Directing information literacy in a digital (school) environment

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Directing information literacy in a digital
(school) environment

• James Henri
• Associate Professor
• Faculty of Education
• The University of Hong Kong
• SLAV 3 September 2004

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So what are the issues?

• What is a digital environment
• Who owns this environment
• How does that environment redefine school

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So what are the issues?

• What is information literacy what is an
  Information Literate School Community (ILSC)
• How does adoption of an ILSC redefine the
  curriculum culture

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So what are the issues?

• What is leadership in a digital environment
• How does digital redefine the TL role and what is
  understood by school library

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What is a digital environment

• Is this a question about infrastructure
• Is it a question about time place
• Is it a question about relationships

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Who owns this environment

• Educators or Entrepreneurs or
• Teachers or Students

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How does that environment redefine school
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How does that environment redefine school Past

• Isolation, Short Term Budgets, Classrooms, Class
  Teachers disconnection, Teaching, Homework,
  Bricks mortar

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How does that environment redefine school Future

• Connectedness, Long Term Budgets, Learning
  spaces, portability, Facilitators
  collaborators, Learning, Homefun

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What is information literacy what is an
Information Literate School Community (ILSC)

• Information is.
• Information skills are.
• Information literacy is..
• Information processing models provide
• The information literate school community is.

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• Information is NOT photocopy learning
• (dead or alive information)
• What is the highest mountain
• What is Emc²

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One of Einstein's great insights was to realize
that matter and energy are really different forms
of the same thing. Matter can be turned into
energy, and energy into matter.

• To find the energy, you multiply the mass by the
  square of the speed of light, this number being
  300,000,000 meters per second

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• Information skills are the ways we learn (are
  informed)
• In a traditional classroom what information
  skills do the participants need
• --The information skills in the digital world
  are dominated by visual cues not by text based
  cues

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• Information literacy is mastery of the processes
  of becoming informed

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• An information processing model provides a
  uniform scaffold and shared language for learning

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• Not all IP models are the same
• Prescription V Description

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• Kuhlthaus Information Search Process
•  
•  
• Tasks Initiation Selection
  Exploration Formulation Collection
  Presentation
• Feelings uncertainly optimism
  confusion clarity sense of
  satisfaction or
• (affective)
  frustration direction/ disappointment
• doubt
  confidence
• Thoughts vague
  focused
• (cognitive)
  
  increased interest
• Actions seeking relevant information
  seeking pertinent
  information
• (physical)
• exploring
  documenting
• Source http//www.scils.rutgers.edu/kuhlthau/In
  formation20Search20Process_files/frame.htm

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• Borrowing from Cooper Boyd(1995) The
  information literate school community can be
  viewed as a philosophy as well as a place it is
  a way of being as well as a working model. It is
  a mindset as well as a map.

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What is information literacy what is an ILSC

• A school community that places a high priority
  (policy, benchmarking, funding, and evaluation)
  on the pursuit of teacher and student mastery of
  the processes of becoming informed can be
  regarded as an information literate school
  community. Henri (2000)

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How does adoption of an ILSC redefine the
curriculum culture

• Learning what learning how
• (curriculum mapping process)
• Or
• Learning how and learning what
• (Process mapping curriculum)

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Learning what learning how (curriculum mapping
process)

• This has been best practice for decades and
  means
• Curriculum content Class Teachers are dominant
• Marginalization of process specialist teachers

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Learning how and learning what(Process mapping
curriculum)

• This is likely to be best practice of the future
• Learning how to learn whole school
  collaboration are dominant
• Photocopy learning a thing of the past
• Linkages to real world
  environments

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What is leadership in a digital environment

• Information leadership
• Information policy information literacy
• knowledge management

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What is leadership in a digital environment

• What is the focus
• When transportation moved from horse buggy to
  motor vehicle the problem wasnt getting a
  drivers license it was the redundancy package for
  blacksmiths

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What is the focus

• Are schools still educating blacksmiths

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What is the focus

• Being comfortable in the digital world
• Realizing it is the world
• Not hanging onto the prized icons of the
  pre-digital world
• Educating the teachers is as important as
  educating the students

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How does digital redefine the TL role Lets
consider the accepted role statements

• Curriculum Involvement
• Services
• Leadership
• Teaching
• Management
• Literature Promotion

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How does digital redefine the TL role Reward
what matters

• Leadership
• Curriculum Involvement
• Teaching KM
• Services TL?
• Literature Promotion TL?
• Management TL?

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Consider inhibitors enablers Analyse for
primary inhibitors and basic enablers

• inhibitors lack of time, confusion of roles,
  poorly designed learning assignments
  (busywork)
• basic enablers
• team approach to teaching
• understanding of constructivist learning
• commitment to lifelong learning
• competence developing learning strategies
• (Kuhlthau, 1993)

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How does digital redefine what is understood
by school library

• Whose library
• The library in the school or the school in the
  library
• - Collection profile
• - KM
• -Intranet
• - Staffing profile
• - Links to ICT group
• - Links to Curriculum group

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Leadership a matter of Partnership

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Principals should provide leadership
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Principals can provide

• Vision
• Motivation
• Celebration
• Forgiveness
• A soap box
• Resources
• CPD
• Policy
• Whole school perspective

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Teacher Librarians are able to Lead

• In fact everyone can demonstrate leadership

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Gain Principal Support

• Essential, but not sufficient for success

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Gain Principal Support

• How
• Expertise
• Linkages to school vision defendable evidence
• Planning
• Providing options

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Gain Principal Support

• What is your relationship with the P
• -Communication, communication,
  communication----early often
• What is the P getting out of the relationship

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Gain Principal Support!

• If you are an inexperienced TL
• -mentorship
• -networks
• -expertise

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Principal Influence Findings

• The five tasks identified most frequently as
  requiring significantly more principal attention
  by principals and teacher librarians across all
  participating countries includes

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• informs new teaching staff about the importance
  of collaborating with the teacher librarian
• encourages the teaching staff to invest time in
  cooperatively planning and teaching with the
  teacher librarian
• actively seeks outside school funding
  possibilities that can be used to supplement the
  library resource centre budget

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• seeks feedback from staff about their impressions
  of the quality of library resource centre
  services
• works with the teacher librarian to develop
  his/her personal professional development plan

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Principals and teacher librarians can

• have a powerful impact on the environments in
  which teaching
• and learning occur

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A close alignment among principal TL visions
is important TLs need broad based support and
will suffer if seen as part of factional
politics TLs must be credible and act as change
agents
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TLs who seek support of a senior mentor are
likely to expand their influence
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Gain Broad Staff Support

• Staff support has to be won because staff
  influence the principal!

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How can success be measured
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By agreeing about what is important.

• Policy
• Benchmarking best practice

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Suggested BenchmarksWhole School Focus

• The school has a set of information policies in
  place
• The school has adopted an information technology
  plan
• The school has an Internet portal. Learning is
  the dominant consideration in its design and
  maintenance

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Suggested BenchmarksWhole School Focus

• The school has benchmarked information
  competencies that are expected of students at key
  points in their school career
• Information skills are taught/learned across the
  curriculum and in the context of authentic
  content learning
• The process of learning from information - of
  constructing knowledge - is always the focus of
  teaching and learning.

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Suggested BenchmarksPrincipal Focus

• The principal demonstrates information leadership
  
• The principal fosters knowledge management,
  requires timely information for corporate
  decision-making, and provides the resources to
  make this possible
• Information leaders (ITC coordinator, teacher
  librarian) are members of the key curriculum
  committee

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Suggested BenchmarksTeacher Focus

• The school supports the professional development
  of staff with respect to information literacy
• Teachers demonstrate that they are excellent
  learners
• Teachers talk, dream, plan and teach as a team
  rather than as a group of individuals
• Teachers seek evidence that students are
  constructing their own meaning

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Suggested BenchmarksTeacher Librarian Focus

• A significant percentage of school funds are
  budgeted for the provision of information
  services
• The school understands and defends the role of
  the teacher librarian, as articulated in policy
  documents
• The school requires that the teacher in charge of
  information services be a qualified teacher
  librarian

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Suggested BenchmarksStudent Focus

• The school requires students build electronic
  portfolios of evidence of their level of
  information literacy
• The school monitors the information work demands
  that are placed on each student. Careful
  scrutiny is applied before students are requested
  to locate information outside school
• Reporting on student achievement focuses on how
  the student is maturing as a learner
• Teachers encourage student collaboration in many
  aspects of their learning

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Suggested BenchmarksStudent Focus

• Learning contexts are varied involve students
  in the meaningful use of a wide range of
  information resources
• When students are required to undertake homework
  that involves a step(s) in the information
  process, teachers consider issues of social
  justice, equity, the domestic demands placed on
  students
• Students are encouraged to provide constructive
  feedback to teachers with respect to information
  based learning tasks
• Students are involved in self-assessment

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• Final thoughts
• Communicate the vision
• Be strategic
• Insist on policy
• Play the teacher card
• Focus on learning not on the technology per se