I was reminded last week of a video I saw when I was in Grade 4 at Woodward Elementary School – the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest:
I remember being sucked right in.
Of course, the tools have changed. In recent years, Alan November has done a great job of sharing the web equivalents of the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest in:
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
Just as so many of us learned how to find the author, publisher and other pertinent information with books and magazines, these skills are more important than ever. I was convinced that we were winning this battle, but several visits to classrooms lately, and through conversations with students, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to do more to reinforce the idea that just because “Google” puts it at the top of the list on a search, doesn’t mean it is any more valuable that the other results. As we unleash more students in one-to-one situations in an era of personally-owned devices, information literacy is just as important now as it was when we learned how to find the author of a book.
Again, Alan November is helpful with this. Some of the skills he advocates for include:
- Learning How to Read a Web Address
- Finding the Publisher of a Website
- Finding the History of a Website
- Checking the External Links
One way I have seen this done (in a Grade 6 class in our district) was that the teacher required students using a website for a project to not only give the URL but also include WHO wrote the information on the site, WHAT the purpose is for the site, WHEN the site was last updated, WHERE the information comes from and WHY the information is useful for the project. This is inline with the suggestions that come from Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators.
Information literacy is not new, but the tools have changed. As the number of devices continue to increase, and we put them in kids’ hands at younger ages, we need to be sure that information literacy is a key aspect of our instruction.
cultureofyes.ca 
Hi Chris, isn’t what you’re referring to here critical thinking? I interviewed a grade 12 student in the fall who emphasized that teachers play a key role in helping students become critical thinkers. The Who, What, etc. questions you list are what he referred to as well. Access to information is not a problem – it’s a firehose of data, information, and via connected people, knowledge and expertise. Students for sure need to be taught and guided in navigating the sea of information available to them. It’s true that Information literacy isn’t new but I think the context is radically more complex due to the availability of and impact of technology.
I wonder what your thoughts are about other literacies or as I recently wrote about Information, Media, and Network fluency (http://www.shift2future.com/2011/04/fluency-in-technology-accelerated-age.html)? Information is only one dimension that’s been impacted significantly by technology.
cheers,
Brian
Hi Chris
Information literacy is not new but the tools are.
“Give them Google and everything will be ok” is akin to believing that giving every educator a laptop and an lcd will forever transform curriculum delivery and the classroom experience.
The technology should accelerate our students’ efforts to “find the author, publisher and other pertinent information with[in] books and magazines” but what we need to ensure (the instruction piece) is that we ‘coach’ our kids around how to survey and question their sources; how to decide what is important and what is worth paying attention to; how to put this information together in ways that make sense and have meaning.
When you visited those classrooms, how many of the kids could share with you their stories about how they were learning to research with various search engines; how many school agendas had “cheat sheets” about online researching (you know, those pages in the back of the agenda that kids usually turn into homages to the Gods of Origami!).
If we want change for our own kids (the urgency you wrote of in your earlier blog) we need to understand that our delivery models need to reflect our students’ very contemporary culture of learning (personal devices, ok, but they shouldn’t have to ‘figure it out’ on their own).
A good link that I thought I’d share: http://sites.google.com/site/wakelandhslibrary/websiteevaluation
~Cheers!
Thanks Dave – great link. I hadn’t seen that before. I wanted to expand from the same “test” sites we have all been using for the last five years – this has a few more good ones. I will be sharing this with others for sure!
Hi Chris,
Another great resource I use is Web in the Classroom from your neighbor, SD44:
http://www.nvsd44.bc.ca/Programs/Information%20Technology/Web%20in%20the%20Classroom.aspx
It’s very teacher-friendly, even for those who are new to using technology in the classroom.
Thanks Errin. I used this (or an earlier version) a few years ago – but forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder!
And if I recall, Chris, you are the one who, in speaking to a group of librarians and teacher-librarians at Cap U a few years ago, said, “The world needs more librarians.”
The work you describe is what we do when teachers bring their classes to the school library to work on collaboratively developed inquiry-based learning units. Teaching hoax sites is always so much fun, and there are many others: search “malepregnancy” for my favourite Mr Lee who has been anticipating birth for years now! In the context of curriculum, students learn to be critical consumers of information and are actively engaged in the processes of learning to learn and create meaning with a range of resources and tools and within increasingly rich technology learning environments.
Thank you for the work you do to support school libraries as hubs of teaching and learning in the new C21L contexts you nurture, inspire, and support. For more of the work we do with teachers, your readers may want to check our new Points of Inquiry document for C21L and Information Literacy, for use in classrooms as well as with teacher-librarians in school libraries.
Click to access PointsofInquiry.pdf
We were delighted to have the Ministry of Education from PEI contact us about this document and commend us for this work. Still awaiting take-up here in BC!
Hi Moira – yes, I did say that we need more librarians, and it is a view I still hold. I am convinced that strong leadership from formal leaders (principals, vice-principals, department heads) combined with leadership from teacher-librarians working with classroom teachers is the key to moving the “21st century” or “personalized” learning agenda forward. I saw this first hand more than a decade ago in Richmond when I worked with a great principal – Gail Sumanik, and a great librarian Gordon Powell. I saw it in Coquitlam where we had exceptional leadership from our department heads and two very thoughtful, forward-thinking teacher librarians in Sue Kilpatrick and Ron Hasselhan. I see it now in West Vancouver as well. We need information experts to work with staff and students.
Thanks for sharing the document.
Also, here is the 2-page CCRAP Detection worksheet we use in Vancouver secondary school libraries (locally developed) to help students first analyze the URLs as these can reveal more or less credible online sources, then discern the Currency, Coverage, Relevance, Authority, and Perspective of the sites that pass the URL reading.
Moira
What?!! Are you saying Spaghetti does not grow on trees?
If that is what Darren Straumford is telling you at the Riverside Cafeteria you may want to ask for a second opinion.
As information migrates, literally, into the hands of our students, we need to unpack the skills essential not only to locating credible and authoritative sources, but also to organising information and using it ethically. As Moira suggested, we can look at the BCTLA’s Points of Inquiry for a framework that identifies those essential skills. At Rockridge, we’re using the framework to investigate current practice and build on it so that we can ensure that information skills are introduced and mastered across disciplines and across grades. The importance of ethics in information retrieval is layered. Of course, it is very important to respect the work of others, but the real payoff that comes when we insist that students cite their sources is that we engage them in the process of distinguishing their own original ideas from the ideas of others. It’s messy work making sense of information. We need to value the process as much as the product. This will require a shift in traditional practice.
A few years ago, one of our West Van administrators passed along an article called “Plagiarism in the Internet Age.” It’s worth revisiting this article. The authors, Rebecca Moore Howard and Laura J. Davies, argue, “Using sources with integrity is complex. The solution is teaching skills, not vilifying the Internet.” I don’t think many of us are vilifying the Internet these days, but I do think we have some territory to cover before we can say we have adapted our curriculum and our practice to prepare students to navigate new technologies competently and critically. Thanks to the BCTLA Info Lit Task Force for providing us with a framework for moving the conversation along.
Interesting discussion. I believe that the information literacy is morphing into media literacy (including social media). here is an example from my practise
http://www.bestlibrary.org/socialjustice/