The Alexandria proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning of 2005 states that:

“Information Literacy lies at the core of lifelong learning. It empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational and educational goals. It is a basic human right in a digital world and promotes social inclusion of all nations.”

Language students and any internet users now find themselves facing an exponential availability of edited publications online. As the 1st of July 2016, the number or internet users was estimated at 3,424,971,237 (http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/). It is as many users likely to add, edit, remix documents and artefacts. For perspective: ‘the amount of information in the digital universe would fill a stack of iPad Air tablets reaching ⅔ of the way to the Moon [157,674 miles / 253,704 kilometers] and by 2020, there will be 6.6 stacks’ states Gary Price (http://www.mediasourceinc.com/). However, there are only a few protectors fact-checking and analysing the web. Wikipedia illustrates this very well: as Amy Bruckman (2011) points out, ‘a popular, high profile Wikipedia page is the most accurate reference that has ever been created in the history of the written word’ because it has been checked and looked over by hundreds of editors. ‘On the other hand’, says Bruckman, ‘an article on an obscure topic may be relatively unreliable and any falsification or vandalism may go unnoticed for some time’. After-the-fact checking of all documents and artefacts is now the responsibility of each and everyone and especially of our students.

Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2014: 23) report that ‘[o]ur students must learn to ask critical questions about information found online; compare it to their existing baseline of knowledge (hence the need to have memorised widely accepted facts); and, where their baseline of knowledge is inadequate, they need to compare and contrast, or ‘triangulate’, multiple sources of information.

On completion of this unit, you will be able to:

• define key concepts pertaining to information literacy
• explain how and why evaluate documents and artefacts in the target language
• select resources for the classroom and design information literacy tasks for your students

What is information literacy?

Definition

Dudeney, Hockly and Pegrum (2014: 22) define information literacy as the “ability to evaluate documents and artefacts by asking critical questions, assessing credibility, comparing sources, and tracking the origins of information”.

Some useful links

How Large is the Digital Universe? How Fast is It Growing? 2014 EMC Digital Universe Study

About information literacy

The Internet is overflowing with information, edited publications and written artefacts. We have to remind students that even the most credible online documents are often provisional and unstable.

One way to show the importance of information literacy is to begin with the assessing, evaluating, and criticizing of spoof websites.

 

Source/attribution: DigiLanguages          Author:    Alexandre Jacquot