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    Teaching information literacy: Who’s teaching the teachers?

    Ewan McIntosh
    University of Stirling, Scotland
    http://edu.blogs.com

    For many educators, “information literacy” is just another buzzword with little meaning for their day-to-day teaching and the learning of their students. So far, it’s fallen to IT departments and librarians to teach students the intricacies of university email systems or library catalogs.

    Information literacy in the 21st century, however, is less about technicalities and more about the way we teach. Students learn in the classroom and outside it.

    Social software has created new ways to seek information. Less relevant today is the official reading list and the subsequent frustration when paper books and journals are not in stock. Far more relevant are the decisions formerly taken by the educator but now transferred to the students to make. It this viable information I’m looking at? How can I turn it into useful knowledge? How can I gain a greater wisdom in my subject? Knowing where to find knowledge and how to interpret it is where information literacy comes in.

    This screencast will explore some of the reasons why these skills are not being taught as well or as often as perhaps they should be. If taught, and not just caught, skills in exploiting social software can help student and teachers make better judgement on information and opinion and turn this into valuable knowledge. If caught, and caught wrongly, social software can lead to false information, narrow scope and less rigor.

    View the screencast (59:36); will load directly in a Flash-enabled browser.

    Download the enhanced podcast (59:36, m4a, 30M); requires Quicktime, iTunes.

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    Tags: Blogging, Information literacy, RSS,

    This entry was posted on Friday, April 7th, 2006 at 3:12 am and is filed under teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

    2 Responses to “Teaching information literacy: Who’s teaching the teachers?”

    Kristin Johnson Says:
    April 11th, 2006 at 4:08 pm

    Hi Ewan,

    Thanks for the comprehensive presentation!

    I liked hearing your viewpoint as an educator in secondary ed and that tie-in to higher ed, especially the difficulty you face in predicting at the secondary ed level what information literacy ’skills’ (for lack of a better word) students will need when entering higher ed.

    It makes sense when you say students will come to higher ed with high expecations regarding technology and pedagogy, and the statement that many faculty may have incorrect assumptions about students information literacy levels (is that a better word?) actually being higher or more advanced than they really are.

    This former paragraph basically summarizes the difficulty we face at the higher ed level regarding information literacy, and may be part of the reason why librarians have embraced the information literacy movement more than the classroom faculty. Perhaps the reason teaching infolit has “fallen to” librarians is the recognition by faculty that they really do lack some of the expertise expected by the students? Or simply because librarians are closer to what’s happening with information and IT and it’s a natural fit.

    I’d love to see more faculty embrace the concepts and theories peppered throughout your presentation. Any concrete ideas on how librarians can help/collaborate to facilitate this?

    –Kris Johnson, California State University, Chico–

    Ewan McIntosh Says:
    April 24th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

    Sorry I’ve not replied before now - my access has been limited in the past two weeks. I’ll put my thinking cap on and post on the blog soon.