Friday, August 24, 2007

Information literacy for life

What is literacy?
Literacy—the ability to read and write—is vital to a successful education (or more than that)In a technological society, the concept of literacy is expanding to include the media and electronic text, in addition to alphabetic and number systems.
What is information literacy?
"Information literacy is defined as the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand" (The National Forum on Information Literacy).
Information Literacy is the ability to identify what information is needed, understand how the information is organized, identify the best sources of information for a given need, locate those sources, evaluate the sources critically, and share that information. It is the knowledge of commonly used research techniques.
An information literate student will be able to locate and use resources for classes through both the library and the World Wide Web.
WHY IS INFORMATION LITERACY IMPORTANT?Information literacy is critically important because we are surrounded by a growing ocean of information in all formats. Not all information is created equal: some is authoritative, current, reliable, but some is biased, out of date, misleading, false. The amount of information available is increasing. The types of technology used to access, manipulate, and create information will likewise expand.
TutorialA Strategy for Finding, Evaluating, and Using Information
First step: What do I need?
The first step in doing research or finding information is to clearly define your information need. At the Task Definition stage, you are asking, "What exactly do I need to do, and are there any special requirements for my task?
Step 2 :Information Seeking Strategies
What type of information do you need?
What kinds of resources will help you find the information you need?
Step 3: Location and Access
Where are the resources, and how do I find the information in these resources?
Step 4 Use of Information
Step 5 Synthesis
Step 6 Evaluation
Steps of information literacy
Information literacy skills are skills you will need through your life.
Big6 Skill Big6 shoes
IL Course Outline