Spanish information literacy model for schools

An article (in Spanish) outlines a three stage model for information literacy in formal education. The abstract reads: "A three-phased model is proposed for addressing information competence in the context of compulsory education. The 3 basic phases are information searching, management and communication. A study of the current standard curriculum identified the objectives and content corresponding to the three phases, with the aim of assisting centres in establishing programs for each educational stage. The goal is to help improve the design of research projects that are carried out in the classroom as well as to develop information literacy using the school library. The text points to areas in which the school library can play an important role in supporting the curriculum for skills development."
Anna Blasco Olivares and Glòria Durban Roca (2012) "La competencia informacional en la enseñanza obligatoria a partir de la articulación de un modelo específico." Revista Española de Documentación Científica, 100-135 doi: 10.3989/redc.2012.mono.979 http://redc.revistas.csic.es/index.php/redc/article/view/746/827 and the 2nd author blogs about it Spanish here
Photo by Sheila Webber: autumn stairs, November 2012

Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet: PhD thesis

A French-language thesis on schoolchildren's concept of internet searching has just been put online.
Cordier, A. (2011) Imaginaires, représentations, pratiques formelles et non formelles de la recherche d'information sur Internet : Le cas d'élèves de 6ème et de professeurs documentalistes. UNIVERSITÉ CHARLES DE GAULLE – LILLE III. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00737637
I did not really spend enough time with it (considering my moderate French language skills) to give a good account of what it is about, but I think it is an investigation into 11-12 year old French schoolchildren's experiences of searching the internet, contrasting this experience with what the school librarians have as their goal for information literacy teaching. The latter are urged to pay more attention to the pupil's practice with information and technology.
This is the French abstract "L'objectif de ce travail est d'apporter une meilleure connaissance des imaginaires, représentations et pratiques non formelles développées par les élèves de 6ème sur la recherche d'information sur Internet, et d'effectuer un parallèle et une confrontation avec les pratiques de formation mises en oeuvre par les professeurs documentalistes. Pour ce faire, une étude qualitative, combinant entretiens semi-directifs et observation distanciée, a été menée au sein de trois établissements scolaires français. L'adoption d‟une éco-posture pour analyser la recherche d‟information sur Internet permet de considérer les pratiques de recherche et de formation de manière située, en tenant compte des contraintes opérées par les espaces d'action identifiés. Le sentiment d'expertise personnellement ressenti en matière de recherche sur Internet joue pour les deux types d'acteurs un rôle fondamental à la fois dans l'appropriation de l'outil et dans l'appréhension des séances de formation. L'étude révèle un écart important entre les pratiques de recherche ordinaires des élèves et les pratiques prescrites par les professionnels."
Photo by Sheila Webber: yet more anemones, October 2012

The Road to Information Literacy: Librarians as Facilitators of Learning

The Road to Information Literacy: Librarians as Facilitators of Learning was a conference that took place last week in Tampere, Finland, as a pre-conference satellite of the IFLA conference. You can see what the programme was on the website here: http://iflasatellitetampere2012.wordpress.com/programme/ (The photo of Tampere on the right is by tempuu_ on Flickr)
One of the impressive feats was to get the published proceedings produced by the time of the conference, although it is a bit pricey (Euro 99.95):
Gwyer, R., Stubbings, R, and Walton, G. (2012) The Road to Information Literacy: Librarians as facilitators of learning. The Hague: De Gruyter. IFLA Publications 157.
ISBN: 978-3-11-028100-2. The information is here: http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/181777

A couple of content links:
- The slides for the workshop from Jane Secker, Maria Bell and Katy Wrathall are here: http://www.slideshare.net/seckerj/ifla2012final
- A poster from the University of Padua "ABC of Information Literacy: info license for aware driving" is here: http://www.cab.unipd.it/novita/the-road-to-information-literacy-librarians-as-facilitators-of-learning
- Prezi from Andrew Whitworth: http://prezi.com/q5ihpwlwkp9p/from-information-literacy-to-informed-learning-professional-development-for-a-learning-organization/
- Full text of: Sormunen, E., Eriksson, H. and Kurkipää, T. (2012) "Wikipedia and wikis as forums of information literacy instruction in schools" https://www12.uta.fi/blogs/know-id/files/2012/05/Sormunen_Eriksson_Tuulip%C3%A4%C3%A4_final.pdf

There are pictures from the conference here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/taykirjasto/sets/72157630982989118/

Horizon Report 2012 K12 (schools) edition

The New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education just released the NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition (i.e. the edition focused on school-level education, rather than higher education). "This fourth edition in the annual K-12 series of the NMC Horizon Project examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative expression within the environment of pre-college education." As usual it identifies what it sees as key trends and applications. It sees cloud computing, collaborative environments, mobiles and apps, and tablet computing as the immediate adoption technologies. It forecasts that digital identity, game-based learning, personal learning environments and learning analytics will have a time-to-adoption horizon of 2 to 3 years. With a time-to-adoption horizon of 4 to 5 years are: Augmented Reality; Natural User Interfaces; Semantic Applications; Tools for Assessing 21st Century Learning Skills.
You need to register (free) to download the report from the NMC site.
http://www.nmc.org/news/its-here-releases-horizon-report-2012-k-12-edition
Photo by Sheila Webber: wild rose, Hailsham, June 2012

The ways that young people experience information

Marian Smith gained her PhD from Loughborough University in 2010, with an interesting dissertation about children's perceptions of information (I was external examiner at her viva) entitled "Young people: a phenomenographic investigation into the ways they experience information". Mark Hepworth, who supervised Marian at Loughborough, recently did a blog post in which he outlines the framework she identified, that could be used to guide information literacy teaching to children. His blog post is here: http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/young-peoples-perception-of-their.html and Marian's full dissertation is here: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/6632
Photo by Sheila Webber: Wildflowers, Maryon Park, May 2012

HUMANIT information literacies issue

This journal from the Högskolan i Borås in Sweden has some information literacy and learning articles in English (HUMANIT issue 11:2):
- Camilla Moring: Newcomer Information Practice: Negotiations on Information Seeking in and Across Communities of Practice
- Anna Lundh, Birgitta Davidsson and Louise Limberg: Talking About the Good Childhood: An Analysis of Educators’ Approaches to School Children’s Use of ICT
- Jan Nolin: Learning Technologies that Are Not Meant for Learning: A Critical Discussion of Learning Objects
Go to http://etjanst.hb.se/bhs/ith/2-11/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Crab apple, Sheffield University, April 2012

School librarians Survive and Thrive!

Colorado Association of Libraries has a web site (unveiled at the end of January, I think) Survive and Thrive! An Advocacy Toolkit for School Librarians. This focuses on advocating the 21st century skills:
Self directed learning - “Own Your Learning”
Collaboration - “Work Together Learn Together”
Information Literacy - “Untangle the Web”
Critical thinking - “Think Deeply, Think Differently”
Invention - “Create Solutions"
https://sites.google.com/site/caslsurvive/home - Thanks to Judy O'Connell, I noticed this via her Scoop-IT page.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Crab apple blossom, Sheffield University, May 2012

New Libri

There's a new issue of Libri (2012, Volume 62 issue 1). Articles include:
- Keller, A. "In Print or On Screen? Investigating the Reading Habits of Undergraduate Students Using Photo-Diaries and Photo-Interviews" (pp 1-18)
- Bankole, O. M., Oshinaike, A. B.and Banwo, C. O. "HIV/AIDS Knowledge, Attitudes and Sources of Information among Librarians in Southwestern Nigeria (pp 41-51)
- Tan, S., Gorman, G. and Singh, D. "Information Literacy Competencies among School Librarians in Malaysia" (pp 98-107)
The Libri website is at http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/libr (priced journal).
Photo by Sheila Webber: Daffodils, Botanic Gardens, Sheffield, April 2012.

Children searchers; First year students

Articles in the latest issue of the priced journal, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology:
- Foss, E. et al. (2012) "Children's search roles at home: Implications for designers, researchers, educators, and parents. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63 (3), 558–573. "This paper presents the results of a large-scale, qualitative study conducted in the homes of children aged 7, 9, and 11 investigating internet searching processes on Google. Seven search roles, representing distinct behavior patterns displayed by children when interacting with the Google search engine, are described, including Developing Searchers, Domain-specific Searchers, Power Searchers, Nonmotivated Searchers, Distracted Searchers, Rule-bound Searchers, and Visual Searchers. Other trends are described and selected to present a view of the whole child searcher. These roles and trends are used to make recommendations to designers, researchers, educators, and parents about the directions to take when considering how to best aid children to become search literate."
- Gross, M. and Latham, D. (2012) "What's skill got to do with it?: Information literacy skills and self-views of ability among first-year college students."Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63 (3), 574–583. "This study replicates a previous study based on work in psychology, which demonstrates that students who score as below proficient in information literacy (IL) skills have a miscalibrated self-view of their ability. Simply stated, these students tend to believe that they have above-average IL skills, when, in fact, an objective test of their ability indicates that they are below-proficient in terms of their actual skills. This investigation was part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded project and includes demographic data about participants, their scores on an objective test of their information literacy skills, and self-estimates of their ability. Findings support previous research that indicates many students come to college without proficient IL skills, that students with below-proficient IL skills have inflated views of their ability, and that this miscalibration can also be expressed by students who test as proficient. Implications for research and practice are discussed."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Forsythia, March 2012

Teens, Virtual Environments and Information Literacy

In the new issue of the ASIST bulletin (free online): Beheshti, J. (2012) "Teens, Virtual Environments and Information Literacy." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 38(3). http://asis.org/Bulletin/Feb-12/FebMar12_Beheshti.pdf
"EDITOR’S SUMMARY: As digital natives, the vast majority of teens are used to cellphones, text messaging, social networking sites and other forms of electronic communications and technologies. Though rooted in the digital world for many of their daily activities, teens lack basic information literacy skills for academic tasks and other demands. Specific instruction through the educational system may not be feasible, but it may be possible to build teens’ information competence through interactive virtual learning environments. Game-style virtual environments are highly motivating and engaging, providing opportunities for repeated practice and reward for persistence and achieving goals. A virtual reality library, VRLibrary, was constructed, collaboratively designed by young teens and adults, based on the metaphor of a physical library. Teens could wander the virtual space and browse links to age-appropriate websites presented as virtual books. VRLibrary was very positively received and succeeded at engaging teen users. A librarian avatar could be incorporated to provide help as needed with a user’s information seeking"
Photo by Sheila Webber: Winter tree, Blackheath, January 2012