I just started a new course at U of M in the Emerging Technologies stream. It's the only way I can seem to keep following the topics in the emerging technologies field. If I find it hard when I have a great interest in it, I think it must be very hard for those with just a 'passing fancy' to stay engaged. I guess as a latecomer the field and not employed strictly in the research field or the post secondary halls of academe, I find it hard to mantain the same pace of engagement after the course course is completed.
Because I cannot upload images to the Moodle environment of the Digital Literacy course, I have decided to post my comments here and put a link in the course.Here are some houghts on a couple of points in the papers we read for the week 2 forum (links for those who wish to read them at the end of this posting)
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I felt that the statement in Kuhlthau's paper ".......the importance of the interpretation of the information and the constructive process of formulation a perspective from information .......' summed up the key issue I have in dealing with this course and all other information gathered for critical information inquiry: to wit how does make sense of the voluminous amounts of information presented in the Digital Literacy field , add something of merit to this knowledge through rumination and present it to the constantly connected critical audience/community of practice without either seeming either trite, silly or both. I think it is this public display of one's faculties that deters many from contributing to many on-line postings. While I have a thick skin for such things, I can see the reticence of large numbers of persons who would feel uncomfortable or would be unable to grapple with the synthesis and analysis of very specialized data. In fact, I stopped reading the EDSL article is it was too heavily into verbiage and added little more to the articles I had already read. It wasn't that I couldn't understand what was being said, it was that it was becoming redundant to me. Others may have not been able to decode it at all depending on their skills.Therein lies the dilemma: in our own personal paths on the continuum to Information Literacy the skills, knowledge and cognitive abilities cannot assume to be well defined or even exist at all without some judgement by an independent body. I think we are a long way off from the acceptance of a community of learnings 'certification of credentials' as being accepted as sufficient for employment in many disciplines or careers. Hopefully this will come sooner rather than too late for our collective well-being as a species.
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Sandra Campbell mentions, as do in many UNESCO documents on Information Literacy and Open Source Education, that we cannot dismiss (as the business parlance goes) the 'externalities' of the third world such as access to electricity, computers or infrastructure. If the 1st world students at high school level are merely approaching Information Literacy with ubiquitous and easy access to a myriad of free learning resources, how can we presume to appropriate the terms of 'Free access to all' when the means are so far out of reach. The proponents are such small cogs in the wheel that the infrastructure nor the economics will accommodate their ideals. Was stated, there are many types of Information Literacy but the knowledge as applied to to economic growth trumps all other forms given today's global marketization of the world's economies. Inuit and indigenous peoples all over the world loose in this post-industrialist knowledge based economy because they lack( or see no value in) those skills that do not suit their immediate needs.
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Here are the links to the readings I chose:
Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century:
http://www.ifla.org.sg/IV/ifla70/papers/059e-Campbell.pdf
Information to Meaning: Confronting Challenges of the 21st Century.
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/docs/I3%20Conference%202007.doc
Design for Information Literacy:
http://www.ck-iv.dk/papers/PilerotHiort%20Design%20for%20information%20literacy.pdf
Dr. Merrill
http://madlat2009.wikispaces.com/Workshops#w1
Because I cannot upload images to the Moodle environment of the Digital Literacy course, I have decided to post my comments here and put a link in the course.Here are some houghts on a couple of points in the papers we read for the week 2 forum (links for those who wish to read them at the end of this posting)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I felt that the statement in Kuhlthau's paper ".......the importance of the interpretation of the information and the constructive process of formulation a perspective from information .......' summed up the key issue I have in dealing with this course and all other information gathered for critical information inquiry: to wit how does make sense of the voluminous amounts of information presented in the Digital Literacy field , add something of merit to this knowledge through rumination and present it to the constantly connected critical audience/community of practice without either seeming either trite, silly or both. I think it is this public display of one's faculties that deters many from contributing to many on-line postings. While I have a thick skin for such things, I can see the reticence of large numbers of persons who would feel uncomfortable or would be unable to grapple with the synthesis and analysis of very specialized data. In fact, I stopped reading the EDSL article is it was too heavily into verbiage and added little more to the articles I had already read. It wasn't that I couldn't understand what was being said, it was that it was becoming redundant to me. Others may have not been able to decode it at all depending on their skills.Therein lies the dilemma: in our own personal paths on the continuum to Information Literacy the skills, knowledge and cognitive abilities cannot assume to be well defined or even exist at all without some judgement by an independent body. I think we are a long way off from the acceptance of a community of learnings 'certification of credentials' as being accepted as sufficient for employment in many disciplines or careers. Hopefully this will come sooner rather than too late for our collective well-being as a species.
*************************************************************
Sandra Campbell mentions, as do in many UNESCO documents on Information Literacy and Open Source Education, that we cannot dismiss (as the business parlance goes) the 'externalities' of the third world such as access to electricity, computers or infrastructure. If the 1st world students at high school level are merely approaching Information Literacy with ubiquitous and easy access to a myriad of free learning resources, how can we presume to appropriate the terms of 'Free access to all' when the means are so far out of reach. The proponents are such small cogs in the wheel that the infrastructure nor the economics will accommodate their ideals. Was stated, there are many types of Information Literacy but the knowledge as applied to to economic growth trumps all other forms given today's global marketization of the world's economies. Inuit and indigenous peoples all over the world loose in this post-industrialist knowledge based economy because they lack( or see no value in) those skills that do not suit their immediate needs.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Here are the links to the readings I chose:
Defining Information Literacy in the 21st Century:
http://www.ifla.org.sg/IV/ifla70/papers/059e-Campbell.pdf
Information to Meaning: Confronting Challenges of the 21st Century.
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/docs/I3%20Conference%202007.doc
Design for Information Literacy:
http://www.ck-iv.dk/papers/PilerotHiort%20Design%20for%20information%20literacy.pdf
Dr. Merrill
http://madlat2009.wikispaces.com/Workshops#w1
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