Information literacy
One of the themes of BlogWalk was the idea of information literacy - that people need to know how to find and critically evaluate information. Being a discussion of blogging and social software, several people expanded this to include the idea that we also have to know how to find and critically evaluate the people who might help us get to the information we need. For some reason, I am seeing reference to this idea all over.
Steve Dembo, a BlogWalk attendee, talked about the importance of teaching kids the difference between scholarship and cheating in The Internet is not an Excuse for Allowing Students to Cheat. Kids need to be shown how to use the Internet for research, just as we were shown how to use encyclopedias and other reference material.
Dave Pollard's post today is Not Search, Re-Search, in which talks about research being a key part of the process of exposition that is central to learning, the scientific method
Exposition consists of (a) assembling pertinent facts and information, (b) using analysis and inference to extract meaning from these facts and information, and (c) composing a coherent and compelling statement of the meaning you have discovered. The process is iterative: In doing steps (b) and (c) you often have do go back and get more facts and information.
The February 2005 issue of KMWorld that arrived in the mail today has a cover article In praise of knowledge workers by Jonathan Spria that has some fantastic quotes:
"Today, the knowledge worker who makes a difference is less a knower than a learner and applier," notes Mike Wing, IBM's (ibm.com) VP for strategy.
Jeff Raikes, Microsoft group VP, Information Worker Business, observed that there "is a global change happening in the way we work--a need to be more responsive and more connected to people and information, and a move away from the desk, the office and traditional hours. ..."
That second quote also dovetails into the morning discussion about the nature of work and the enterprise.
In case you need more Information Literacy information, there is an Information Literacy Weblog. The University of Texas offers a Texas Information Literacy Tutorial for the uninitiated. The National Forum on Information Literacy might be helpful.
2 Comment(s)
Of course it is. I probably should have made that clearer in my post. I love librarians. So much so that my wife is a librarian, amongst her many other qualities. I've been party to a number of conversations around the idea. One of my favorites: are librarians responsible for educating on information literacy, or do they only provide the service?
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Information literacy? That's a library term!!!
Absolutely right. It's amazing how people get out of college not knowing how to do research or cite resources.
Your readers can, of course, go to their local corporate, university, or public library and get help! There may be classes or they may be able to schedule time with a professional librarian. In my org, I'll run over to someone's desk in a heartbeat if they need me :) I teach this stuff all the time.