by
Kristen Nelson, Pearson Skylight Professional
For many teachers, their memories of completing a research report focus on being assigned a topic, being sent to the library, feeling lucky if they could find more than one resource (with the encyclopedia serving as the main source), and writing up the report using their own words. Most frequently, their biggest problem was not being able to find enough information in outdated books and encyclopedias.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century. The amount of information available over the Internet, on the news, and in newspapers, magazines, and books is astonishing and overwhelming. Students now are literally surrounded with Web pages of information, CD-ROMs with interactive programs, books, magazines, and other multimedia products. Most frequently, the biggest problem students face is finding too much information and not knowing what to do with it. Before students can be taught to understand concepts and skills and be asked to use their multiple intelligences, they need specific tools to work with the large amount of information at their fingertips. Without these skills, students feel like innocent lambs being thrown to the information wolves.
Disturbing trends about finding information and doing research are developing in students. The top three are (1) students believing that anything from a computer is better than anything that comes from a book, (2) students viewing the library as a last resort, and (3) students being more concerned with the quantity than the quality of their sources. 'It is critical that students learn to find information from many sources and be able to analyze its quality relatively quickly. Only then are they able to move to the next step of using the information to produce a piece of work. These searching and analyzing skills are information literacy skills, and the sooner teachers begin helping students learn them, the better the students' chances are of succeeding in the Information Age.
In a time when many are crying for back to basics in schools throughout the United States, teachers need to carefully evaluate what the basics are for students living in the twenty-first century. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are still at the top of the list, but basic skills also include being able to find, analyze, and work with information. Teachers can no longer expect to fill their students' heads with content and assume the students are prepared for the future. Information literacy skills can now join reading, writing, and arithmetic as basic skills of the twenty-first century.
Michael Eisenberg and Doug Johnson (1996) propose six components of information literacy skills in their Big Six Skills approach* Figure 5.1 briefly lists the information literacy skills with the Bloom taxonomy skill that it relates to in parentheses. Teachers may want to post this list in their classrooms, because these skills need to be seen and discussed on a regular basis.
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