Young Scot - Information Literacy & Young People

This is my second posting about the presentations from the IL symposium at Atlantic Quay, Glasgow in February. 

Young Scot presentation

Young Scot have come a long way since they first started out all those years ago with the introduction of a Young Scot card. Not surprisingly there were a few in the audience who had a Young Scot card. Today the organisations is involved in an array of activities all focused on providing Scottish Youth Information for 11-26 year olds. 

Kirsteen Urquart, Information servcies Manager and Hilary Kidd, Digital Academy Manager, Young Scot gave an information packed presentation. I jotted down as many of the issues and activities they covered:

• TMI - too much information out there - not just factual information but opinion, comment etc
• Young Scot have a Digital Information Strategy, it is agile and evolving [see their presentation for details url at the bottom of this post]
• being aware of news stories that young people will be interested in and having information about it available for them
• when disseminating information they need to make sure that all devices can handle / display the information - multi platform content
• the length of words that young people use in a search is astonishing [this doesn't come as a surprise to a lot of us but it is disappointing that we are sill hearing about this]
• data driven content - they use a variety of resources to help them understand how young people are using the Young Scot service
• data and monitoring tools - Young Scot use Hootsuite for trend monitoring and Google Trends for trending search topics 
• young people are using Google and Wikipedia for information
• there is not much research about young people under 16 not online [research project there for someone]
• Young Scot provides lots of information about being safe online for Internet Safety Day
• key areas of work: digital technology and literacy should be a consistent, integral part of learning.

One of their slides was about digital literacy

Digital Literacy: 

• Young Scot is digital by design 
• "We cannot leave any young person behind - we have a responsibility to support them (particularly the most vunerable) to be digitally literate."
• "Research - what do we all need to do to help kick start their participation? What are the barriers? is it about hardware? Is it about capability? 

From my experience about the barriers is that skills and competencies need to be reinforced throughout lifelong learning. It is not simply about hardware.

My final note from their presentation was 

What are the key opportunities for further improving levels of information literacy for young people? 

a good question to end on.

After hearing their presentation I hope people were inspired to seek out opportunities and work with Young Scot on a range of issues. I know from experience that they are a great organisation / people to work with. 

Thanks to Kirsteen and Hilary for a whistle stop tour of some of their activities and the issues they face.  Their presentation is available on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/SLICINFO/kirsten-urquhart-hilary-kidd-young-scot

Great internet age divide is a myth: children no better with technology than adults, claims Google scientist

This recent Herald newspaper article Great internet age divide is a myth by Andrew Denholm brought a knowing smile to my lips.

The article was about Dr Dan Russell a senior research scientist for internet search company Google, who was 'visiting Scotland to deliver a lecture in the importance of digital literacy at Strathclyde University, Glasgow'. 

He said: "There is a myth about the digital native and the Google generation kid who, because they are young, are seen as being more computer literate than their parents, but that is totally wrong.

"Kids can be very fluid and fast with computers, but they are only fast when they are doing something they have had a lot of practice in."

Haven't we been saying that since the digital generation was first spouted? 

The article goes on to say that

'Mr Russell said research showed the way younger users of technology learned skills came from interactions with their friends rather than formal education.

"This is a huge disservice because, certainly in the US, lots of colleges have stopped their information retrieval courses and they assume falsely that students know this stuff and I think it is pretty clear they don't."

Sound familiar? I'm sure it does. What springs to mind is head teachers who don't think schools need school libraries or school librarians - just a computer centre, as everything is on the internet and young people know have to use computers ... 

As he says "We are doing a terrible disservice to our students by not making research a crucial element of the curriculum. It has to be because, in a world where these things are changing rapidly, if you don't have the skills to be able to keep up you will be stuck in the past." I would endorse that but also include information literacy as a crucial element. 

According to the article 'Mr Russell's talk explored the changing definition of literacy at a time when it is possible to search billions of texts in milliseconds over the internet.' and that:

"Although you might think literacy is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding.

"Knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, how to interpret the texts you find, how to organise and use the information you discover are all critical parts of being literate as well."

Sounds like information literacy to me ....

I looked at the online article comments - not surprisingly they were about computers and programming in my opion completely missing the skills point. 

Exploring child information poverty, looking at children’s access (or lack of) to information, in particular children living in poverty.

Just reading the latest posting from 23 (more) librarians Frances - doctoral researcher about 'Exploring child information poverty, looking at children’s access (or lack of) to information, in particular children living in poverty' a doctoral research by Frances Breslin (University of Strathclyde). 

Frances post really interested me form several points. Firstly that it is information literacy orientated and secondly it is research focused and like me has become a PhD student.

Frances is at the early stages.

I am currently undertaking my literature review in which I justify my research, set parameters and seek information to assist my research.  This stage feels like a personal treasure hunt, I am looking to know more about certain topics and have to navigate a sea of information to track down what is pertinent. 

I look forward to hearing more about Frances research / PhD and are now following her on Twitter @FBreslinDavda  

if you haven't heard of the 23 librarians blog and 23 (more) librarians then I would recommend it 

Digital Literacies & Skills Project Manager - Vacancy

Young Scot has a vacancy that centres on digital and information literacies. The post is located at their office in Haymarket, Edinburgh. 

Digital Literacies & Skills Project Manager
(£25K, Initially Fixed Term to 31^st July 2014)

The Digital Skills & Literacies Project Manager will be directly responsible for project managing and developing the main components of the Young Scot Digital Academy:

- Digital Creative Modern Apprenticeship programme
- Digital Skills in Schools Programme
- Digital information literacy/digital footprint.

The post will line manage two Modern Apprenticeship Co-ordinators, and work with the Information Services and Outreach Teams to develop online and offline resources to support young people’s digital information literacy skills and digital footprint.

http://www.youngscot.net/news/vacancies-at-young-scot.aspx