Informaiton literacy

Information Navigation 101
Andrea L. Foster

My response:
In today's world college aged students are thought of as tech-savvy, advanced computer users. Unfortunately this is not the case when it comes to academic research. There is a huge problem with students whose research ability extends only to Google and Wikipedia. As Foster points out in "Information Navigation 101," librarians all over the world are very focused on increasing students' ability to find and evaluate scholarly information. Information literacy programs are springing up on campuses everywhere! Librarians are attempting to get the word out there about online resources: journals, book reviews, articles, primary sources... etc. There have been standardized tests created to evaluate student's information literacy skills. Some librarians think that standardized tests will not accurately show a person's ability to do meaningful research; instead they suggest a student be judged on research papers and different sorts of projects.

I totally agree that there is a huge problem among college aged students who don't know about all of the great online resources and how to obtain and access those resources. Standardized tests are horrible and don't work so I really think that is a horrible idea. The amount of information showing the ineffectiveness of standardized testing is present and growing and it is sad that anybody would want to continue in this awful tradition of rewarding fact memorization and punishing creativity and innovation. There are other ways to get a good reading of a person's level of information literacy like the projects and electronic portfolios talked about in the article, and those should be further explored.