In today’s technology-rich environment, physical access to information has never been easier. Intellectual access however, can be denied to the student who does not possess the cognitive strategies for selecting, retrieving, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, creating, and communicating.

The accepted definition of literacy has evolved from being able to read and write to the expanded and more elaborate ability to address the practices and outcomes of education in the Information Age. Literacy is referred to in different terms: math literacy, reading literacy, media literacy, print literacy, visual literacy, cultural literacy, computer literacy. Each literacy prescribes a particular process by which that content area can be more easily negotiated. But there is one -- Information Literacy -- under which all the other literacies reside because it is a tool of empowerment. Students who possess information literacy have a heightened capacity for doing meaningful, relevant work. "Regardless of where information literacy skills are employed, they are applicable in any school, play, or work situation."

From linear to hypermedia learning - Students move back and forth between information sources in an interactive and non-sequential way. From direct instruction

2). If teachers are to use information so that others can learn from them, then teachers must be information literate.

SHIFTS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING In an information literate environment, students engage in active, self-directed learning activities, and teachers facilitate students' engagement through a more adventurous style of instructional delivery. Students involved in information literate activities:  --seek a rich range of information sources;  --communicate an understanding of content;  --pose questions about the content being learned;  --use the environment, people, and tools for learning;  --reflect on their own learning;  --assess their own learning; and  --take responsibility for their own learning. These students feel good about themselves as learners, and they leave school feeling passionate about some content.

tudents and teachers make decisions about appropriate sources of information and how to access them

Information literacy thrives in a resource-based learning environment. In such an environment, s

There is increasing recognition that the end result of computer literacy is not knowing how to operate computers, but to use technology as a tool for organization, communication, research, and problem solving. This is an important shift in approach and emphasis. 

Successful integrated information skills programs are designed around collaborative projects jointly planned and taught by teachers and library media professionals. Information technology skills instruction can and should be imbedded in such a curriculum. Library media specialists, computer teachers, and classroom teachers need to work together to develop units and lessons that will include both technology skills, information skills, and content-area curriculum outcomes. 

Students need to be able to use computers and other technologies flexibly, creatively and purposefully. All learners should be able to recognize what they need to accomplish, determine whether a computer will help them to do so, and then be able to use the computer as part of the process of accomplishing their task. Individual computer skills take on a new meaning when they are integrated within this type of information problem-solving process, and students develop true "information technology literacy" because they have genuinely applied various information technology skills as part of the learning process. 

the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools.