Now info lit is sounding like the new science.

Hey reading

Made another connection after reading my second article about info lit.  It contains a list of skills students are supposed to be using for information literacy, as listed below.  And while reading them, I thought they sounded an awful lot like the skills listed in the Science strand of the new Australian Curriculum.

Here is what was on the second article:

Student Skills and Strategies

The student uses habits of mind:

• recognize problems
• formulate hypotheses
• make good predictions
• ask important questions
• locate, analyze, interpret, evaluate and record information and ideas
• assume multiple stances
• apply heuristic strategies
• develop complex understanding
• extend understanding through creative models
• apply understanding to new problems
• Taken from "Information literacy: building blocks of...."

Here is what is in the new Australain Curriculum.  Go to the science inquiry skills and click on each one - a lot of parallels!
Year 2 science Australian Curriculum

The History strand has a bit too but does not tie in as obviously or as easily as the science strand does:
Yr 2 History Australian Curriculum

SOOOOO can we use science to cover/teach/reinforce our info lit skills?
Hmmmmm.....

Information literacy thoughts

So after reading just one article about info lit, a few thoughts have occurred to me.
First it sorta sounds like stuff I was doing in my early years of teaching.  I figured that the kids are going to know how to read or interpret more than books, so I was showing them how read posters, the phone book, adverts etc.  All stuff they were going to need to function properly in the world outside of school.  All before the www was invented.  SO now that we have a www, my thought is that we just extend literacy into these areas.  Include how to read and interpret websites, social media, texts, emails etc.
If I was going to present the concept of info lit to techers who had been teaching for ages, I'd take that angle - stuff the kids are going to need to know how to read and interpret to function outside of school and not get ripped off.
Second trying to find a definition for info lit sounds very similar to finding a definition for the role of a TL - they're a great, research-backed and you'd better have it, but exactly what they are or do is still a bit of a mystery!

The Laptop Fallacy - dense article re info lit

So what's information literacy then?

OK, before I have done any readings here is an attempted definition:
Information literacy being able to access, interpret and make decisions about the usefulness of information.

So therefore you will need to be able to:

1. get to the information.  This may mean books, posters, Internet, online, talking to people.  All sorts of places.  Can you get to the info?
2. figure out what the info is saying. 
3. Do all those higher-order processing skills like evaluate, interpret, classify - decide if this info is what you want or not.

So there we go.

So let's see if this changes as I start reading a bit more.

Thought on Inquiry based learning

I wonder....way back when I did my teaching degree, we were taught that the best learning occurred when the student thought they had made a new discovery or learnt something new by themselves.  In fact, the teacher had been in the background all the time, guiding and directing the student to take a certain path, blocking off certain ways, opening up other ways, so the student ended up about where the teacher had intended they be all along.  If the teacher was successful, the student doesn't see what the teacher has been doing in the background - they think they've done it all on their own and have this "new discovery".  This learning sticks, because the student thinks it's "theirs", they found it, they discovered it. 

I see parallels with inquiry based or constructivist learning.  Students think they are making their own discoveries, but in reality it is the teacher who is setting up the learning opportunities, guiding and directing.

Stuff in common? - I am inclined to think so.

First assignment in, Legos and Sandboxes

Well I am feeling very proud of myself - first assignment in for my Masters.  First tertiary paper in 15 odd years or so.  It did give me quite a feel for what is possible for teacher librarians.  i particularly liked an article by Bob Hassett - Playing with Legos in the Sandbox and other Uses For  Library.  Love the way he practically and realistically says we need to take a cold hard look at what a library does and "make re-invention continuous" (p.24). And then the bit where he quotes Paul Miller who says the library should be like Lego - build the model you want, not the one on the box.  Moving beyond the walls of the library, and letting people play with information, to build with it, create with it.

Makes me think more of a community library then a school library though.  People who come into a community library are there because they want to be - they may have a goal in mind or they may not.  But they are there and are open to using whats in the library.

However, a school library faces the challenge of actually getting students in, or getting the info to the students.  Plus, probably a lot of the clients in the school library are there because they HAVE to be - they have an assignment, they need something to read, the teachers there need a new resource, poster or idea.  Much less voluntary attendance in a school library - so I guess this is when you have to take it beyond the walls.  Community library patrons know they have a need - that's why they are there.  But students and teachers may not look to the library as a port of call and may rely on Google, thinking that will answer every question everybody ever has in the entire world. 

Hmmm.  Would rather work in a community library then.

However, love this quote at from the article: -
"The Library is a sandbox...a space where friends and strangers come together in community, to try things out and play with things and smash things together, and nobody gets hurt and nothing gets broken (and when we do we say we're sorry and put things back together and keep playing)." (p. 25)