In regards to adult learners,
information literacy often takes the form of learning to evaluate digital or
online resources for credibility. For the population I am most often working
with, digital literacy and information literacy go hand in hand and it is
sometimes hard to grasp that anyone can put anything on the internet. So it is
important to go through a series of steps when evaluating a website.
1.
Is the website current?
a.
Is it dated at all? If you can find no
information on when the information was published to the web, you want to
choose another source
2.
Is the author or organization an authoritative
source? Is the information reliable?
a.
If you have done research on an illness, is the
site you are looking at from a drug vendor who would have an interest in
convincing you that you need medicine?
b.
Is it a recognizable organization? Scientific
American as compared to someone’s personal site? One definitely has more
scientific authority than the other.
c.
Is there an author named at all? If there is no
author named, you will want to choose another source.
3.
What kind of site is it?
a.
An Institutional site? Do you recognize the
Institution?
i.
Some official URLs:
ii.
University or other Educational sites
(.edu)
iii.
Government (.gov, .mil)
iv.
Non-Profit or other organization (.org)
b.
Personal webpage or blog? Remember, you can
research the author of a blog to see if they are a reliable resource
i.
Some blog urls:
1.
tumblr.com
2.
wordpress.com
3.
blogspot.com
4.
blogger.com
4.
How about the content.
a.
Is the language professional or inflammatory?
b.
Are there spelling or grammar issues?
c.
Is the content biased? If the site is trying to
convince you of one point of view, is inflammatory against other points of
view, or has an obvious agenda, that site is biased.
Resources
There are two major public
resources available for learners and instructors of digital and information
literacy in New York State and beyond. The Digital Literacy in NY (http://diglitny.org/) project was established
through a series of Federal grants and through partnerships with representatives
from library organizations and systems. They developed a series of digital
literacy standards and described the skill set one would possess to be
considered digitally literate. The idea at the heart of it is that to
effectively locate and process information within a digital age and context,
one must be digitally literate as well, and that digital and information literacy
are at this point intertwined. Digitalliteracy.gov (http://www.digitalliteracy.gov/) is
a government site that is a strong hub of resources and training materials,
again similar to the NY site in that it is useful and accessible for both
educators and learners.
For basic digital literacy,
learners should have
1.
Basic computer skills
a.
Basic parts of a computer
b.
Turning the computer on and off
c.
Windows navigation
d.
Basic computer terminology
2.
Basic Internet
a.
Parts of the browser
b.
Difference between search engine and browers
c.
Basic search skills
3.
Communicating on the Internet
a.
email
i.
phishing and spam
b.
IM and chat
c.
Blogs
d.
Job search
4.
Word Processing
a.
Opening and Saving
b.
Basic formatting
c.
Printing
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