SLO 3. The student applies and values user education principles in the teaching of information literacy.
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| False quote. Source |
The Internet--more specifically, Google--is an amazing tool. However, it is a tool that must be used to gain information; it is not the end-all, magical solution to all research questions. One of the amazing things about the Internet is accessibility. At least right now, most websites are free! Millions of results and possible answers to research questions are right at our fingertips! Also, most websites are free. Virtually anyone can publish their own research and experiences. What an enlightened time in which we live!
Well . . . kind of. The advantages of the Internet are also, in many ways, disadvantages. All information is available, true, but the majority of websites do not have fact-checkers or editors. And what is true anyway? The president of the United States himself routinely calls researched news articles with which he disagrees "FAKE NEWS." How are we as librarians supposed to teach information literacy in a world with so much, well, information?
"We were guaranteed a free press, we were not guaranteed a neutral or true press," claims Valenza (2016) in his blog post about teaching information literacy. His focus, as well as a Stanford Graduate study in 2016, is on students: how can high school and college students improve their information literacy skills? How can we as teachers and librarians, help students NOT get duped by unreliable sources?
Information Literacy work in the MLIS Program
My first reflection about Information literacy was a paper called The Fake News Media is Out of Control! (Eash, Nov 13, 2017) in which I write:
Fake news has been around for much longer than the last couple of years, and the president’s claim to have invented it, is, well—fake news. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s website, the term fake news has been around for at least 125 years, citing examples of headlines from 1890’s newspapers (Merriam-Webster, 2017).
Fake news is not a new problem, although I think the argument can be made that the Internet and especially social media exacerbates the problem.
I approached this in a humorous way in a reflection paper I wrote entitled How Do You Evaluate Information? (Eash, Nov. 21, 2017):
RU: Okay, here you go: “JEFF FOXWORTHY HUMILIATES OBAMA SO BADLY The Whole Damn INTERNET GOES WILD!” (CF, 2017).
ME: . . .What kind of website uses cuss words in its headlines? Anyway, back to my lesson in information evaluation. The headline would immediately raise my suspicions, regardless of the grammar and punctuation, because it is just too editorialized. And then when I read the content of the article, it sounds even more suspicious. In fact, it seems to be an essay in the style of Jeff Foxworthy, and Obama, despite being a prominent part of the headline, is not even mentioned in the article (Christophans, n.d., CF, 2017). The articles do list sources for the essay—but one source leads to a 404 error and the other leads to the exact same article on a page called Patriot Hangout (2017), which has even less information than the original site.
Several unrelated political posts later:
ME: I am not sure that the “deep state” is that organized, Uncle, and I would like to get back on topic. . .
I also created a video called Before You Share that Facebook Video: An Introduction to Information Literacy which goes through an example website and shows how to debunk it.. Another related video is WWLD?, which is an exercise for librarians to use as a way to roleplay how to deal with patrons with outdated views.
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| Screenshot from the Information Literacy video |
Information Literacy work outside of the MLIS Program
Before I joined the MLIS program, I was an eighth grade English teacher. I stressed all the time the importance of evaluating Internet sources before using them in a research paper. I did not allow the students to use Wikipedia, for example, but I encouraged them to use the sources at the bottom of the Wikipedia articles.
One assignment that was popular among my students was an urban legend folklore assignment. I would give them copies of urban legends that had been either email forwards or Facebook posts, and they would have to evaluate the stories and guess which one of stories was true. I gave them this worksheet for hints about how to analyze the stories. The stories were numbered and chosen at random in the packets. Each group would have at least one true story among the four that I gave them. They were allowed to check their answers on Snopes the next day. Here are two versions of the answer sheets I used with the students. I also gave my students this worksheet to use to evaluate Internet sources.
I have not been able to teach any information literacy to adults yet, but I plan to have posters and visual displays in my library and maybe even have some informational videos available. Teaching adult education computer research classes is also something that I would be interested in.
Weaknesses of Information Literacy and the Future
Biggest weakness? The political and social divide in which we live. The Internet, social media, and even politicians have muddled the truth so much that many people will only trust information when it comes from certain sources, even if those sources have been proven to be false or unreliable. Calmly presenting information and facts has been my method for conquering this in the past, but I am not sure how this will bade for the future. Unfortunately, I do no see that issue going away anytime soon. In fact, I see the divide getting wider and deeper.
In Conclusion
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| Information literacy graphic Source |
Information literacy is not easy and not quick to teach, and it needs to be reinforced frequently. This is not something that librarians can be passive about; they must be active participants in the teaching of Information Literacy.
And I'd like to end with a quote from my paper about Information Overload (Eash, Sept 14, 2017):
I decide to Google “Information Overload” to give me some ideas. Over four million results appear, and the titles of the articles on the first page include:
- “Information Overload: why it matters and how to combat it”
- “10 steps to conquering Information Overload”
- “Death by Information Overload”
- “Why the modern world is bad for your brain”
- “What is Information Fatigue Syndrome?”
I click on a few of the articles, but rather than giving me ideas of what exactly information overload is, most of them just give advice about prioritizing emails and texts and Facebook posts and Twitter feeds, and then statistics are thrown at me about how much media the average adult consumes in a day, and then . . .I AM SUFFERING FROM INFORMATION OVERLOAD WHILE RESEARCHING INFORMATION OVERLOAD.
The struggle is real.
Return to Capstone, or click on other SLOs below:
1. Ethics
2. Research
3. Information Literacy
4. Communities
5. Professional Development
6. Technology
7. Marketing
8. Collaboration
Click on the picture to return to
Jen Reads the Rainbow
Jen Reads the Rainbow
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