Information Literacy

Information literacy can be generally defined but can also vary depending on opinion.  I think of information literacy as your knowledge of common research techniques.  It is the ability to know what info you need, understand it, identify and locate the best source, evaluating the source, and sharing the source.  That is how I define it, but there is no exact definition because there are different ways to look at it.

There are definitely ways to teach your students how to be information literate.  Not only should you go over the basic guild lines and walk them through how to find sources that have legitimate information, but you should also incorporate information literacy whenever using the internet to find information so your students have lots of practice evaluating different websites and sources.  Teaching these skills that are needed for information literacy cannot just be taught once because it will go in one ear and out the other.  These skills need to be encouraged over and over to ensure that students know how to use them. These skills are things like identifying what to search, understanding what you are searching, identifying and locating the best source available, evaluating whether the source is legitimate or not, and using or sharing the information.

We can prepare the students to the best of our ability to use technology safely and to use the internet to find true information but as technology evolves and continues to improve the things taught will need to change too.  We can try to prepare them for the technology we have now but it will keep changing and the things they learn now may not matter very much as the technology improves.  So, can we prepare students to be effective users of the most powerful medium?  We can attempt to provide them with the knowledge to be effective users of what we have to work with now, but as teachers we will constantly have to adapt to all of the changes being made.  We can only teach them so much before it all changes.