Information literacy

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Richard Novak’s “Best Three Picks” for Assisting Students, Teachers, and Librarians in Information Literacy (IL): Overview of Three Bibliographies and Three Webliographies

There are many thousands of resources available from libraries, magazines, and web pages describing methods and processes for teaching and learning information literacy (IL) for student, teacher, and librarian environments. The use of these resources help insure proper documentation and critical thinking skills which contribute to valuable life-long learning. Identified below are overviews of this learner’s “Best Three Picks” of useful resources for information literacy from among the many bibliographies and webliographies available.

“Best Three Picks” Bibliographies

1. Brown, C. (2004, October). America’s Most Wanted: Teachers Who Collaborate. Teacher Librarian, 32 (1), 13.

Carol Brown discusses a qualitative study, she helped conduct on the factors that are needed for successful collaboration between teachers and school librarians. Teachers, school librarians, public librarians, and library science students were the make-up of the study population. Brown found five social factors to be a constant for great collaboration projects: a proactive team leader, a shared vision, open communication, mutual trust with respect for the other teacher(s), and self-confidence in ones own contribution to the project. Other factors were noted as being part of good collaborations such as flexible scheduling when possible, scheduled meetings and impromptu discussions on the project, as well as administrative support.

2. Koechlin, C.and Zwaan, S. (2003). Build Your Own Information Literate School. San Jose, CA: Hi Willow.

Build Your Own Information Literate School is an excellent source for helping students of all grades become empowered in the Information Age. Koechlin and Zwaan continue the work they did in their first book Info Tasks. This time they take Information Literacy (IL) topics and spotlight skills by three levels: Novice Learner, Apprentice Learner, and InfoStar. Each level has an IL lesson idea starter that covers the IL topic at hand. Their concepts help Library Media Specialists and teachers cater lessons to the skills of their students, and as they learn they can progress and try the next level’s lesson. The worksheets, graphic organizers, and collaboration guides are also an added bonus. To sum it up, this book is a must to have for every type of library, because everybody needs to know Information Literacy.

3. Squire, K., & Steinkuehler, C. (2005, April 15). Meet the Gamers. ''Library Journal'', 130 (7), 38-41.

This article takes the reader inside the world of computer games and computer game players. Computer games are the medium of choice for a majority of Millennials (also known as digital kids and NextGens). Therefore, information providers to today’s youth need to know what is happening in the game world. The reality is that Millennials are using information literacy skills in their games. Game cultures promote different types of information literacy, help develop information seeking patterns, and results practices. These digital games also incorporate research skills and collaborative sharing of information and tasks with others around the world via the Internet. How can librarians reach out to the gamers? Can they merge the library culture into collaborative dialogue with the gaming culture? This article asks librarians to plug in and see.

“Best Three Picks” Webliographies

1. Dodge, Bernie. (1998, February). The WebQuest Page. ''San Diego State University, Educational Technology Department''. Retrieved April 18, 2006 from http://webquest.sdsu.edu.

This site is great for getting information on webquests and templates for creating your own webquests for your classroom or library. It has a portal site that has examples of webquests that are sharable. Also the “What’s New” and “Training Materials” pages are very informational. The WebQuests Page offers educators and students a perspective into how powerful this relatively new tool is.

2. The Landmarks Project. (2000, October). Citation Machine. Retrieved April 18, 2006 from http://citationmachine.net.

This is a great tool for creating a reference page for school reports. Students can come to this site and put in their citation information and get a basic format for citing the source. They can compare this to the style guide they are using. It makes standard Modern Language Association (MLA – is the authority on MLA documentation style) and the American Psychological Association (APA) citations. It is great for teachers to use when modeling to students how to cite sources.

3. Schrock, K. (2002, July). The ABC’s of Web Site Evaluation (2nd ed.). DiscoverySchool.Com. Retrieved April 18, 2006 from http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/pdf/weval_02.pdf.

This article is an update to the one in Classroom Connect in 1998. It highlights the key factors needed to teach website evaluation to students. It also has links for more information and as tools to use with the criteria Kathy Schrock recommends. Schrock points out that websites that have full citations of resources used to form the page are very useful for deciding if a site is creditable or not. This is because the students can look at these sites, books, articles, or other material and compare the author’s content to the other works. It allows them to evaluate the author’s use of scholarship.

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