Scottish Information Literacy Project

Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service started filming last week on their Libraries R 4 Learning Project: Multimedia clips. As one of those approached, I travelled north last week (2nd and 3rd February 2010) to do some filming. It was an interesting process writing the scripts for the introduction sections on Information Literacy, Information Literacy in schools and Information Literacy in the workplace and then filming them. A new experience for both myself and the film crew (Sue Cromar and one of the network librarians whose name I have forgotten – my apologises to her). I now have a great respect for news readers, it is not as easy as it looks.

During my two day visit I also had a meeting with some of the Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service staff – Primary School Librarian and Early Years / Young People in Schools Librarian plus one of Aberdeenshires Literacy Development Officers (Katherine who is an English teacher on secondment). We had an interesting session where I shared information on the information literacy work I’m involved with specifically the LTS Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level) CPD Toolkit.

Katherine was amazed to hear that Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service is not just about books, they also have objects / educational tools – religious artefacts, puppets, costumes etc that teachers can use for lessons. As a teachers she is probably not alone in thinking that libraries are just about books. She was also not aware that tours of the service have been organised for probationer teachers and that several teachers have requested visits once they heard of the resources available from the probationer teachers. I made a note to myself to remember to include Library and Information Services as a resource for teachers in the Real and Relevant  CPD Toolkit.

I also had an interesting conversation with the network librarian at Meldrum Accademy about transition initiatives (primary 7 – S1) and also about my experience todate of information literacy in the early years specifically regarding my thoughts that information literacy involves all our senses (sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing) plus our memories not just reading of text from books and or the Internet. I think we forget about the power of visual images and how this helps us learn languages, remember / recall past experiences, knowledge etc.

An open letter to the Prime Minister re UK School Libraries has been sent by various organisations, including the CSG Information Literacy Group,  in response to the statement made by the Government about the online petition to make school libraries statutory.

CILIP supports the call for statutory school libraries

A small group of people from the Youth and School Libraries Joint Committee are putting together a Libraries for schools manifesto. The text below is the latest draft February 2010:

Every child, at every stage, is entitled to:

• designated library staff able to encourage ‘wider reading and reading for pleasure’
• a ’skilled library practitioner’ to teach pupils to handle ‘information overload’, lifelong learning and employers’ demand for ‘problem-solvers and independent thinkers’
• a safe library environment inside and outside school hours, with help, resources and advice 
• high-quality, wide-ranging, easily accessible resources to support the curriculum, carefully selected to suit their age, learning style and ability
• be valued as an individual, with reading materials ‘exploited by a knowledgeable person’ to support the whole person.

Every teaching team is entitled to a designated library professional who:

• understands the curriculum and their pastoral needs
• collaborates on curriculum planning and teaching 
• works with other organisations within and beyond the school

Debbi is well known to the project through her involvement as Chair of CILIP’s Information Literacy Group and LILAC (Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference) which is now in its sixth year and attracts international delegates.

Currently Deputy Director of Information and Learning Services at the University of Worcester since 2007 and prior to that was a Faculty Team Leader at Imperial College and Academic Liaison Librarian at the University of Luton. 

Debbi will start her new position on 22 March  2010 and we wish her well in her new post and welcome her back to Scotland where I’m sure she will be an enthusiastic active player in Information Literacy, Libraries, Learning and Teaching.

Just finished reading  A Vision for Scotland  report and identified a few items that tied in with the projects thinking and with the current project Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century plus the work of our partners:

• ‘it is necessary to start literacy programmes from a very early age’ (p13)
• ‘good CPD is an essential element of any successful programme, as it develops teachers’ skills, puts the teacher in charge and so helps build the necessary commitment at school level’. (p13)
• moving beyond basic literacy - “the need to move children beyond a basic level of literacy in order that they can fully engage with modern society and the workplace” (p14-15)

As indicated earlier, the Commission agreed from the outset that literacy is a continuum that extends beyond basic literacy skills. Different levels of literacy are needed; for example, for undertaking a modern apprenticeship, for most jobs (SCQF level 5) and for Further and Higher Education. In this age of information overload via the Internet, it is important that all youngsters are equipped with analytical skills so that they can understand not just the information that is provided but also its validity. Did the author of the information have a vested interest in persuading the reader of a particular version of the truth? Literacy is also not the sole responsibility of local authorities and schools. Literacy should go beyond the remit of formal education and become embedded across society in order to ensure continuous development. Partnership working, involving the public, private and voluntary sectors, is key if poor literacy across society is to be challenged. (p14 – 15).

• ‘If young people are to develop these higher-order intellectual skills, it is crucial that they are explicitly taught’.

Young people should be made aware at the outset what skills they are going to acquire and why they are important. At the conclusion of any unit of work, they should be reminded of what they have learned and be made aware of its application. This element of metacognition is a crucial part of sound learning at any level. It is no less significant when dealing with learning at an advanced level. (p16)

Govan High School (project partner) is actively doing this with their co-ordinated system of skills, called “Future Skills” see posting about Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Manager, Govan High School presentation at the 2009 Project Open Meeting .  

It is important that the skill is seen as being of widespread application. The ability to use knowledge, understanding and skills in areas other than the one in which they were acquired is essential. In some highly specialised areas of learning, skills may be needed for very specific purposes and have few applications in other contexts. The higher-order skills, like analysis and critical thinking, which are associated with advanced literacy, are not like this; they have everyday significance in much the same way as basic decoding. They are the transferable skills of the 21^st century. (p16)

Within the recommendations are the following which we would certainly endorse and support:

• A national strategy should set priorities for assisting children to move beyond basic literacy by improving standards of comprehension and higher-order literacy skills. This strategy should be informed by research and by good practice.
• Progress of local schemes should be carefully monitored and good practice shared in a systematic process of continuous improvement and professional development.
• Raising levels of higher-order literacy-related skills should be a priority objective within the Curriculum for Excellence development programme. (p18)

Jorum has now opened up for the sharing of resources, created under Creative Commons (CC) licences, through its new collection JorumOpen.

Jorum provides access to free learning and teaching resources, created and contributed by teaching staff from UK Further and Higher Education Institutions. Jorum offers two collections – JorumOpen and JorumUK, containing a wide variety of resources, including open educational resources that are freely available to all.

Copyright is a big problem so thanks to Carol Stewart for notifying me about news on the LTS website about New copyright proposals look to benefit educational and research institutions  .

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has opened the second stage of a consultation looking at specific amendments to UK copyright legislation, as identified by Andrew Gowers in his review of Intellectual Property.  

It is important that universities, schools and libraries have the tools to equip the students of today with the skills they need to complete their studies. 

The proposed changes will better reflect the needs of the modern education system by allowing the use of sound recordings, films and broadcasts which are not currently covered by the exceptions. 

The main proposals include: Educational Exceptions , Research and Private Study Exception, Archiving and Preservation Exception.

The consultation and its proposals are now available. Stakeholders are invited to consider the details of the proposed legislative changes and respond by 31 March 2010.

Have a look at the rest of the information on the LTS website plus engage with the consultation.

Sheila Webber has posted her presentation – International Perspectives on IL from the meeting on an Information Literacy Strategy for Wales on 30 November 2009 at Gregynogg Hall in Wales. John also spoke about the work of the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the lessons which Wales can learn from us his thoughts on the event were posted on the project blog .

Her presentation cover useful pointers for everyone and contains some amazing school librarian quotes. Worth a look.

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 1 class as part of the work I’m doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team – Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was amazing with lots of information literacy activities based around some of the CfE learning outcomes and experiences. For example:

Finding and using information: Early Level

I listen or watch for useful or interesting information and I use this to make choices to learn new things. LIT 0.04a 

The children aged 5 years old listened to a chapter (chapter 4 I think) from a book about an owl finding out about night and darkness.

The book - The owl who was affraid of the dark

They had to listened for a specific piece of information which they then had to remember. Questions were asked to ensure that they had heard and remembered it. Later on in the day they were each given a worksheet and had to draw a picture to represent what the chapter was all about. The teacher then went round each of them and asked them to complete a sentence with information they had heard. Some repeated the information exactly others put it into their own words. Whatever the child said the teacher transcribed it onto their worksheet.

Other examples of activities included:

• selecting books in groups to find information about a particular night animal that the group had chosen i.e. a fox, badger, bat.

With the help of the teacher reading the text the children decided on the 4 most important facts about the animal. Later each group told the rest of the class what they had found.

• art of the week where they had to look at a picture of a piece of art Rodin’s Thinker and say what they thought it was about. It was amazing to see then looking at it, thinking about it and then giving their thoughts.

I could go on but will end there. My thanks to Mrs Lisa Bonar and her class at St Margaret’s School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world. Discussions regrading the sort of things that would be useful to teachers regarding their own information literacy was also covered. It has certainly helped my thinking for the work ahead of me and I look forward to using this knowledge along with other experiences of Primary 2 and 3 to come in the new year.

This is my last blog of the year so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

The Winter issue 2009 of the Journal of Information Literacy  has been published.

Of particular interest is the Editorial by Susie Andretta   The multifaceted nature of information literacy: solving the Rubik cube puzzle. (1-5) 

The collection of papers presented in this issue positions information literacy in diverse contexts, implying that this phenomenon has finally permeated our social, educational and professional consciousness. This is in line with Catts and Lau’s claim that information literacy “needs to be considered not only in relation to education, but also in the broader context of work, civil society, and health and well being” (Catts and Lau 2008, p. 9). The diverse interpretations of information literacy presented in this issue are illustrated by a visual metaphor which has inspired the title of this editorial ’The multifaceted nature of information literacy: solving the Rubik cube puzzle’. Each facet of information literacy corresponds to one of the colours of the Rubik cube1.

This multifaceted aspect of IL is something that John and I have spoken about over the years as a result of our experiences and knowledge plus project / research work.

Of the articles within the issue three are written by known associates including:

project partners Jenny & Lesley

• Jenny Foreman, Lesley Thomson Government Information Literacy in the “century of information”  (64-72)

Audrey Marshall (John and I were external advisers on the net.weight project at Brighton)

• Audrey Marshall, Flis Henwood, Leslie Carlin, Elizabeth S. Guy, Tanja Sinozic, Helen Smith   Information to fight the flab: findings from the Net.Weight Study (39-52)

Christopher Walker. John and I heard Christopher speak about his PhD research into IL and parents of young children in the early stages at the LILAC Conference in Liverpool 2008. We have had several discussions with him offering suggestions and information from our research and experience.

• Christopher Guy Walker  Seeking Information: A study of the use and understanding of information by parents of young children (53-63)

All 3 articles support our experience that information literacy is not just within formal education but throughout life. They are published from presentations at LILAC 2009 (see also our blog postings on the conference – Some thoughts on LILAC 09, LILAC 2009 (The Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) Cardiff).

Of interest to IL and the workplace is K. Stuart Ferguson Information literacy and its relationship to knowledge management: A theoretical study(6-24). It explores IL and KM, and learning organisations as I did in my 2007 MSc Lifelong Learning and Development research ‘The role of information literacy in addressing a specific strand of lifelong learning: the work agenda’  . It also lead the project to further research in the work place and discussion with Annemaree Lloyd.

Other articles which I haven’t read yet but may be of interest are:

Andrew Whitworth  – Teaching information literacy within a relational frame: the Media and Information Literacy course at Manchester (25-38)

Nora Hegarty,  Alan Carbery,  Tina Hurley – Learning by Doing: Reactivating the Learning Support Programme at WIT Libraries (73-90)

Conference corner:

Peter Godwin, Information Literacy gets mobile in Vancouver  (91-95)

Book reviews:

Nick Frost  Book review of Andrew Whitworth. 2009. Information Obesity. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. (96-97)