
‘Gear Up with Information Literacy’: NKU’s Steely Library will present a free workshop on July 9, 2019.
Common Sense education discusses the definition and importance of information literacy for educators in the twenty-first century (2018).
Information Literacy
What is Information Literacy? Information literacy includes the ability to identify, find, evaluate, and use information effectively. From effective search strategies to evaluation techniques, students learn how to evaluate the quality, credibility, and validity of websites, and give proper credit. Information Literacy has also been referred to as digital literacy or media literacy. Regardless of the terminology, be it digital literacy or media literacy, having information literacy skills are the fundamentals to thrive in a digital space.
What to Know
Today’s digital landscape offers young people unprecedented access to tools and resources for learning. The information that kids encounter, however, is not always accurate or high-quality. Foundational information and digital literacy skills, such as conducting strategic online searches, judging the legitimacy of online sources, sifting out misinformation, and recognizing advertising, can help set kids up for success as lifelong learners. For example, kids can learn to search effectively and efficiently with the right kinds of keywords. They also can learn that sponsored links (which commonly appear at the top of the search result list) are forms of ads and therefore not always the best resources. When young people also get in the habit of checking out an author’s credibility or bias, questioning whether a photo has been digitally altered, or cross-referencing sources, they can avoid being misinformed or duped.
Why Teach It?
Help your students … learn effective techniques for evaluating the quality and credibility of websites. think critically about the intentions of commercial websites and advertising. apply different search strategies to increase the accuracy and relevance of online search results. Too often, students who are looking for information online— particularly for their schoolwork — conduct an oversimplified search that leads to millions of results. With a sea of information at their fingertips, it is crucial for young people to think about how they search and what they find online. As a teacher, you can help your students develop strategies for uncovering accurate, relevant, and quality information — whether conducting online research for school projects or exploring their personal interests. Below we have included a workshop for teachers taking place at Northern Kentucky University.
‘Gear Up with Information Literacy’: NKU’s Steely Library will present a free workshop on July 9.
Students should be taught information literacy. They need to know how to find good and effective information for their projects and papers.
This article explains the ease of access to literacy and being able to know/understand literacy and how vital it is to our everyday lives. This helps us understand the benefits of the resources we have at school to improve upon on ourselves and continue to teach the next generation.
Our society relies heavily on technology and the internet, so information literacy is very important. I was able to take an information literacy class through the summer spark program at NKU and that class taught me a lot about this topic. We learned how to effectively search for information and do research without being overwhelmed. We also learned how to fact check our information, and how to find information that fits best with our topic of research. I wish that a class like that would have been available in high school because I always found myself struggling when doing research. I didn’t know where to start, or I would get too many results and have trouble picking the best ones to use which made me feel overwhelmed.
Information literacy should be taught to student at an earlier age. High schoolers would benefit from this knowledge so that if they decide to enter college, they already have the tools they need to do any kind of research and writing. These are skills that can be used outside of academic work as well, so I will be sure to try to teach my students information literacy and where/how they can use it in their lives.
After reading this article, I was amazed by how much I was missing! I wish that when I was in high school, I was informed about meeting like the ‘Gear Up with information Literacy.Like others who have commented, I believe that I would learn how to find the correct information and how to use it effectively.In the past, when I have completed papers or speeches, I was always shown a crazy amount of information and I would be docked points for some of the sites that I cited. This program needs to be introduced to students earlier in their school career to help them become more successful.
During the summer spark program of NKU, I was able to attend an Information Literacy class. My professor taught us that being information literate would help us to not have information overload. when just the click of a button gives us thousands of links, we can know how to limit the search to make it so that you have mainly scholarly articles. This class has helped me to be able to not get behind on a paper, or dread the next one. I now know that its not going to be hard to pull out a credible source from all of the non-liable sources.
i have always been bad at doing research for papers and making sure that i am using credible cites and information. the more you learn about something the better you get at it. so this article is really helpful when it comes to having students have a better understanding. the article is helpful but then using database is an old thing and takes longer then the internet. are internet has grown so much with lots of internet at our finger tips.
Before the invention of the internet, one of the only resources that students had was the library, where they were almost always guaranteed to gain a reliable source. Now, a simple Google search can grant you a plethora of information in just a few seconds. Learning which of these sources is factually accurate can be a challenge, which is why information literacy is very important in schools today. Many students in schools today are unaware of the dangers related to inaccurate information from the internet, mainly because many schools do not place much emphasis on information literacy. I hope that this subject is taught more frequently in schools in the near future.
I like how informative and honest this article was. I too am so terrible at doing research especially when it involves using a database. I have been to the library and been in some classes that show us how to use a data base and make things simpler for ourselves, but I still hate the database. I feel like it takes more work and time to find information when I could have found several resources in the same time frame by just using google. I think going to a literacy workshop could be helpful and teach teachers so many great resources that could then be passed onto their students.
This article was straightforward and to the point. It is easy to deduce the benefits of the information literacy workshop. You are able to know what it is and why you should learn such vital skills. It places a responsibility on the leaders of this young generation to protect them from memorizing false information.