The 'Google generation', the young people who have become so hooked on the web and computer games that they are unable to think, study and concentrate!

Thanks to Ian McCracken and Philip Graham from Govan High School for alerting me to a Radio 4 interview about the Internet, the Google generation and the rewiring of brains - available until Thurday 19th March 2008 via BBC iPlayer Transcript also available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/7935725.stm  

 The interview is described on the BBC iPlayer as follows:

"Kenan explores the reality behind the stereotype of the 'Google generation', the young people who have become so hooked on the web and computer games that they are unable to think, study and concentrate.

This characterisation is motivated by genuine concerns that heavy use of the internet and computer games are actually rewiring the brains of young people. They are learning and thinking differently to their forebears in a massive technological and social experiment. Kenan investigates these concerns and asks Stephen Fry, among others, whether the rise of the digital generation should be a cause for celebration or concern.

Broadcast on: BBC Radio 4, 8:30pm Thursday 12th March 2009

Duration: 28 minutes

Available until: 9:02pm Thursday 19th March 2009"

 

In addition to Stephen Fry, there are other familiar names like Tara Brazabon interviewed.  

As Philip Graham says:"This i-player programme is fascinating. I would recommend that you make some time to listen to it.  It poses a very serious questions about the internet and its resources creating either a very smart generation, a very dumb generation or a generation with a whole new way of using their brains to which we cannot relate.

For my part, I found it quite challenging as I found value in all the arguments. "

JISC Podcast - Interview with Philip Pothen

On Friday 28^th, November last year Christine and I attended  the Scottish Library and Information Council Further Education  conference, at the invitation of Catherine Kearney, Assistant Director of SLIC to whom, Many Thanks. At the end of the day we were interviewed about our work by Philip Pothen, at that time, the JISC Press and PR manager. JISC has now posted the interview on its website. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/02/podcast71johncrawfordchristineirving.aspx

There are a few Ahs and Ums but the main points are there.  We spoke to Philip about the role of information literacy in the education sector, the workplace, in libraries and how government agencies can be encouraged to promote it. We also emphasised that information literacy is the democratic right of every learner and citizen. The noise in the background is the sound of librarians consuming the free food and wine thoughtfully provided by JISC.

Social Networking

Thanks to Carol Stewart who notified me about the BBC Learning Officer's blog in which Cathy Fraser talks about students and social networking. Here is her final comment from the blog posting.

"Students are certainly taking advantage of social networking on their own. Might as well tap into that passion and use it to improve the delivery of education. The potential value of online learning communities and global networking is too great to fathom. David Warlick, who was a keynote speaker I heard recently, said that educators are trying to prepare youth for a future that we cannot describe. I was struck by the absolute truth of that statement. Nothing is certain or impossible for that matter. December 4, I attended a technology in education conference myself and it was an eye-opening experience. I was heartened to learn that students have not lost their inquiring minds. They've simply taken them underground or online. What they're not asking in school, they are asking people in social networking situations and creating amazing things in the process. There is no doubt that the landscape of education is changing and that these changes are powerful and positive. However, I wonder about the ramifications of too much interacting online. Are young people losing their ability to conduct personal relationships face-to-face? Second Life is a place where people can develop alter egos which take the form of avatars. This "place" is being touted as a way for students who have difficulty relating to their peers to transcend these problems and succeed. At what are they succeeding? It's not real, or is it? Are they learning important life and coping skills by creating a graphic of themselves and existing in cyberspace? There has to be a balance. Humans will adapt to new technologies as soon as they're available in the mainstream, but at what cost?"
Cathy Fraser
Fri Dec 19 04:39:45 2008

Cathy raises some interesting questions and I know that Phil Bradley would agree that we should be taking advantage of social networking. Whilst I like to blog and email, for me nothing beats a face to face chat but then it's not always possible to meet face to face and I know of some people that are not comfortable talking face to face but are very expressive through other mediums. The old expression horses for courses springs to mind.

Welcome to the Scottish Information Literacy Project

Welcome everyone to the Scottish Information Literacy Project and weblog we are delighted with the help we received from the invaluable Warren Smith in IT in setting it up. Things are reasonably good at the moment as we are currently funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and Many Thanks to this body for keeping the show on the road. However although we are funded until the end of September 2009, now is not too soon to be thinking about finding future funding. 

We have recently been doing our first piece of consultancy, some subcontracting work for Becta. This has proved to be very informative and it shows that Becta is becoming aware of information literacy or digital literacy as they prefer to call it.  There is also growing interest in the early years/parental involvement agenda, the role of information in these areas and media literacy which is something we are interested in having previously had contacts with Ofcom Scotland. It was also flagged up strongly when I visited Washington in October last year to meet US experts on information literacy. However I feel that, while LIS research is using educational findings, I do not think that, on the whole, the converse is true. I attended a discussion last month on a pre print about digital natives and although information literacy was discussed in the text there were no references to LIS journals or research.

Christine and I are currently scurrying about meeting employers' organisations, the STUC, the Employability & Skills Division of the Lifelong Learning Directorate and Skills Development Scotland who are interested in the role of IL in careers guidance.  There is no doubt at all that the skills agenda is going to play a big part in the future of IL development and it is essential that it should be seen as a discrete skill and not just buried  under umbrella terms like 'problem solving' and 'soft skills'. A recurring problem for us is that we have no policy formulated by our professional body (CILIP) to show them.  An issue for the Policy Forum?

I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) which has a strong interest in vocational education and skills development.  We recently had a meeting with the RSA Outreach Officer who has agreeed to promote IL awareness among IL members.

 

Best wishes

 

John Crawford

 

Project Director

Digital Literacy in an e-world: The 8th Annual E-Books Conference

On Thursday 30th October 2008 we were one of five speakers at the E-Books Conference at the Lighthouse in Glasgow. The Lighthouse is an amazing building and I took the opportunity to take the lift to the sixth floor to see the roof top view of Glasgow which must be amazing at night time so will need to do a return visit.

We had been asked to do a presentation about the work of the project and wanted to incorporate the conference theme so decided to call our presentation The Scottish Information Literacy Project "From ICT to Digital Literacy the importance of information literacy" (see project website events page for link to presentation) linking the start of the project with the Drumchapel Project (John Crawford) and recent consultancy work on Digital Literacy.

presenting - e-book / Digital Literacy event

Other speakers included Paul Riley (The Welsh E-Books Consortium), like Scotland, Wales is a good size for collaboration on a national basis and Paul described some of their collaborative developments. Talking to him afterwards he expressed interest in the framework and the possiblity of Wales doing something similar. Hopefully they will be able to pursue this and as we will be in Cardiff for the 2009 LILAC Conference we can check on any progress.

John Coll gave an overview of the Business Information Services at the National Library of Scotland (Scotbis), whilst most enquiries are made electronically their resources are predominately print although they do collect both print and electronic publications / editions and offer clients / customers the option of accessing information sources in person (free of charge) or sending paper copies for a fee. I spoke to John at lunch time about the work the project is involved in within the workplace and also the forthcoming SIN (Scottish Information Network) meeting on Blogging which unfortuantely had to be postponned due to lack of numbers.

After lunch Sarah Fahmy (JISC) talked about JISC Collections for Schools and Jim Henderson (LTS) talked about the Online Reference Resources offered by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) in partnership with JISC through GLOW (a national digital network for schools which will provide tools to underpin Curriculum for Excellence learning and teaching approaches). It was really good to see the material that will be available to schools and also to see schools now benefiting from JISC collections.

The last speaker was Duncan Chapell from Glasgow School of Art - InfosmART: using the Web to Deliver Information Skills to Arts Researchers. One of the highlights of Duncan's presentation was the use of the project National Framework to inform the development of their information literacy programme. The other was their / his use of images (Visual Literacy) both within InfosmART and his presentation as Art students use of visual images is not surprisingly very high. It made me remember the old adage a picture tells a thousand words.

All in all the day seemed to be a success both event and project wise. Interestingly their seemed to be more mention of information literacy rather than digital literacy.

Photo courtesay of Jill Evans (SCURL)