And now the spring semester is over, too soon for me, not soon enough for the students in my two classes, I suspect. (They have lives, this is my life, lol!) This was my first chance to teach LIS 5503 (“Information Literacy and Instruction”), which I loved and would love to be able to teach again in the future. So much to learn, so little time… and by that I don’t simply mean whatever the students learned from me but also what I learned from the students throughout the semester. This was the first class I’ve taught where I felt that almost everyone became actively aware of not only their “learning styles” (which has become quite commonplace) but of their “teaching styles” (as most of them are likely to be doing information literacy instruction of their own) as we reflected together on some of the andragogical and pedagogical issues. It also made me more conscious (and even, at times, self-conscious!) about what I was doing in the class. The whole semester served as a formative evaluation of the class itself, though probably no one else became aware of this until we reached the formal “summative” evaluation stage at the end of the semester!
Not every thing went well (I could have done more to support some of the discussion forums, for instance), but some things went extraordinarily well. And because those things were “owned” by people in the class, I may never know what their impact outside the class will be. But I do hope that the projects take on a life of their own now, whether it’s the animal-oriented inquiry project for low-income first graders, the evidence-based teaching methods tutorial for physics teaching assistants, the information coaching/research stages model, the middle-school health literacy videos, the health law resources tutorial for non-lawyer researchers, or the content creators guides to various “public domains,” to name a few. Or that, at least, the people who created the things like these will go on to do even better projects!
Job candidates should always have a few interesting books to mention during casual conversational moments that come up in their on-campus interviews. Here’s one from yesterday that I was pleased to hear about: The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr (author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, which I read and enjoyed when it appeared in The Atlantic a while ago.) Always a pleasure serving on these search committees, as I pick up such intriguing information along the way…. also, the lunches are generally wonderful!
Photos by Sweet Juniper from the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository ruins: fascinating that the graffiti is the most hopeful thing in sight here.
Back at the beginning of the semester in KM/LIS 5033, we had the usual introduction to the so-called DIKW hierarchy, which turned out to be WIKID cool in our reinterpretation. Thinking of another hierarchy (and its possibilities), I wonder what might happen to Bloom’s (revised) taxonomy if we were to look at that with an equally critical eye? (Special thanks to Andrew Churches of Auckland, New Zealand, for providing the Edorigami wikispace, because it provides additional digital resources with which to think about this!)
Another perspective on my ongoing literacy theme. Thom Gillespie of Indiana talks with Mihai Nadin about multiple literacies.
The book by Nadin they mention (Civilization of Illiteracy) is available for download through Project Gutenberg, and it’s not an easy read either. In fact, the more vested you are in traditional (textual) literacy, the harder this is to read. Ich bin ironic?
A little experiment, using Christine Bruce’s seven faces of information literacy model, which deserves wider attention, I think. (Publishing with an academic press in Australia, alas, doesn’t get people quite the exposure here in the States that it often should!)
Anyway, here’s the experiment: if you’re in 5433 and reading this blog because you’re trying to get a handle on the class that starts on Monday the 20th, please comment on what you think of her model here. (It may or may not be directly related to the class work: it’s more of an added bonus, in that I think everybody in the profession, whether or not they’re going to hold the title of “instructional librarian”, should be aware of perspectives beyond the ACRL standards, so it’s definitely worth your scanning.) I’m expecting at least one comment: but let’s see what happens!
