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Information Literacy

The American Association of School Librarians provides a short, readable paper detailing the organization's position on information literacy. This document describes the new roles that teachers, school librarians, and principals play in the information literate classroom; for example, teachers and librarians act more as learning coaches than textbook lecturers who dispense knowledge from on high. Another helpful feature of this article is that it lists the information problem-solving skills process through which the students should be able to work.

Northwest Indian College Oksale Program Virtual Library. For a Native American perspective of information literacy, click on Educational Resources from the main pages then click on the different parts of Greg Cajete's education model.

TILT, the University of Texas' wonderful online information literacy tutorial, is appropriate for older elementary school students. It comes in both graphics-heavy and graphics-light versions so that students can experience TILT even if their schools don't have the latest in technology. Virtually guaranteed to educate and entertain.

One of the National Forum for Information Literacy's goals is to help teachers "incorporate information literacy into their teaching" as well as to promote equity of access to technology. Their site contains definitions of new information literacy-related terminology, describes publications that discuss information literacy and its ramifications, and lists web sites related to their cause.

This web site details the Colorado Department of Education's official guidelines for creating information literate students. It is an excellent place to go not only to get a brief, clear definition of what constitutes an information literate student, but also to illustrate how the combined efforts of library media specialists, teachers, and administrators can work together to make a difference.

School Libraries.org brings educators and school librarians outstanding links to information literacy resources. These resources include: the Big 6 model for information problem solving, curriculum and technology planning links, an online book entitled "Information Literacy" by Christina Doyle, as well as lesson plans and teaching activities.

Kathy Schrock, the author of DiscoverySchool.com, is a widely-published educator who has compiled helpful articles, web sites, critical evaluation surveys, and evaluation tools for teachers. The information on this site largely deals with using information literacy skills to discern legitimate web sites from biased or false sources.

The Directory of Online Resources for Information Literacy is put together by Drew Smith, an instructor in the library and information science program at the University of South Florida. If you are searching for a comprehensive list of online papers, bibliographies and webliographies, conferences, listservs, programs and projects in elementary schools, and a detailed outline of the information literacy process, this website provides all of these options and more.

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