It’s that time again – Your School Library Online Conference #2, Information Literacy with Web 2.0.
We started on Saturday, and already I’m falling behind. Hopefully I will be able to block out some time each day at work to view the presentations, and then I’ll need less time at home to take part in the discussions.
I have been working hard preparing for this; I have a wiki presentation on day 6, which still needs a few things uploaded, but is basically done. I have to resist the urge to play around with prettifying it, so that I can concentrate my little free time on keeping up with the real conference stuff.
To whit:
Day 1: Information Literacy Assessment:
A Systems Global Approach
By Dr. Lesley Farmer, CSULB
This was the opening ppt presentation, unfortunately not as fleshed-out as we might have hoped, but it certainly raised the issue of how/whether/why to assess information literacy skills, which is a tricky question. Information literacy is so enmeshed with the processes that it is hard to deduct from an end-product, unless that product includes perhaps some kind of journalling of the steps of the task.
Another key point for me was the cultural/international aspect – can we assume that information literacy is global, and globally agreed upon? I’m guessing not, as different cultures place different values upon information, from total ownership at one end, to communal sharing at the other. International students at the secondary and teritary levels cannot be assumed to have the same understandings or skills as students who have come up through our education system and curriculum. – Although that even applies to the microcosm at local school level – a new student who has moved from one suburb to another will have different ideas and experiences of information literacy skills than those held by their new peers – we cannot make assumptions, we must always start with an explicit definition and demonstration of the skills we wish students to acquire/develop or use , and even more so if those skills are to be an assessable component of their learning.
Lastly, (although I am skipping a great deal of what was presented), I am feeling caught by the issue of overlap; there are more and more ‘literacies’ being targeted by educational researchers or professional development writers, and so many overlap or are interdependent with information literacy, escpecially in the digital dimensions: “critical thinking, technology competency, problem-solving, research skills…” (Farmer, 2009) and technology/visual/media literacies – I cannot define any of these without being aware of the way that they relate to information literacy and sometimes each other. I think that as ever we need to be aware of the ‘Big Picture’ – to have in mind our goals for our students’ education, and to weave these skills and understandings in as and where appropriate. In some cases it is easy and helpful to maintain a tick-a-box checklist, especially for areas such as ICT literacy where we are being asked to demonstrate our integration of a key skillset. In others these important skills are side-notes on the syllabus, difficult to assess or demonstrate in traditional assessment routines.
hmm, that’s a lot of thinking. Perhaps it is time for me to catch up on Day 2.
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