The Finnish approach to teaching IL and the fight against fake news

There is an excellent article in The Guardian by Jon Henley, published 29th January 2020.

It explores how Finland decided to tackle the problem of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation (terms that are preferred over "fake news").

Have a wee look here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news

The nub of it is that since 2016, the Finnish national curriculum has embedded teaching and learning across a variety of subjects to encourage children to develop critical thinking skills.

The result is that Finland has topped a European index measuring each country's resistance to fake news.

The author spoke to some young people about their views and experiences of this approach to developing critical thinking skills, and the following snippet resonated with me: 

Alexander, 17, said he had learned a lot from devising a fake news campaign. Asked why fake news mattered, he said: “Because you end up with wrong numbers on the side of a bus, and voters who believe them.”

The article has some interesting ideas about the need for society at large, and citizens generally, to upskill their fact checking. In practical terms it has involved training librarians, teachers, civil servants and journalists, as well as school children. Heartening reading for anyone involved in IL.

Claire Roberts
City of Glasgow College

'Informed societies: why information literacy matters for citizenship, participation and democracy edited by Stéphane Goldstein

Hello,

You might be interested in the recently-published book edited by Stéphane Goldstein on 'Informed societies: why information literacy matters for citizenship, participation and democracy'.

There are excellent chapters written by three members of the Information Literacy Community of Practice for Scotland: John Crawford, Bill Johnston, Konstantina (Dina) Martzoukou. Others equally exciting by Geoff Walton, Andrea Baer, Andrew Whitworth, Gianfranco Polizzi, Stephan Lewandowsky, Jesús Lau and Alton Grizzle, Reggie Raju, Glynnis Johnson and Zanele Majebe, Jamie Barker, Matthew Pointon, Martin Turner and Andrew Wilkinson, Hilary Yerbury and Maureen Henninger.

The title gives a pretty good idea of what the book is about, and through its dozen chapters, it explores how information literacy can help citizens play an informed role in society and its democratic processes. The authors are experts, from across the globe, in multiple fields - including political science, pedagogy, information science and psychology, as well as information and digital literacy - providing an original and multi-disciplinary perspective to an increasingly topical subject. 

'Informed societies' is published by Facet, and is available at http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=304226#.Xh4EsfzgqUl . A pre-print of my introductory chapter, which explains the rationale for the subject-matter, is available via my blog at https://www.informall.org.uk/blog/informed-societies/ .

Stéphane is happy to answer any questions - please feel free to get in touch if you'd like to!

Kind regards,

Stéphane Goldstein

Director of InformAll

email: sg@informall.org.uk

Skype: stephanegoldstein

Twitter: stephgold7

website: www.informall.org.uk

Online Harms - Media Literacy Survey - deadline Friday 17th January

Media Literacy Landscape Mapping Exercise 

The UK Government committed to developing an online media literacy strategy in the Online Harms White Paper, published in April 2019. As part of this the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport have appointed a consultancy, RSM UK, to undertake a comprehensive mapping exercise to identify what actions are already underway.

The consultancy has developed a framework to record and characterise the media literacy initiatives available to UK users and is in the process of populating this framework to help DCMS understand the nature of the initiatives and any gaps in provision.

If you represent an organisation that provides or funds any media literacy initiatives to users in the UK, it would be very helpful if you could complete this brief survey. 

The link below will take you to an online questionnaire, designed using SmartSurvey, that will ask some questions about the issues that you are trying to resolve, your target user groups, and delivery methods.

https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/MediaLiteracy

The survey will ask you a few questions about your organisation as a whole. You will then have the chance to describe the individual media literacy initiatives that you provide.

The survey should take no more than 15-30 minutes depending upon the number of media literacy initiatives that you describe.

If you have any queries about how to complete the survey, please email matt.rooke@rsmuk.com and amy.hau@rsmuk.com. The survey will remain open until Friday 17 January and any queries will be responded to in time to complete the survey.

Many thanks

Jenny Foreman (Scottish Government Library)

Student advice on voting, General Election 2019

At the last IL CoP meeting (11th November), Lauren Smith from the University of Edinburgh spoke about work involving young people, IL skills and elections.

As an IL librarian at an FE college, this sparked an interest in doing something to encourage our students to be aware of the upcoming General Election, and to provide some practical information and advice on voting.

I pulled together a 6-point information poster and leaflet for our college students on voting (who can vote, getting registered, how to vote on the day). I drew on information from YoungScot and the Electoral Commission, and also highlighted The Ferret, Full Fact and Channel 4 FactCheck sites for looking beyond headlines.

It was well received by our Students Association who used to it to get students talking about their voting rights and to motivate them to get along to vote. The feedback from them was really positive, so I plan on adapting the materials again for future elections. I used Piktochart to create both a poster and an A5 leaflet.

If you would like to find out more about the leaflet/poster, follow the link here: https://create.piktochart.com/output/42446920-get-voting-2019-poster

Claire Roberts
City of Glasgow College Library Services

Honorary Membership Awards from CILIP Scotland

CILIP Scotland Honorary Membership 2019:  Jenny Foreman, Head Librarian, Scottish Government Library and Information Service and Cleo Jones, Lifelong Learning Strategic Officer, City of Edinburgh Council, have been awarded Honorary Memberships for CILIP Scotland 2019 for their joint efforts in raising the awareness and importance of Information Literacy and the role it plays in every day society.   We all deal with vast amounts of information everyday as we go about our daily routines, sometimes being totally unaware we are doing so.  Through Jenny and Cleo and its members, the Information Literacy Community of Practice for Scotland, which Jenny and Cleo co-chair, aims to bring together those interested in Information Literacy - how we source information, why we must consider its importance and value, while taking care to evaluate and use what we source responsibly, all of which highlights the importance of teaching and promoting information literacy skills in education and lifelong learning.

Please do join the IL CoP if you're interested and come along to our biannual meetings. 

Email the Scottish Government Library sglibrary@gov.scot

The Right Information: information skills for the 21^st century

Thanks

Ian McCracken

Govan High School Archivist