Jun 08 2009
Kayaking a metaphor for facilitating information literacy
This idea comes from Mark Hepworth’s blog – “a kayaking trip: an adventure, that involves battling through rapids; avoiding whirl pools or colliding with rocks; having to navigate channels; using one’s knowledge of the water (environment), the kayak, the padel (tools); following an overall route or journey and so on.”
http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor-for-facilitating.html
I can see this appealing to a wide range of people, it certainly caught my imagination and I’m sure it will others. There are two other postings that continue with the theme and expand upon it to include:
- whirlpools of despair (I’m sure we have all been in these) – “not being able to pin down ones topic; not sure which precise question to investigate; unfamiliarity with the information landscape (where to go and how to use it) etc.”
- “People can be on the banks giving advice – emphasising the importance of other people as a source of information and knowledge.”
- “the barriers, the rocks, with common problems e.g. too much information, not enough, irrelevant, wrong type.”
http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor-for-information.html
http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/kayaking-metaphor.html
Thanks to Mark who is a lecture at the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University for blogging about this.
On LIS-INFOLITERACY list there has been quite a lot of discussion / contributions from people about the metaphors they use. Mark has collected these for people to see via his blog http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/metaphors-people-use-to-teach.html
They include shopping, cake baking, planning a dinner party and sporting activities. Reading this it just occured to me that you could probably add gardening to this – type of soil, effect you are after, knowledge of plants and their planting, growing, pruning or picking season etc (plder sister, husband and parents are all keen gardeners).