ADE634

The mission of the  National Forum on Information Literacy is to promote and mainstream information literacy at home and abroad.  In doing so, we provide programmatic research and workforce development training activities to a broad spectrum of constituencies in the following areas (1) education and learning, (2) business and economic interests, (3) health and wellness, and (4) government and citizenship.

You might think that I would respond by saying, "A great library is a great big library." But actually, I think a great library is one that stimulates curiosity.

Based on how Google ranks search results, typing in a question will be more likely to bring back pages with a question for a title.

So I have students write down their questions and teach them how to mark them up to create queries, the first step being to identify the significant words.

Nouns frequently make good search terms, so students can start by drawing the people, places, and things in their questions.

Make informed decisions. Information literacy will help your children acquire relevant information and filter out biased or unreliable information

  Encourage, support, and guide your children in exploring their interests. Point them to various resources—such as printed materials, videos, and computers—that they can use to find out about the things that interest them and to communicate their ideas and feelings.

Use "The Big Six" to help your children with their homework. Help them (1) determine what is expected from their homework assignments, (2) identify the resources they will need to complete the tasks, (3) locate and access the needed resources, (4) read or use the available information, (5) apply the information to the tasks, and (6) evaluate the quality of their final product. In addition to helping your children master subject-area content, "The Big Six" helps them develop information problem-solving skills

Literacy in the 21st century is worlds away from past processes of defining and interpreting information. The new age of digital technology is redefining the ways we find, evaluate and process concepts. Information literacy—how we identify, locate, and evaluate information—is a crucial skill in all disciplines and levels of education.

I’m recycling a couple of videos that I have posted in the past, mostly because I believe that they’re worth watching again.  These videos – the original higher ed version of “A Vision of Students Today” by Mike Wesch, the spin-off , called “A Vision of K-12 Students Today”, and “The Networked Student”, created by Wendy Drexler‘s high school students  – bring to mind many thoughts that I find both challenging and encouraging.  Hopefully you will, too.