1. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
An online information
literacy community of
practice
The Scottish Information
Literacy Framework
CILIPS Autumn Gathering
3rd October 2012
He’s back! Christine Irving
Independent Information Professional
2. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Launched 11th June 2012
@ CILIPS Annual Conference
in Dundee
New online information
literacy community of
practice: Information Skills for
a 21st century Scotland.
More than a website …
Hosted by Scottish Library and
Information Council (SLIC)
3. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
• Scottish Information Literacy Project and the funding concluded end March 2010
• Important not to loose all the valuable work the Scottish Information Literacy
Project and it’s partners did, achieved and to continue the work …
• Information literacy is important …
– It is the cornerstone of learning and absolutely essential in this digital age.
– It supports learning and decision making in all areas of human activity:
education from early years through school to higher education, the
workplace, adult and lifelong learning and skills development.
– It helps people make informed choices about health care and gives people the
information they need to cope with long term medical conditions.
– It helps people to develop new skills and make them more employable.
– Perhaps most important of all, in a period of political change, it gives citizens
the information they need to make informed decisions about the future of
their country.
4. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
What’s there?
• Scottish Information Literacy Framework - a national overarching
framework of information literacy skills and competencies which all
sectors of education can recognize and develop or which can be applied to
the world of work, equipping learners with skills needed for the 21st
century.
• Valuable archive of material built up over several years:
– information about the Scottish Information Literacy Project
– project blog.
5. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
What’s there?
• Community of Practice open to everyone who is interested in information
literacy (IL) and associated skills and competencies. The aim is to connect
up practitioners in a range of sectors who are all working towards the
common goal of creating an information literate Scotland.
• What is information literacy?: definitions, frameworks, information
literacy and lifelong learning, information literacy and education
– Literacies that are associated with or are required to be used in
conjunction with information literacy e.g. critical literacy, digital
literacy, media literacy – definitions given
• Blog roll:
– Library and Information Literacy Websites
– Education, Learning and Development
6. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Work is on going – some
changes will be:
• Banner improved to show
all age groups involved in
information literacy
• RSS feed to be added
• Events listing to be
included
• Promote the use of
creating resources under
Creative Commons Licence.
More to come / be added but
we need your
help, engagement and
participation
7. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
How you can get involved?
Scottish Information Literacy
Framework
We need your help, we are
looking for individuals and groups
across the LIS sectors/community
to:
• continue to develop the
current version
• updating it to incorporate new
research, adding case
studies, and so on …
• use and promote the
framework.
8.
9. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
How you can get involved:
Community of Practice
Share your expertise, ask
questions and get involved!
Join the Community of Practice:
• Become a member - sign up
• Share practice,
• Contribute to the
communities’ knowledge of IL
activities, case
studies, news, conferences and
events, new research etc.
10. Information skills for a 21st century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Communities of practice have become a common term but:
– What is a 'community of practice' (CoP)
– How can we participate and engage in them
– How can we use them as an approach to knowing and learning?
Communities of Practice are
“groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn
how to do it better as they interact regularly”. Etienne Wenger, 2006
11. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Wenger identifies that there are three characteristic which are crucial to a community
of practice:
• The domain. 'A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network
of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of
interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain
membership.‘
• The community. 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in
joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build
relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a
community of practice.'
• The practice. 'A community of practice is not merely a community of interest.
Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared
repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring
problems - in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.'
12. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
How you can get involved:
Use the discussion board to:
• solve problems, request
information, seek and share
experience
• reuse assets
• discuss developments
• map knowledge and identify
gaps
• document projects
• announce events or report
back from them
• coordination and synergy of
activities, strategies, develop
ments etc.
13. Information skills for a 21st
Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Community of Practice: first meeting of
interested parties – cross sector
The main areas of interest:
• Developing core IL skills in FE;
• Assessing the impact of IL training;
• Advocacy for IL;
• Instructing teachers in IL,
• IL as an employability skill;
• IL toolkits for young people;
• Teaching IL skills in public libraries;
• Links between schools and public
libraries,
• Use of electronic IL resources in
public libraries;
• Online training packages in HE (short
demo of SMILE);
• Workplace IL skills social media;
training materials for teachers.
• NLS the Toolkit being developed -
looking for partners to work with in
the different sectors on the toolkit.
• Identify training and CPD needs
14. Information skills for a 21st Century Scotland
www.therightinformation.org/
Come and join us and contribute to what will be a vibrant
community working towards the common goal of creating an
information literate Scotland.
Thank you
"To prosper in the Digital Age, people must become masters of information."
Dr. Carolyn M. Stern for the NFIL/NCLIS/UNESCO 2003 Prague meeting of information
literacy experts - Information Literacy "Unplugged": Teaching Information Literacy
Without Technology.(p.3)
Editor's Notes
Launched appropriately in Dundee the home of OorWullie by leading activists from the former Scottish Information Literacy Project. It has been 2 years in the planning with lots of emails flying back and forward between interested parties, quite a few face to face meetings, some over coffee and cakes – just to keep us going of course and negotiations about IPR etc
You might be asking why do all this when there is no funding to do this work particularly as the project was so successful and achieved what it set out to do - develop a Scottish Information Literacy Framework. However those involved in the project were passionate about what they had achieved and felt it was too important to loose all the valuable work done by the project and its partners plus there is more work to be done to keep it current and reinforce the message that information literacy is important to us all.
We needed to find a new home for the framework so that it couldcontinue to be used but more importantly it could be developed further, updated to incorporate new research, new case studies, and so on by the information literacy community particularly in Scotland. We can’t do it on our own. The project website and blog both contain valuable material that we wanted to be able to access and we thought others would too. It is great to look back and see how others have learnt valuable lessons from the project. The Welsh Information Literacy Framework is such an example. It would be good to emulate some of the work they have done. If you haven't looked at their work I would recommend that you do.
Emerging from the project was a community of practice facilitated by Jenny Foreman and Lesley Thomson. Jenny and Lesley were active project partners and information literacy activists within the Scottish Government. The CoP local government platform was changed and the decision was taken not to move the CoP but create a new CoP one that was open to everyone not just its members. The section on What is Information Literacy used to be within the framework but this has been brought to the front for all to see what Information literacy is and its relevance within education, lifelong learning etc… It also highlights other literacies that are associated with or required to be used in conjunction with information literacy e.g. critical literacy (referred to in the CfE), digital literacy (more widely heard of than information literacy and higher up the political agenda), and media literacy – perhaps not so much used The blog roll is a hyperlinked list compiled by Jenny Foreman of useful blogs, websites etc
Work is on going and some changes will include an improvement to the banner to show all age groups involved in information literacy, RSS feed, events listing. We also need to promote the use of Creative Commons when developing resources so that we can all benefit and use them for our specific environment. Ok that’s what we have done and now for you. What can you do to help? How can you be involved?
This is an overview of the framework which shows that there is commonality between the different sectors. We are talking about the same thing but we tend to use different terms but that’s ok. Information literacy means different things to different people in different environments / landscapes. But we do have to make it relevant to people. Since the framework was developed the CfE has been introduced to the 3-18 education sectors, the SCONUL 7 Pillars has been updated. We need to look at these developments and update the framework as appropriate.
I want to spend a little time in looking at what community of practices are. They have become a common term but do we really know what they are?How can we participate and engage in them? How can we use them as an approach to knowing and learning?Here is a definition by Etienne Wenger that I like and that I can relate to.Next we will look at some useful advice from him about the crucial characteristics that we need for communities of practice to work.
Here are the three characteristics that Wenger identified that are crucial to a Community of Practice.I’m not going to read it out – I will leave that up to you. I have underlined what I think are key messages.
Some suggestion of how to use the discussion board. Remember Wenger’s points about a community:engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. build relationships that enable you to learn from each other.
Further to the launch and workshop session at Dundee an interested group of people willing to be facilitators within their sectors meet face to face on the 30th August. Each person had to say what there interest in being there was - this is a list of the main interests. The meeting generated interest in cross sector collaboration, sharing resources and potential future project. A great start to the Community of Practice long may it live and thrive.