Sharing practice information literacy case studies (Curriculum for Excellence)

The Scottish Information Literacy Project worked with Learning and Teaching Scotland and Project partners:           

• North Lanarkshire Council, Education Resource Service
• Information and Learning Resources, City of Edinburgh Council, Children and Families Department
• North Ayrshire Education Resources Service

to identify case Studies / exemplars of good practice within the cross curricular area of information literacy for dissemination through the LTS Information Literacy website under sharing practice.

Originally posted: 05/10/2009 Exported: 01/06/2012

Literacy Skills Project – Dundee College

Following a visit to Dundee College by Catherine Kearney, Sam Stirling, Learning Resources Manager at Dundee College contacted me about a Literacy Skills Project they are currently running for their Special Education Needs students at the College.

It is an amazing project which arose out of “a library service review which identified that they had limlited resources that were specifically aimed at Special Programme students. To ensure that they provided the necessary material to meet their special needs, a partnership project between the Library and Special programmes was established”.

The project has been running successfully for a few years and includes various external trips (Waterstones and DC Thomson) class based literacy sessions and project work. Last session the students created next year’s SEN Library Guide using Comic Life software.

The Comic Edition of the library and learning centres user guide 09/10 Dundee College is well worth a look and is an inspiration to us all along with the wider aims of this literacy skills project which has resulted in

The learners have taken ownership of the environment, as they have actively participated in the selection of the resources. Their voice has been heard and changes made that help develop their core skills and promote independent learning.

If you would like to find out some more about this project then I’m sure Sam Stirling s.stirling@dundeecollege.ac.uk would be happy to help.

Originally posted: 05/10/2009 Exported: 01/06/2012

Aberdeenshire information literacy activities update

There has been much information literacy (IL) activity in Aberdeenshire lately as Sue Cromar sue.cromar@aberdeenshire.gov.uk their Information Literacy Officer outlines:

• draft IL Strategy, which includes reference to the Curriculum for Excellence
• paper drawn up for Aberdeenshire’s Literacy Steering Group on Supporting Literacies Across Learning, which includes elements of both IL and reader development.
• working on a CPD powerpoint for teaching staff on: What is IL? the skills, integrating IL, partnership opportunities etc. 
• working with one of the local academies to get an IL course for S1s up on GLOW – including workbook, powerpoints and teachers notes for each lesson
• about to start working with Portlethen Academy to organise a shire-wide IL ‘competition’, based on a webquest they have been using for the past couple of years - core topic is geography
• got funding from SLIC to develop an advocacy programme for school libraries, focusing on IL across the curriculum – outcomes will include staff development, and a DVD highlighting the vital role of IL skills within learning, leisure and working life .  This will be created under a creative commons license and shared with other Scottish  libraries/schools – hopefully in time for the start of the 2010/11 academic year. See Libraries R 4 Learning: supporting the Curriculum for Excellence in Aberdeenshire article by Sue Cromar (February 2010) and subsequent postings.
• doing some work on setting Dewey to rap  
• working on linking the library resources / IL to CfE outcomes and experiences.

I’m sure I am not the only one who will be interested in seeing this work come to fruition.

See also previous work in Aberdeenshire exemplar – Schools toolKit for Information Literacy – Nursery – primary 7 (12 year olds)

Originally posted: 05/10/2009 Exported: 01/06/2012

School policy for Information Literacy

In May 2008 Anne Mathews a school librarian at Benton Park High School in Leeds contacted the project to say that she was chairing a working party where they were starting to put together a whole school information literacy policy. However she had been unable to find school policy for Information Literacy; a problem we had encountered ourselves although a few of our project partners had just started to look at this issue themselves. 

Some six months later I contacted Anne to check on her progress and found that they had produced a School Information Literacy Policy . Hopefully this will spur others to create an information literacy policy for their school.

My thanks to Anne and her colleagues for their willingness to share their policy with us.

Originally posted: 03/06/2009 Exported: 01/06/2012

Information literacy in first year (HE)

Bill Johnston is Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at the University of Strathclyde he has experience in first year experience as well as information literacy and is a member of the project advisory group and spends quite a bit of time in Australia speaking at conferences. In a recent visit to the University of Southern Queensland he spoke about:

1. practical tips for teachers of first year courses to help them engage their students early in the semester.


2. embedding information literacy skills into first year courses and using assessment to engage students


3. how to prepare students for the workplace.

The interviews were filmed and can be viewed at www.usq.edu.au/learnteach/learnres/vsarchive/bjohnston.htm 

The three individual interviews with Bill are not long and give practical examples. Thanks to Sheila Webber for bringing my attention to this in her information literacy weblog.