The changing role of Jorum: sharing using JorumOpen and JorumUK

Jorum has now opened up for the sharing of resources, created under Creative Commons (CC) licences, through its new collection JorumOpen.

Jorum provides access to free learning and teaching resources, created and contributed by teaching staff from UK Further and Higher Education Institutions. Jorum offers two collections - JorumOpen and JorumUK, containing a wide variety of resources, including open educational resources that are freely available to all.

New copyright proposals look to benefit educational and research institutions

Copyright is a big problem so thanks to Carol Stewart for notifying me about news on the LTS website about New copyright proposals look to benefit educational and research institutions  .

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has opened the second stage of a consultation looking at specific amendments to UK copyright legislation, as identified by Andrew Gowers in his review of Intellectual Property.  

It is important that universities, schools and libraries have the tools to equip the students of today with the skills they need to complete their studies. 

The proposed changes will better reflect the needs of the modern education system by allowing the use of sound recordings, films and broadcasts which are not currently covered by the exceptions. 

The main proposals include: Educational Exceptions , Research and Private Study Exception, Archiving and Preservation Exception.

The consultation and its proposals are now available. Stakeholders are invited to consider the details of the proposed legislative changes and respond by 31 March 2010.

Have a look at the rest of the information on the LTS website plus engage with the consultation.

Information Literacy Strategy for Wales

Sheila Webber has posted her presentation - International Perspectives on IL from the meeting on an Information Literacy Strategy for Wales on 30 November 2009 at Gregynogg Hall in Wales. John also spoke about the work of the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the lessons which Wales can learn from us his thoughts on the event were posted on the project blog .

Her presentation cover useful pointers for everyone and contains some amazing school librarian quotes. Worth a look.

Information Literacy in Primary 1

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 1 class as part of the work I'm doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team - Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was amazing with lots of information literacy activities based around some of the CfE learning outcomes and experiences. For example:

Finding and using information: Early Level

I listen or watch for useful or interesting information and I use this to make choices to learn new things. LIT 0.04a 

The children aged 5 years old listened to a chapter (chapter 4 I think) from a book about an owl finding out about night and darkness.

The book - The owl who was affraid of the dark

They had to listened for a specific piece of information which they then had to remember. Questions were asked to ensure that they had heard and remembered it. Later on in the day they were each given a worksheet and had to draw a picture to represent what the chapter was all about. The teacher then went round each of them and asked them to complete a sentence with information they had heard. Some repeated the information exactly others put it into their own words. Whatever the child said the teacher transcribed it onto their worksheet.

Other examples of activities included:

• selecting books in groups to find information about a particular night animal that the group had chosen i.e. a fox, badger, bat.

With the help of the teacher reading the text the children decided on the 4 most important facts about the animal. Later each group told the rest of the class what they had found.

• 
  
  art of the week where they had to look at a picture of a piece of art Rodin's Thinker and say what they thought it was about. It was amazing to see then looking at it, thinking about it and then giving their thoughts.

I could go on but will end there. My thanks to Mrs Lisa Bonar and her class at St Margaret's School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world. Discussions regrading the sort of things that would be useful to teachers regarding their own information literacy was also covered. It has certainly helped my thinking for the work ahead of me and I look forward to using this knowledge along with other experiences of Primary 2 and 3 to come in the new year.

This is my last blog of the year so Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

 

Journal of Information Literacy - Winter 2009 issue

The Winter issue 2009 of the Journal of Information Literacy  has been published.

Of particular interest is the Editorial by Susie Andretta   The multifaceted nature of information literacy: solving the Rubik cube puzzle. (1-5) 

The collection of papers presented in this issue positions information literacy in diverse contexts, implying that this phenomenon has finally permeated our social, educational and professional consciousness. This is in line with Catts and Lau’s claim that information literacy "needs to be considered not only in relation to education, but also in the broader context of work, civil society, and health and well being" (Catts and Lau 2008, p. 9). The diverse interpretations of information literacy presented in this issue are illustrated by a visual metaphor which has inspired the title of this editorial 'The multifaceted nature of information literacy: solving the Rubik cube puzzle’. Each facet of information literacy corresponds to one of the colours of the Rubik cube1.

This multifaceted aspect of IL is something that John and I have spoken about over the years as a result of our experiences and knowledge plus project / research work.

Of the articles within the issue three are written by known associates including:

project partners Jenny & Lesley

• Jenny Foreman, Lesley Thomson Government Information Literacy in the "century of information"  (64-72)

Audrey Marshall (John and I were external advisers on the net.weight project at Brighton)

• Audrey Marshall, Flis Henwood, Leslie Carlin, Elizabeth S. Guy, Tanja Sinozic, Helen Smith   Information to fight the flab: findings from the Net.Weight Study (39-52)

Christopher Walker. John and I heard Christopher speak about his PhD research into IL and parents of young children in the early stages at the LILAC Conference in Liverpool 2008. We have had several discussions with him offering suggestions and information from our research and experience.

• Christopher Guy Walker  Seeking Information: A study of the use and understanding of information by parents of young children (53-63)

All 3 articles support our experience that information literacy is not just within formal education but throughout life. They are published from presentations at LILAC 2009 (see also our blog postings on the conference - Some thoughts on LILAC 09, LILAC 2009 (The Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) Cardiff).

Of interest to IL and the workplace is K. Stuart Ferguson Information literacy and its relationship to knowledge management: A theoretical study(6-24). It explores IL and KM, and learning organisations as I did in my 2007 MSc Lifelong Learning and Development research 'The role of information literacy in addressing a specific strand of lifelong learning: the work agenda'  . It also lead the project to further research in the work place and discussion with Annemaree Lloyd.

Other articles which I haven't read yet but may be of interest are:

Andrew Whitworth  - Teaching information literacy within a relational frame: the Media and Information Literacy course at Manchester (25-38)

Nora Hegarty,  Alan Carbery,  Tina Hurley - Learning by Doing: Reactivating the Learning Support Programme at WIT Libraries (73-90)

Conference corner:

Peter Godwin, Information Literacy gets mobile in Vancouver  (91-95)

Book reviews:

Nick Frost  Book review of Andrew Whitworth. 2009. Information Obesity. Oxford: Chandos Publishing. (96-97)