Enter the Blog

This blog was created as part of my studies - MTeach (teacher librarian) -hopefully here you may find some musings on education, libraries, life and studying along with generally witty and insightful comments (if i can manage any!).

Please add comments along the way. I'll be glad for any input, especially from fellow students and library lovers

Kylie




Tuesday, September 14, 2010

edition 14 - IL / IF and IL models

Into final assignment time ...
I was merrily traveling along til i read some of the forum posts -I had felt i was on the right path but am no longer as certain - the general confusion has confused me lol.

However, in doing more reading i was struck, as with when researching for assignment 1, how much of the literature we are provided with is from the 1990s and how some of the questions raised then, by people such as Langford still appear pertinent today - which led me to question if we are stuck in the conceptual phase of IL or are we simply refining the ideas of IL/IF and what it means in this period of changing technology. Obviously we have moved to the development of tools and processes as well, part a of the assignment is testament to that, but have these been applied in a consensual manner across schools or indeed across subject areas within schools? And have the application of information process models actually changed teaching practices?

Stripling says that IF is "now accepted in the field as a replacement for IL" but i actually think they are different - IF requires the skills needed for IL and can also encompass multiple other literacy types like visual and digital. However, i guess despite the "fuzziness" of the concept the models are designed to scaffold the process of learning from information - i thought it was interesting that Herrings PLUS model evaluation found that the more able students didn't think it helped them - which i guess indicates that these students have already internalised their own information models which follow the same basic principles (and are probably self-directed learners who don't need that level of scaffolding to complete tasks). It would be an interesting exercise to get students to individually record their own processes before introducing a model - in fact i wish i had done that prior to beginning this so i could see how similar/different my own model is to the professionals - perhaps i could create my own!!

Langford, L. (1999) Information literacy? Seeking clarification. In J. Henri and Bonanno (eds.) The Information literate school community: best practice, pp. 43-54 . Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Stripling, B. (2007). Assessing information fluency: gathering evidence of student learning. School library media activities monthly 23(8), 25-29.

Herring, J, Tarter, A. and Naylor, S (2002) An Evaluation of the Use of the PLUS
Model to Develop Pupils' Information Skills in a Secondary School. In School Libraries Worldwide 8 (1) 1-24

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