An Information Literacy Strategy for Wales

A couple of weeks ago (November 30^th- 1st December) I attended an invitation only conference in Wales on the theme of ‘An Information Literacy Strategy for Wales?’  which was held at the attractively situated if geographically inconvenient University of Wales conference centre at Gregynog House.

All LIS sectors and Welsh education were represented and I was particularly impressed by the willingness of all sectors to work together and learn from each other.

The initial presentations were devoted to reviewing the various sectors and the familiar theme emerged of pockets of excellent good practice which were not being supported by an overarching strategy. I spoke about the work of the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the lessons which Wales can learn from it. After dinner there were sectoral discussion groups and I joined the public librarians and was impressed by their grasp of the role which public libraries can play in informal learning and the good work they are already doing.

The following morning Gareth Evans from Caerphilly Public Library spoke about the work he has been doing with the Open College network which could well be replicated elsewhere.

The conference concluded with a list of action points which included:

• The production of an overview/vision statement (urgent)


• The development of a strategy and Framework


• Making cross sectoral/partnership contacts including outside the LIS sector


• Developing a National Forum for Information Literacy in Wales


• Appointing an Information Literacy Development Officer for Wales


• Accrediting library staff information literacy training skills


• Include IL concepts in teacher training


• School librarian posts should be a statutory responsibility


• Pursue media literacy issues through Ofcom

However if these objectives are to be achieved funding will be a key requirement

The Third Scottish Information Literacy Project Open Meeting

Open Meeting 2009

The Scottish Information Literacy Project’s third Open meeting took place on Wednesday 16^th September 2009 at Glasgow Caledonian University and about 45 people attended. It was a genuinely cross sectoral event with people attending from all library sectors, educational agencies, government organisations including the Scottish Government and academia.  Inevitably a few people dropped out at the last moment through illness or other commitments. Unfortunately this included our keynote speaker, Professor David Smith, who had to pull out through illness.  

The theme of the day was information literacy as part of the wider skills agenda as one of the Project’s successes has been locating information literacy (IL) within this agenda. I began the day by giving an overview and update of the Project including some of the initial findings of the evaluation which we have done of the excellent employability skills courses which Inverclyde Libraries run.  This drew attention to health as an employability issue and the difficulty in disentangling personal from vocational motivations. This provoked a lively audience discussion during which it emerged that people from different library and educational sectors had shared concerns.  Next Jenny Foreman, the Scottish Government’s Information Literacy Librarian spoke about the Scottish Government’s Information Literacy Strategy. This was very much a policy level presentation explaining the need for a strategy and the issues likely to be encountered in developing it. Jenny also described how the policy is turned into practical training. Her colleague, Lesley Thomson, Knowledge Management Officer at the Scottish Centre for Regeneration then described the Information Literacy Community of Practice which she and Jenny are launching and will host and lead. She explained the principles behind a community of practice and how the website will operate. All are welcome to join and contribute. For further details contact either Lesley.Thomson2@scotland.gsi.gov.uk or Jenny.Foreman@scotland.gsi.gov.uk who will gladly sign you up.

 

After lunch Christine Irving, the Project Officer on the Scottish Information Literacy Project, spoke about the restructuring of the Scottish Information Literacy Framework which is being restructured to make it a genuine lifelong learning document incorporating early years, the workplace, employability and lifelong learning. It is being physically restructured as a weblog so that postings of current activities and developments can be added. It is also interactive and comments and postings can be made. It includes exemplars of good practice from all educational sectors. There is, as yet, less on the workplace and lifelong learning but the work we are doing on the workplace and employability is helping to enrich it. It can be found at /nilfs/ and through the project website http://www.gcal.ac.uk/ils/framework.html .

Next Lou McGill, an elearning and Information Management Consultant reported on a JISC funded study Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA) - http://prezi.com/vv_ynswlwwkv/ see also Project website http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/llida/ . LLiDA is a study of academic, ICT and information literacies across a range of HE institutions including Glasgow Caledonian and takes the form of institutional audits with overall analyses and best practice exemplars drawn from participating institutions. She found that IL people were further ahead in their thinking than other learning literacies areas. Flexible education will be needed as it is impossible to predict future employer needs. She feels that there are still to many ‘silos’ in HE each with its own language. Academic teaching is slow to change and there is resistance to a holistic agenda.

IMcCracken Open Meeting 2009

The last speaker was Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Manager at Govan High School - Connections between Information Skills and wider skills: the Future Skills Project where he and his colleagues have developed a Future Skills System of 71 skills which pupils can acquire which includes IL.  The Future Skills System is matched to Standard Grades, local and national business requirements, curricular and extra curricular work and the Curriculum for Excellence. Ian also mentioned the problem of a common language as Lou had. The Framework has been in existence long enough for Ian to be able to identify the most used skills throughout Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes as ‘Analytical Skills’, ‘ICT E-Lit’ and ‘Gathering facts’ which have pretty obvious IL implications.

All in all it was a most useful day and a great deal of information was exchanged in informal discussions as well as the formal sessions. Similar issues were identified across a range of sectors and practical difficulties round employability and linking vocational skill training and personal development were reviewed.  The PPTs and accompanying documents will appear shortly on Slideshare as we are running out of space on allocated space with the university and will be linked to the project web event page http://www.caledonian.ac.uk/ils/events.html. All the presentations were excellent and represent a great deal of work by those who gave them and I would like to thank all who contributed.

Information literacy and the Digital Divide

A recent article by Dylan Jones-Evans Information Literacy and the Digital Divide  (Daily Post, 10th August 2009) discusses the Welsh Affairs Committee report which "highlighted the problem areas with limited or no access to high-speed internet connects".

Whilst attention has been drawn to the following quote:

The report by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee is a welcome first step but if we are to create a truly digital society, we must not only build a world class broadband network in Wales but also give everyone the skills to access it properly.

If not, it is like buying a seventeen year old a Ferrari without paying for the driving lessons first.

I hope that it is not just the last sentence that is remembered but the rest of the article where he highlights a pressing problem that of the

inability of many of those within our poorest communities to access the information they need to conduct their daily lives from the internet.

As a result of this lack of information literacy, some of the most vulnerable groups in Wales are becoming even more excluded from modern society, yet it remains an area which has yet to be properly addressed by policymakers. This is despite overwhelming evidence that the growing gap between those who are "information rich" and "information poor" within our society has the potential to create significant social and economic problems in the future.

Certainly, there is little evidence that information literacy forms a part of any initiative to support the educational and training needs of those within our more deprived communities. Indeed, as government services, educational resources and information move online, those who have not been adequately trained to access such services become increasingly excluded and increasingly financially disadvantaged if they cannot access support.

Yet the importance of information and a clear strategy to ensure its dissemination to the wider community is being ignored even by those who should know better.

This is an area that John and I have been giving some thought to over the last couple of years particulalry in conjunction with Government Digital Divide Reports that have seen the answer to the digital divide as providing more access to computers and information rather than making the link to information literacy / the skills people need to access, evaluate reuse etc. and Public Libraries. Last week we were in Greenock doing some learner interviews from recent employability courses that Inverclyde Libraries have been running. We hope to do more in this area if funding is secured.

He also makes a sound statement regarding 'search engines and Google' in that

if individuals are not supported properly in how to use search engines such as Google effectively, then it becomes a completely useless tool that may, worryingly and potentially dangerously, provide wrong and misleading information.

Scottish Information Literacy Project's Third Open Meeting

The third Scottish Information Literacy Project Open Meeting will take place on Wednesday 16^th September between 10.0am  and 4.15 pm  at Glasgow Caledonian University. It is a free event to encourage maximum participation.  The programme is enclosed below.

As with last year’s event there will be a strong focus on partnership involvement with presentations by  Project partners and supporters. This year’s theme is Information literacy within the wider skills agenda as defined by Government policy as the Project has been successful in locating information literacy within this agenda. Professor David Smith, the co-director of the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning, has agreed to deliver a keynote reviewing the educational policy background to developments in information literacy.

To reserve a place email us as below listing: name, job title, email address and indicating any specific dietary and/or disability requirements by Friday 4^th September.

 

Best wishes

 

Dr. John Crawford,                          Christine Irving

Library Research Officer,              Researcher / Project Officer

Milton Street Building                    Milton Street Building

MS004, (ground floor)                   MS005, (ground floor)

Glasgow Caledonian University Glasgow Caledonian University

Cowcaddens Road                           Cowcaddens Road

Glasgow, G4 0BA                              Glasgow, G4 0BA             

Tel: 0141-273 -1248                          Tel: 0141-273 -1249

Email jcr@gcal.ac.uk                       Email christine.irving@gcal.ac.uk

Project website    www.caledonian.ac.uk/ils/

Project blog          /information-literacy

 

Scottish Information Literacy Project Third Open Meeting – Wednesday 16^th September 2009

Information literacy and the skills agenda: a day devoted to linking information literacy with skills strategies at all levels                

Glasgow Caledonian University, Hamish Wood Building W115

Programme

9.30 – 10.00 - Registration and coffee/tea

10.00- 10.10 – Welcome and overview. Dr John Crawford, Director, Scottish Information Literacy Project

10.10-10.55 – Keynote. Information literacy and the knowledge society:  implications for higher education.  Professor David Smith, Co-director, Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning

 

10.55 -11.05 Comfort break

11.05-11.50 – Project overview and update.  John Crawford

11.50- 12.30 - The Scottish Government’s information literacy strategy and the launch of the Information Literacy Community of practice website. Lesley Thompson, Knowledge Management Officer, Scottish Centre for Regeneration and Jenny Foreman, Information Literacy Librarian, Scottish Government

 

12.30- 13.30 – Lunch

13.30 – 14.15 – Restructuring the Scottish Information Literacy Framework.  Christine Irving, Project Officer, Scottish Information Literacy Project

14.15 -15.00 – Learning Literacies for the Digital Age, a JISC funded study (LLiDA).  Lou McGill- eLearning and Information Management Consultant

 

15.00 – 15.20 Afternoon tea

15.20 – 16.05 – Connections between Information Literacy Skills and wider skills:  The Future Skills Project. Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Manager, Govan High School. 

16.05- 16.15 – Summary and close

Most presentations to run for 45 minutes including time for questions

Ofcom Scotland Communications Market report 2009

Recently I attended the launch of the Ofcom Scotland Communications Market report, published on August 6^th 2009. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/features/cmrscot.  Ofcom staff presented the report and much of the discussion centred round the decline in spending by BBC Scotland and STV and there was concern about low Broadband take-up in Glasgow. There is really only one page (p.99, Figure 5.25) detailing Internet use in Scotland and does not give comparative figures for other parts of the UK.  The two highest categories: Any and General surfing/ browsing don’t really mean much. Although sending and receiving email is the largest meaningful category (77%) there is no breakdown between work and leisure. Finding/downloading info for work   comes in quite high at 28% for a serious activity and there is clearly possible further work here.

Ofcom’s commitment to media literacy is not in doubt as it is specified in Section 11 of the Communications Act 2003 which requires it to promote media literacy. Ofcom also has a definition of media literacy:

‘the ability to  access, understand and create communications in a variety of content’

which must take its place alongside the CILIP definition of information literacy.

However Ofcom (UK) has recently produced a range of information reports in a Digital lifestyles series including:

Digital lifestyles: adults aged 60 and over   

Digital lifestyles:  young adults aged 16-24

Digital lifestyles:  parents of children under 16

Digital lifestyles:  hesitants, resistors and economisers

These reports, although not usually containing regional breakdowns, give a lot of information, useful to the IL specialist. For example the 16-24 report Figure 4 p. 9 give a list of Internet activity carried out at least once a week.  This rates Work/studies information second (48% all; 60% 16-24) which shows a high level of purposeful activity. On p.14; Figure 8 lists Interest and confidence in using Internet functions. Joining in debates come out lowest. The research was done in 2007. Would the same question asked now produce different results? Figure 18 on p.24 lists checks made when visiting websites and has a strong IL ‘feel’ as it includes questions like: How up to date the information is and Who has created the page and why.

The parents of children under 16 report contains the worrying statistic (p.23) that only a fifth of parents are very confident in being able to tell if a website is truthful and reliable.

Food for thought obviously.