential use of alternative technologies such as RFID to deliver similar types of information at the time and place of need that may not share similar barriers to entry with QR codes.”

Educator John Steltz blogs about his Top Ten 2.0 Tools for 2010 which he’s used in his classroom teaching. In addition to this annotated list he also shares another 18 applications which have also been used in his teaching this past semester.

Sharon A. Weiner, Professor and W. Wayne Booker Chair in Information Literacy at Purdue University writes for Educause Quarterly about Information Literacy: A Neglected Core Competency. In her article she discusses the recent report from the researchers at the Information School at the University of Washington titled Lessons Learned: How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age, and offers these takeaways:

• College students think of information seeking as a rote process and tend to use the same small set of information resources no matter their question.
• Information literacy is essential for lifelong learning and empowers individuals and societies.
• Our educational system should expose students to information literacy from elementary school through postsecondary education so that it is a habit of mind they can call upon throughout their lives.
• Collaborative efforts between faculty, librarians, technology professionals, and others can develop students who graduate with information literacy competency.

Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg have published an article in First Monday discussing How Today’s College Students use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research.

“Findings are reported from student focus groups and a large–scale survey about how and why students (enrolled at six different U.S. colleges) use Wikipedia during the course–related research process. A majority of respondents frequently used Wikipedia for background information, but less often than they used other common resources, such as course readings and Google. Architecture, engineering, and science majors were more likely to use Wikipedia for course–related research than respondents in other majors. The findings suggest Wikipedia is used in combination with other information resources. Wikipedia meets the needs of college students because it offers a mixture of coverage, currency, convenience, and comprehensibility in a world where credibility is less of a given or an expectation from today’s students.”

Free Technology for Teachers rounds up Nine Tools for Collaboratively Creating Mind Maps. Each entry in this helpful list includes a discussion of the application’s best features, cost, and usability.