TILW2.0 - Defining Information Literacy

Although I follow the Information Literacy Standards of ACRL, I like to use this definition of an Information Literacy Curriculum that was taken from “Information Literacy as a Liberal Art” by Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes (Shapiro).

• Tool Literacy: The ability to understand and use the practical and conceptual tools of current information technology relevant to education and the areas of work and professional life that the individual expects to inhabit.
• Resource Literacy: The ability to understand the form, format, location and access methods of information resources, especially daily expanding networked information resources.
• Social-structural Literacy: Knowing that and how information is socially situated and produced.
• Research Literacy: The ability to understand and use the IT-based tools relevant to the work of today's researcher and scholar.
• Publishing Literacy: The ability to format and publish research and ideas electronically, in textual and multimedia forms (including via World Wide Web, electronic mail and distribution lists, and CD-ROMs).
• Emerging Technology Literacy: The ability to ongoingly adapt to, understand, evaluate and make use of the continually emerging innovations in information technology so as not to be a prisoner of prior tools and resources, and to make intelligent decisions about the adoption of new ones.
• Critical Literacy: The ability to evaluate critically the intellectual, human and social strengths and weaknesses, potentials and limits, benefits and costs of information technologies.

I like to use this as a guideline to remind me what sort of literacies are possible from the various activities I develop. Sometimes you don't realize what unintended knowledge can be passed on through simple activities.

Shapiro, J. J., & Hughes, S. K. (). Information literacy as a liberal art. Educom Review, 31. Retrieved Mar 16, 2006, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html.

Tags: TILW2.0, Information Literacy, ACRL, Liberal Art, Libraronin