Monday 19 January 2009

Information Literacy and Web 2.0 seminar

Sarah Whittaker and Alan Cann have undertaken a project at University of Leicester "Using Web 2.0 to Cultivate Information Literacy via Construction of Personal Learning Environments".
This was done with first year medical students learning about medical ethics, and third year students on medical ethics, law and human rights. On Wednesday 14 Jan. they ran a live TAN session to outline and promote the outcomes.

"The aim is to explore information literacy that incorporates Wikipedia, YouTube and ‘Beyond Google’ for all undergraduate students. We hope to be able to gauge opinions and expectations from other staff.
Library staff should continue to develop their understanding of web 2.0 tools and how they can utilize them to promote information literacy across the University.
The library will continue to develop librarians’ roles as their future depends on the ability to build relationships, and add value to external tools such as Google Scholar. Web 2.0 can facilitate this, but this requires a change of culture for librarians and academics.
Students are generally reluctant to change their habits unless there is a clear tangible benefit to them. If we believe information literacy skills are worth developing, we must make them a requirement not an added extra."
Alan Cann posts about the TAN session on his blog "Science of the Invisible". Around 40 people attended the face to face session with a number of people contributing online via Twitter.
A very interesting project which is likely to present at LILAC 2009.

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