Information Literacy

What is information literacy? How much do we know and how does it help us in designing our curriculum? There is a lot of information that we are still learning.

Did you know when you are searching that certain extensions represent different businesses, organizations, agencies, and educational institutions? Some of the extensions are: .edu which represents educational organizations; .com is usually a company; .gov is a government agency; and .mil is a military institution. These extensions are helpful in your search for information. If you want government information, you would end with a .gov and .edu for education searches. This is important in helping us find what we are looking for.

Knowing how to determine if a website is valid is important. We do not want to search information that may not be correct. If we are looking for a website to find out how to use microsoft moviemaker, we would type in msmoviemaker.com and find several addressess to look up information on how to download and use this software. This would be good software for an introductory class wanting to teach multimedia.

Google and yahoo are two commom search engines. There are many more out there to use while we are making our way through the information highway.

Blogs are a good communication tool inside and out of the classroom to share information with the teacher and the students. This is an opportunity to learn something new and share ideas not just in the classroom but across the curriculum, across the school districts, and across the country.

Please share some ideas that you are doing in the classroom which will help make a better learning environment for our students.