LIBE 467: Post 3

For many people, it is difficult to remember a time before Google. I certainly do, but most of my students do not; all of their memories of computers, at least, are fairly inextricably tangled up with the notion of Google. These students are from a generation that has grown up with a powerful tool that—because they have never experienced computers without it—they struggle to accurately gauge: how “powerful” is Google? How “dangerous” or “tricky” is Google? These questions are difficult to answer when the user has no reference point by which to compare: Google is powerful compared to what? Google is dangerous or tricky...why? How could surfing the web be either of those? While this powerful tool is an obviously valuable and central part of our culture, part of the process of inheriting Google as a culture is recognizing and reacting to the pitfalls that accompany it. For every pro in life, there is always a con. For high school aged students today, Google is not unlike a young carpenter first picking up a powerful electric drill: the machine is incredibly useful—strong, efficient—but without the appropriate safety training and without ever having used a screwdriver, the young carpenter could easily damage his working materials or injure himself.

Since first engaging with students in projects that involve any online work whatsoever, it immediately became clear to me the challenges associated with becoming information literate. Since these first student-technology encounters years ago, it has increasingly become evident to me that one of the most pressing issues we face as teachers—and, at the risk of hyperbole—and as a society. Literacy has always been important and has always caused clear divides between those who are literate and those who are not—benefiting, of course, those with deft literacy skills. Nothing has changed in this regard, except that now literacy is even more important: it is more important because the types of information and the sources we receive our information from are so multi-faceted: books, newspapers, magazines, radio, the Internet, via any number of handheld gadgets. People today must be literate in a vast number of different types of media and modes of communicating. Being able to wisely analyze, synthesize, and critique a multitude of information sources—determining how and where to use them and whether they are valid—is a skill that is becoming consistently more vital. (This reality strongly suggests that the need for wise and engaged TLs and language teachers, ready to move information literacy education more toward the center of their curricula, are now more important and needed than ever [it turns out that computers are not, after all, eliminating the need for human teachers and librarians!]. However, this is another conversation to be had at another time.) As such, I continue to see how increasingly important information literacy is for me in my role as a language teacher, a future TL, and how important it is in the lives of my students.

Classmate Hilary Montroy hits on some of the central challenges faced by teachers and TLs when guiding students towards achieving information literacy:

It is so important to teach students how to use whatever databases are available, and yes, students are very reluctant to use them. One of the comments I get from students when asked why they are choosing to search using Google only is that it is easier, and when prompted further, it's because they don't get the answer right away when on a database. The latter may be true, but if taught how to use them effectively, they will get the info they need, it just takes a little more work and time, and students today want answers quickly and easily.

The comments by Hilary’s students shed light on the fact that relativity is important: when mostly only Google has been used by students, of course it is “easier” to use than a database. Learning a new skill or doing a new task is always more difficult at the beginning. Without much experience using other databases, the desire to break away from what is known and familiar is difficult to muster. Further, it could be that many students today have been allowed to use sources found using solely a Google search engine. Google as a means to finding information is fine, of course, but there are databases available to students that provide wholly trustworthy and valid information, and these databases should be more often used. In this way, teachers should move toward creating research projects that accept only sources found via a database—and this should be repeated enough times so that students become proficient at using these databases (too often information literacy is seen as a “skill” to be “checked off the list” after a single assignment is completed that focuses on such skills).

On page 11 of Reference Skills, Riedling presents the nine information literacy standards for student learning taken from AASL ande ACET 8. “Information Literacy” Standard 2 notes that “the student who is information literate evaluates information critically and competently.” Hilary’s students’ comment that it is simply “easier” to Google indicates that such students are not thinking critically or competently. Further, the “Social Responsibility” Standard 8 states that the information literate student “practices ethical behavior in regard to information and information technology.” It could be argued that using Google simply because it is “easier,” as Hilary’s students state, is itself an unethical use of information; one of the hallmarks of ethical behavior often has to do with acting in a manner that is in fact not the easiest choice—being ethical is rarely thought of as doing what is easiest.

One of the next steps for me—an ongoing step, really—is to continue to seek out conversation with people experienced with teaching and promoting information literacy, and to seek out quality resources to help facilitate the process. In previous TL Diploma courses, I have come across a few resources—checklists or rubrics—that are first steps toward establishing classroom-ready, usable criteria for assessing students’ information literacy journey. However, I often feel that there must be better resources out there that I have not yet seen, or that I myself need to focus on creating such resources.