What kind of assignments are your children bringing home? Does the emphasis appear to be on rote drill and practice of basic skills demonstrated by circling or underlining responses and filling in blanks? How often is your child asked to interpret information provided in a chart, graph, map, picture or paragraph of text? Even more to the point, how often are they required to justify their answers by identifying supporting information from a resource? Are they asked to explain something they have read in their own words in order to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or relationship?
The nature of an assignment, to a large extent, determines the quantity and nature of thinking required by the student to complete it. Assignments that require students to become "information literate," that is able to locate, interpret, organize and share information in a meaningful way, provide experiences which help prepare students to become able thinking, productive citizens and life long learners. It is to this end that national information literacy guidelines were developed.
What are the Information Literacy Standards?
Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning is the latest in a long series of guidelines developed by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association of Educational Communications and Technology. The guidelines provide teachers and library media specialist direction as they design learning activities to prepare students for a successful future in the Information Age.
The guidelines identify nine standards and identify skills, behaviors, and attitudes students need to develop to become successful citizens and lifelong learners. The first three standards focus on the ability to access, evaluate and use information to meet an identified need. The next three focus on developing independent learning. In other words choosing to apply information literacy skills and doing quality work when seeking information and generating knowledge. The final category of standards relates to the development of social responsibility and ethical behaviors in the use of information, including recognition of the importance of information to a democratic society. All nine standards are worded in terms of behaviors and attitudes a student should demonstrate whenever they are locating, organizing, sharing, or in any way interacting with information.
What does this mean for your child?
There is no textbook for life, and schools can no longer define success in terms of student learning of a predetermined set of facts. Schools need to educate students to cope with a future of constantly changing needs and information. The Information Literacy Standards provide a mechanism for helping students become responsible users of information for both academic and recreational uses.
All across the country, the educational reform movement has encouraged a change in the way teachers and students interact. Traditionally the teacher was viewed as the source of most, if not all, necessary information, as well as being the decision maker about what should be learned. More and more the teacher is becoming a coach encouraging students to generate questions and discover the underlying facts, concepts and relationships which serve as the foundation for real world decision making.
As a result, students have the opportunity to develop the necessary skills to locate, collect, organize, and present information; to evaluate information for its relevance, accuracy and possible bias; and to adopt ethical behaviors related to the use of information. Using these skills enables them to be successful in whatever direction their lives might turn. They will be able to find the answer for themselves rather than being at the mercy of others who provide pre-packaged selected information related to a topic or issue.
At the most basic level, students need to be able to use guide words, subheadings and indexes to locate specific facts to answer who, what, when, why and where type questions such as "What is a community?" or "Who founded your town and when?" It is important that all students be exposed to more challenging questions, which require greater skill in locating and interpreting information, such as "What factors cause towns/cities to develop where they do?" or "What features do most capitol cities share and why?"
True information problem solving activities involve identifying a plan of action or a decision which is supported by a foundation of facts, but given an original interpretation. An example would be asking students to draft and deliver a speech defending how they would vote as a senator on a bill designed to extend low cost, government funded, flood insurance to individuals who continually rebuild communities in known flood plains. Participation in this type of learning activities will help prepare students to succeed in the real world after their formal education is completed.
Quite likely your child's school or your district has shared what they are doing to insure instruction meets national standards in such content areas as math, science, language arts, or social studies. In contrast have you heard anything about what is being done to insure all students become "information literate"? Ask the principal if your school has a copy of the new national information literacy guidelines, Information Power Building Partnerships for Learning, or the companion document, Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning, which include examples of the types of information literacy lessons in a variety of content areas for different age levels. Begin by raising awareness of this important issue. What could be more important than insuring your child has the opportunity to develop these essential life skills?
Prepared by Dr. M. Ellen Jay
Media Specialist
Damascus Elementary
AASL President 1999-2000