Scottish Information Literacy Project

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.

Thanks to Lesley Thomson and Jenny Foreman (Scottish Government) for highlighting the following article in the Information Literacy Community of Practice

Article from the New York Times reporting on research sponsored by Google and developed by the University of Maryland and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, “aimed at discerning the differences between how children and adults search and identify the barriers children face when trying to retrieve information.” Lesley Thomson

A very interesting article and not just relevant to understanding how children search. In our experience re: training in the Scottish Government, sometimes adults don’t always understand the ‘multi step question’ as described in the article.

As for the ‘Wonder Wheel’ (see below) also mentioned, we have recently requested that our IT services enable this feature to be available in our training rooms so that we can demonstrate it. At present we are unable to view the ’Wonder Wheel’ from our desktops because Active X isn’t facilitated. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to use it at least in the training rooms in the near future.

“In May, Google introduced Wonder Wheel, a graphical search tool aimed at making browsing easier. (To find it, click on “show options” on a page of search results; it appears halfway down the left column.) For a search on “apple,” the wheel shows prongs pointing to “apple fruit” or “apple store locator” in the left panel.” Jenny Foreman

As they say it is an interesting article and there comments in relation to their experience of adults within the Scottish Government are interesting and useful. I did a search on Google for information literacy and had a look at Google’s Wonder Wheel (see link below) which was great it’s like a mind map of results. I also liked the options available for viewing your results:

• All results: Images; Videos; News; Blogs; Updates; Books; Forums 
• Any time: Latest; Past 24 hours; Past week; Past year; Specific date range
• Standard view: Related searches; Wonder wheel; Timeline
• Standard results: Images from the page; Fewer shopping sites; More shopping sites; Page previews; Translated search

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.

Email message that you may or may not have seen.

LILAC 2010 would like to remind all interested that the closing date for nominations for the Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year 2010 (A Joint CSG IL, CONUL and LAI Award)  is fast approaching (31st January 2010)! 

We welcome nominations from all sectors. Individuals or groups may self nominate or may be nominated by a colleague. The award is open to all working within the UK or Ireland.

The closing date for nominations is the 31st January 2010.

LILAC 2010 is taking place in Limerick from the 29th – 31st March. Further information can be found at: www.lilacconference.com/dw/awards/index.html

Happy New Year to everyone.

First day back in the office and I’m busy working my way through my emails. It feels strange to be in the office without John but as he said in his last posting although he has retired from the university he is still going to be active.

Just before Christmas I received some good news, confirmation that my contract had been extended to the end of March 2010 to enable me to finish the work still to be done re Information Literacy, Primary 1, 2, and 3 teachers and the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland so that is what I will be concentrating on for the next 3 months. It also means that I will be able to attend / speak at LILAC in Limerick 29th – 31st March 2010.

In the meantime I’ll continue to blog and add to the IL framework but  will need to look for a new home for the National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland) as it is important that this continues and that a number of people will be able to contribute to it’s evolution. Will let you know of any developments in that area.

The 100th blog which is in itself quite a milestone as we have made 100 posts in a little over a year, and my last as Director of the Scottish Information Literacy Project. Following the latest reorganisation here, I will be taking early retirement under the University’s Voluntary Early Release scheme and will be leaving the University tomorrow 18th December. However Christine has a contract until the end of March as there is work for Learning and Teaching Scotland still to complete.

I have every intention of continuing to be active in information literacy. I have been asked to guest edit a special issue of Library Trends, and I will be contributing to a couple of planned books. I am also thinking about writing a book about information literacy in non formal educational situations with Christine. I have recently been elected to CILIP Council and will be keen to promote the ‘gospel of information’.

I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all the project partners, collaborators and supporters for the valuable contributions which they have made without which the Project could not have been so successful.

 I am very pleased to say that Lesley Thomson and Jenny Foreman are taking the Community of Practice forward as an online vehicle to keep everyone connected.

As a CILIP councillor I will be fairly visible but I am sure Christine can act as a contact point where necessary.

It has been a real pleasure working with Christine over the past five years during which she has built up an impressive reservoir of expertise especially in the education sector which I hope she will be able to continue to deploy after the Project ends.

 Best wishes to all our readers for a Happy and Restful Christmas and a prosperous and information literate New Year. 

John

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)