LILAC 2012 part 3 Our Symposium "Information Literacy - just an outdated buzzword".

I have saved the best part til now! Jo Parker, Jane Secker and myself put on a fun Symposium " Information Literacy - just an outdated buzzword?" on the Thursday afternoon immediately after lunch.
I was worried that we were competing against 4 other events including a Teachmeet. Also immediately after lunch would anyone want to argue about the merits of Information Literacy?
We were very pleasantly surprised to see upwards of 50 delegates crowding into the room. But would they discuss the topics using the prompts we had devised? Also the room was in rows of immovable seats and we could not split them into groups.

No problem : the discussions when prompted were almost deafening!

We then each spoke for about 5 minutes :

Jo Parker gave a short summary of how librarians have changed their approach to user education, moving on to information literacy and the web, but was this enough?  Information literacy hadn't been very showy in the past, more like a female peacock rather than the full flowering male peacock. (slide).

I then took over and, disdaining Powerpoint, used 3 props. First the new edited book "Information Literacy beyond Library 2.0" which had been the starting point for the symposium (held up briefly and then thrown down on the floor...)but how to sum up some of the arguments?
Is there an elephant in the room now? Enter prop number 2 (Toy elephant) : there was an elephant in the room but it was not a single one. A better way to look at the problem of IL was to acknowledge that there was something very important around everyone's management of informatiuon : but it kept changing in its nature and no-one saw the whole elephant  : some saw the ears, some the tail, some the head.... There have been many attempts at a comprehensive term (multiliteracy, digital literacy etc etc) but perhaps the most useful way was to take a transliterate approach, which meant acknowledging overlap of literacies and that these would keep changing. Then when we came to talking to others about IL we would need to adapt our language and approach according to the discipline, level, and subject discourse and we would do well to put on a large pair of spectacles (put on a  ridiculously large pair of glasses). The existing IL frameworks had been too rigid but the new SCONUL framework promised more flexibility  and the New Curriculum for Information Literacy research by Jane Secker and Emma Coonan offered the kind of picture that that could fit the future.

Jane Secker then suggested that  information literacy should be viewed holistically as part of the learning process, and drawing on her work with Emma Coonan and the ANCIL ‘pizza’, Information Literacy should be customised and different ‘toppings’ might be more appropriate in different disciplines. However information literacy needed to be delivered embedded in the curriculum and at the point of need. She also saw information literacy as being part of helping students understand ‘the rules of the game’ and used the metaphor of chess, that by having the rules of the game explained it would not make them a grand chess master.

(For more about Jane's research see her other session at LILAC 2012.)

These little presentation created buzz so we set the participants to form informal groups off with the  first discussion point :

"If IL at your workplace was a ‘thing’ (like oup peacock or pizza) what would it be like for them?"

Then after a few minutes we asked :

 "What do you do?Share your knowledge of the frameworks you use with your group (and if you don’t use any –why not?) "

Then after a few more minutes :

"How far do the existingframeworks/statements you’vediscussed go in terms of expressing what is happening at your workplace?Any pitfalls? Gaps?"

Another few minutes and then :

"What’s our action plan?What should we be doing differently (if anything?)"
We  encouraged participants to tweet to #!Lbuzz
This took the place of reporting back from groups. As the groups which were formed varied in size, and there were so many of them, the normal report back just would not have worked. In stead we were able to go through the twitter stream.
 Here is a selection of the tweets :

.....................................................................................................................................

 IL is for life, not just assessment time

Info centric instruction should mean success lives on, and is not just about one off assignment success

Look thro the eyes of the learner to build ur IL framework. What’s in it 4 them?U can take a learner to the 

IL fountain but can you make them drink?

 Information Literacy as a bargain-basement – the TKMaxx of education

@touchthecloud Great use of crowdsourcing IL thoughts on Twitter – thanks for making it such fun!

 Librarian as personal shopper – taking the punters to the good stuff and telling them what would look nice
on them.

    
My action plan for IL. 1)Think. 2) Act. 3)Reflect. 4) Refine. 5) Repeat. 6) Retire

If it’s going to be pizza it should be a calzone – all the good stuff inside

 The elephant has the glasses on – but can it see? 

 Can I be first to posit the idea of the Digital Literacy Spaghetti Bolognese framework? It’s basically just a mess…

I don’t need IL, I just need literacy, I can’t spell Duck Billed platypus! Help me….

  

Different experiences, different institutions. Shared resources, know more about pre-he IL, less silo-ized idea of IL

 Hearing a real need for librarians to have a database of shared resources. Pointing them to your survey @jsecker [think that’s the OER stuff]

It’s a cocktail cabinet containing a Swiss army penknife to open the wine

 Don’t be mechanistic encourage enquiring minds

Do you want a dutch one? @AnnekeDirkx Grappige sessie waarin we de resultaten van onze discussies moeten tweeten

She also said: and we think the frameworks are a little but old fashioned

        We are using acrl or sconul frameworks

        Our IL is a small and spotty ladybug, a dutch cow and a restaurant menu

It is messy. It’s a dinosaur. It should be joined up. It should be holistic, not in isolation, engaging and campus wide. 

 Our action plan: create clearer smorgasbord of tasty options to communicate what I can teach

 It’s like Mr Potato Head

.............................................................................................................................

So what did we conclude?

Information Literacy will continue to evolve. It should not be looked at too prescriptively. It moves about and  is messy.
 The term IL is still the best label we have, we will need to adapt our language and approach according to the discipline, level, and subject discourse.
Librarians can get excited about it even just after lunch and we have a bright future helping our everyone to construct their information universe.

Here are the slides.

Framing transliterate learning through inquiry and participatory culture

This inspiring presentation by Buffy Hamilton, whom I much admire, at AASL 2011 asks how we are helping students create conversations about multiple ways of reading and writing today’s world?
It includes a number of definitions of transliteracy from various experts and proponents of the term. Having just done a good deal of research around this area myself I can recommend this presentation as a good indication of where librarians should be positiooining themselves to help our students in schools and beyond. Regret no time now to view say more : I shall return to this. I do admire such a great presentation but 148 slides may put you off...It wears me out to imagine how long this lot took to prepare! Some great images and captions though!

Framing Transliterate Learning Through Inquiry and Participatory Culture

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton

What is Information Literacy?

Mike Eisenberg answers some key questions in this excellent vodcast.He still sees IL at the centre of the literacies in the 21st century, with technology and digital literacies fitting in as part of the IL process. He refers extensively to his Big6 framework. It's a really useful vodcast for those wanting answers to the basic questions of what IL might be and how to start putting it into the curriculum.

How can you help Tom? A school librarian's guide for preparing students for University.

Thanks to my Twitter stream I came upon this presentation by Jo Alcock to a school library conference. The link between schools and Universities is crucial and any work here is going to be an improvement! I liked the concentration first on social networking : I always stray into those areas when first seeing new students. There is a virtual transcript of the talk here and the slides are below.

How can you help Tom? A school librarian's guide to preparing students for university

View more presentations from Jo Alcock.

Libraries in a transliterate, technology fluent world

This presentation by Bobbi Newman is hard hitting and has some great quotes.

I liked the one by Douglas Adams (of "Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy" fame) best :

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. • Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
   • Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
   • Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things. "

Libraries in a Transliterate, Technology Fluent World

View more presentations from Bobbi Newman.

Attention !

This article by Howard Rheingold on "Attention and other 21st century social media literacies" is interesting.
Howard Rheingold (howard@rheingold.com) is the author of Tools For Thought, The Virtual Community, Smart Mobs, and other books and is currently lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

He says :

"I focus on five social media literacies:

• Attention
• Participation
• Collaboration
• Network awareness
• Critical consumption

Although I consider attention to be fundamental to all the other literacies, the one that links together all the others, and although it is the one I will spend the most time discussing in this article, none of these literacies live in isolation. They are interconnected. You need to learn how to exercise mindful deployment of your attention online if you are going to become a critical consumer of digital media; productive use of Twitter or YouTube requires knowledge of who your public is, how your participation meets their needs (and what you get in return), and how memes flow through networked publics. Ultimately, the most important fluency is not in mastering a particular literacy but in being able to put all five of these literacies together into a way of being in digital culture."

Information Literacy in context

Miss Sophie Mac did a great post "Information Literacy in context" which emphasises the connect between their studies and everyday life. I have believed for a while that the breakthrough in public understanding of information literacy would come if there is an understanding that this is important in whatever task we seek to undertake. At a simple level we require to read the up to date bus timetable to get to work, or reliable health information on the web rather thana site that has a vested interest in selling to us.
She goes on "Within an everyday life information seeking context there are socio-cultural contexts to consider when planning IL training. For example, an academic library IL program might be three tiered consisting of: generic skills, subject specific skills, assignment specific skills. When teaching subject or assignment specific skills is there a way to apply an everyday life lens so the experiences can be applied to formal and informal settings? I believe we can achieve this by understanding the needs of learners and the socio-cultural context of their learning."

Pic shows the activity going on in our LRC over the summer!

Digital Literacy Handbook

Cassie Hague and Sarah Peyton have produced a useful Digital Literacy Handbook, for Futurelab. It is aimed at eduactional practitioners and school teachers in primary and secondary schools who are interested in creative and critical uses of technology in the classroom. Really useful for teachers and school librarians trying to influence teachers. With sentences lioke "Digital literacy supports th eprocess of young people becoming active meaning-makers" there is much here to warm of hearts of information literacy advocates.

Reading and Writing the Wotrld : School Libraries as sponsors of Transliteracy

Here is another presentation from Computers inLibraries 2010. This time by Buffy Hamilton, whose work I have come across and applauded before. She says :

In this brief talk at Computers in Libraries (CIL) 2010 on Monday, April 12 2010 she discusses how librarians can use the frameworks of participatory librarianship and sponsors of literacy to conceptualize the ways we can integrate transliteracy seamlessly into our library programs.

Reading and Writing the World: School Libraries as Sponsors of Transliteracy

View more presentations from Buffy Hamilton.

I must admit being sceptical of another attempt at solving the tangle of literacies and would the idea of transliteracy be helpful? The first few slides included the idea of sponsors of literacy are the delivery systems for the economies of literacies. (?) But it's a really good slide show with some great images and begins with the work of Deborah Brandt defining literacy as a "valuable - and volatile property"which can potentially help individuals gain "power or pleasure,[accrue] information, civil rights, education, spirituality, status (and) money." Schools and libraries have a key role "inviting critical and active uses of media that strenthen democratic potential." Goes on to define transliteracy as "the ability to read and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, tv, radio and film, to digital social networks". As sponsors of transliteracy libraries can close the participation gap. Hey I wish I had been at that presentation. This begins to make sense. This is certainly the most interesting take on literacies I've yet seen and all school librarians should take a look - this may be a real way forward but I still worry about labels like "transliteracy". Does it sound tendentious?

Transliteracy : take a walk on the wild side

I can thoroughly recommend Susie Andretta's recent paper at IFLA "Transliteracy : take a walk on the wild side".
Abstract
"In this paper we explore the concept of ‘transliteracy’ which according to Professor Thomas offers “a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the 21st Century [including] the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks”. Currently transliteracy is primarily the domain of Communication and Cultural Studies and this paper aims to position transliteracy in the professional domain of ‘practising’ librarians and within the remit of the library world. ..... Examples of transliteracy practice by information professionals will provide evidence that libraries are already meeting the challenges of transliteracy by crossing the divide between printed, digital and virtual worlds to address the constantly changing needs of the learners they support."
She concludes with interesting interviews with leading practitioners Michael Stephens,Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois (Tame the Web blog) ; Bernardette Daly SwansonReference, Instruction and Outreach Librarian, UC Davis Medical Center ; Sue Jennings, Outreach Librarian for the Lancashire Care NHS (National Health Service) Foundation Trust Library and Information Service ; Marja Kingma - Collection Manager, Collection Manager for Science, Technology and Medicine at the British Library.

Thriving in the 21st century JISC LLiDA project

This is an important study (click here)and the summary (click here)is well worth reading (I haven't had time to read the whole report in detail yet!) It set out to :
-review the evidence of change in the contexts of learning, including the nature of work, knowledge, social life and citizenship, communications media and other technologies
-review current responses to these challenges from the further and higher education sectors, in terms of the kinds of capabilities valued, taught for and assessed (especially as revealed through competence frameworks); the ways in which capabilities are supported ('provision')the value placed on staff and student 'literacies of the digital'
-collect original data concerning current practice in literacies provision in UK FE and HE, including 15 institutional audits and over 40 examples of forward thinking practice
-offer conclusions and recommendations, in terms of the same issues reviewed in 2

This is a mine of information about current UK HE practice in supporting literacies - the literacy frameworks, recent reports on digital learning, the innovative part played by librarians with digital technologies and the need for this to spread much wider to other staff. The complacency of students about their IL skills is noted : my own University of Bedfordshire is quoted here "it was a little depressing to discover that many students even at level 2 are still relying on Google for their information and that many of them do not see the relevance of information literacy to their studies".
Another point : "Many literacies are so deeply and tacitly embedded in subject teaching that academic staff do not identify their practice as literacy-based at all. " (Librarians could work with them to ensure that the necessary literacies are covered).

The report confirmed and expanded upon the challenges identified in the literature review:
- institutional silos, so learners often have several places to seek help with their learning, and cultural differences can make cross-service/dept collaboration difficult
-(often) poor embedding of literacies into the curriculum, particularly at the level of feedback and assessment
- (often) poor integration of information/digital literacies with academic/learning literacies
- curriculum provision tends to be one-off and cohort-based, rather than based on an ethos of personal development: central provision is more personal and developmental but rarely reaches learners when they are actually engaged in authentic tasks
-Academic staff perceive students as being more digitally capable than is really the case
- poor self-evaluation by learners, particularly in relation to their information skills, so voluntary services are not reaching those in most need, and skills modules are not perceived as relevant or important
Student expectations, student diversity and employability were the main agendas driving change in provision for learning and digital literacy.

They believe that information literacy should be widened to include or be supplemented by communication and media literacies. In their work they found that digital literacy was often applied to Web 2.0 tools while information literacy was almost always referring to digital content literacies.

They say :
"The agenda needs to be clearly formulated around informed and critical use of technology for learning. SCONUL's fifth pillar, 'the ability to compare and evaluate information obtained from different sources' seems in Moira Bent's recent review to overlap considerably with what we have called critical or media literacy: 'knowledge about the way the media operate, and certain processes which are particularly important in the academic context, such as peer review of scholarly articles'. Different disciplines demand proficiency in different (combinations of) media, and create/share meaning in different ways: learners need to both inhabit and critique these modes. Current information literacy models also tend to assume that academic ideas will be expressed (predominantly) in text. All the background research points to the need for learners to become proficient at creative self expression, and critical argumentation, in a range of media. This presents many challenges, not least in relation to assessment. In relation to digital technology itself, the point is not to encourage more technology use but to encourage more insightful, more reflective and more critical choices about technology and its role in learning. "

This is the key paragraph to me because it is the SCONUL pillar 5 which is most critical rigfht now. Libraries should not think only in text (and of course many do not : I used to be a video librarian once) and we need to start recognising that our role is to assist in the creation of and learning from material of all kinds.

Please let's have some comments!!