These content farms are things you have seen in search results before. They are sites like eHow, eZine Articles, HubPages, and Yahoo Answers among many others. And they are annoying as hell. I can’t remember ever finding a useful post on Yahoo Answers. Luckily, it seems that Google is finally trying to do something about it.

For some things, Google is great. I can type “Aljazeera” in and quickly find their English page without knowing the URL. For articles where I can’t remember who wrote them or where I read them, I can type a few keywords that I remember and retrieve them. But if I am doing any shopping I’m not going to Google. There is far too much spam and bias. I’ll go to Amazon or directly to a site. If I am looking for a somewhat credible answer to a not simply factual (Wikipedia) sort of question, I’m not likely going to search Google. Or if I do, I am often disappointed.

This was part of what I was trying to get at in my information landscape post earlier this month. Google is not magic and can’t do everything. It often fails us, and we lower our standards for it because we believe that it’s magic. It seems like these posts about lower quality search results could be used as teachable moments for students.

I observed another librarian teaching and she talked to students about sites like these. She pointed out things like the “belly fat” ads and how the content is normally pretty terrible. It seemed to work very well. Can we use this problem with search to help students become more discerning information consumers? Does anyone else talk about this?

CC image from naotakem on Flickr

Our institution was recently in the New York Times for the focus we are placing on financial literacy. We require students to attend multiple sessions about how to manage their money and make sound financial decisions. I think this is a forward thinking initiative, and wish that I had something like this when I was an undergraduate. What really struck me about the article, though, is the language that is used to describe what we’re teaching:

“Champlain… doesn’t actually use the term financial literacy. The opposite of literacy, after all, smacks of ignorance. Nobody wants to be ordered into a classroom for being illiterate. So the college speaks of its “financial sophistication” offerings…”

This is something I am going to begin adopting in the way I approach information literacy and teaching. As terms, I think ‘financial literacy’ or ‘information literacy’ are fine. People know what you are talking about. But they carry a lot of baggage, especially when used around students.

I almost never use the term ‘information literacy’ in the classroom, because I don’t want students thinking that I believe that they are information illiterate. If they think that, I’ve lost them. And in truth, I don’t think they’re information illiterate. I think they’re bright as hell and often they teach me things. They are really comfortable and adept at searching the web. I just think they’re not as sophisticated in their use and evaluation of information as they should be.

As part of our information literacy assessment, librarians got to look at annotated bibliographies handed in by first year students. In some of them there were rather questionable sources being used. Some included websites from high schools, some included only websites. People with a high level of information sophistication would include sources from a variety of formats. They would try to find sources that argued against their thesis, anticipating arguments. They would recognize bias and approach their problem with balance and objectivity.

I don’t believe that students are information illiterate, they simply need a higher level of information sophistication. At first students are only drinking the Pabst Blue Ribbons of the information world. These are things like Wikipedia and biased blog websites, and sites in the top five hits of a Google search. This is fine is many instances, but I want to help them develop more refined information palettes. I also want them to enjoy the Moët et Chandons of research articles, reports, and information presented in a scholarly, balanced way.

I’m one of three librarians at Champlain College teaching 21 sections of our CORE-210 classes. I have finished five so far and have five to go. In this session we are talking about plagiarism, and more broadly, the ethical use of information. Often sessions on plagiarism can be pretty boring and come off as preachy or authoritarian; but this session, with the help of some technology, elicits thoughtful discussion and is now probably my favorite session.

The technologies that we are using are a wiki,YouTube videos, and a digital projector (new school) and a white/blackboard and post it notes (old school). The videos that we show are examples of possible instances of plagiarism or possible unethical uses of information. After showing an example of possible plagiarism we draw a continuum on the board with one side being completely ethical and the other being completely unethical. Students then have to decide where they feel this situation falls on the continuum by placing a post it somewhere along it and then justifying their answer.

I see this as a perfect example of technology working well in accomplishing an educational goal. It works for several reasons:

• The technology isn’t the focus – We are not highlighting a database or our OPAC. We’re not teaching them a technology. The technology is an afterthought. We’re using a wiki, but simply as a place to embed multiple videos. We’re using videos, but thoughtfully. They’re not just haphazardly thrown in. We are using these technologies in the way they should be used – as tools. When you forget you are using technology is usually the time when it is most effective.
• A mix of old and new – We have some variety in the technology that we use. We don’t limit ourselves to only new shiny technology, nor do we eschew the new. We use the correct tools at the correct times. Using post its and the blackboard can be just as effective (if not more) than showing a video.
• Physical element – Having a student write their reasoning on a post it and then physically walk up to the board and place it somewhere works well pedagogically. It helps people who are kinesthetic learners. It also makes students commit to a position and then justify their reasoning behind it. They can’t hide. They have to put their brains on the board so others can see them. Humans are physical beings and because of this we need more than just a screen. We need to touch things, move, and interact with the real world.

This session works really well because it has variety, a physical element and uses technology in a purposeful way. When the teaching librarians here are designing information literacy sessions in the future I want to remember the lessons that we have learned from this CORE-210 session.

In Zen Buddhism a sesshin is a period of intense practice of Zen and meditation that typically last 5-7 days. This reminded me a lot of my Immersion experience this weekend. In Zen you are trying to maintain the utmost concentration on your practice, and the same is true with Immersion. Teaching librarians have the opportunity to concentrate on nothing but teaching and learning for 4.5 days.

Normally life consists of rushing from one thing to the next with little sustained focus, but at Immersion we got to concentrate solely on teaching. Even during the informal, social parts of Immersion we were jokingly refering to “teachable moments,” and “what lesson did we learn here?”

At sesshin there is also a significant amount of discomfort that occurs. Your legs and body can get very sore from doing extended sitting meditation, you can get completely exhausted doing all night meditation, and even get hit from monks using a flat wooden stick called a keisaku.

Now our amazing faculty members weren’t whacking us with sticks, but there is a certain amount of pain and dismofort at Immersion too. You can get really tired (I took a nap under my desk like George Constanza). You are required to prepare and deliver a short speech in front of your peers, which can make people very nervous. And you are constantly challenged in different types of less than confortable learning activities such as elevator pitches, skits, and even an addition of battledecks this year. But in both Zen and Immersion this discomfort is to serve a higher purpose. Getting out of your confort zone helps you improve and become a more successful person and teacher.

Finally in Zen there is sometimes an elightenment experience that occurs after all the intense practice and concentration and Immersion is similar. We discussed ”Aha!” moments, and I know I had a couple of those. I also heard several people saying (me included) that there were points later in the week when things started to all come together. Different pieces like assessment and learning styles began to make sense as a more coherent whole and we could see information literacy in a new light.

I do feel that I am more info lit enlightened and I’d recommend ACRL Immersion to librarian who has to do teaching in the classroom. It wasn’t all work. We had time to go out and blow of some steam too. I also made a lot of new friendships. It might not be for everyone but it is a great program if you’re serious about information literacy and want to push yourself to become better.

Image from "Victory of the People" on Flickr

I really find citations to be annoying.  Who cares if you are supposed to add a period instead of a comma?  Who cares if everything gets capitalized, or only the first words?  The original point of citations was so you could refer the reader to a  relevant quote or an idea from someone else.  Well guess what.  We have a way better tool for that now. They’re called hyperlinks.

Citations are the original hyperlink. Example: A reader is cruising along reading a lengthy document on law or medicine or something equally prestigious and comes across something with which he is unfamiliar. “Golly, I sure wish I knew more about where this information came from,” he says to himself.  But lo and behold there is a little number next to the sentence he was just reading.  He glances at the bottom of the page and finds the same corresponding number next to a little note, a footnote if you will.  He is then able to follow the citation in the footnote to a completely different article and then learn more about that topic.

The same process is currently availble on the web except it is much easier.  If you see something you want to know more about, you click on it.

I can see why students cut corners and  spend as little time as possible on citations. It’s boring and it is not the reason they went to school.  I get bored to tears coming up with citation examples.  And I don’t always get the capitalization right.  Citations are not fun or glamorous.

Even though I think they’re dumb, I can still see the value in them.  Properly citing teaches you to give credit where credit is due. It teaches you to be able to separate your thoughts from other people’s thoughts. It’s also good practice following set formats and writing a certain way.  In their jobs many of these students may have to use specialized writing: things like business memos, technical writing, commenting in their code. Students have to learn sooner or later they have to be able to understand and follow specific rules for writing.

That doesn’t make it any more fun, but at least it gives them a reason why they should care about proper citations.

I have heard that you never really know something until you teach it. There is a lot of truth in this. I think I am gaining a much better understanding of what information literacy is and how it influences our daily lives.

Teaching the same session over and over can become pretty dull, but it also helps you to polish the session and find your groove.  Every first-year session I did went well, but I think that I really found my groove in the last one. I knew what I wanted to get across and even kept it interesting by telling related anecdotes from my own life or even stupid jokes. This makes a session more personal and less robotic.  By bringing your real self into the classroom you are able to connect better with students.

One example was when I was talking about finding information.  I told them that they were not just looking for stuff but the right stuff.  Like the New Kids on the Block. Then I sang the “oh, oh, oh, oh, oh” part of the chorus.  It was super lame, but I got a few pity laughs.  And the students knew I wasn’t some phony preaching to them. I was just a dude having a discussion with them about information.

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the script or lesson plan and just go through the motions, but if you can personalize it and actually put yourself into your teaching, you will serve the students much better.

I am looking forward to the holidays and a little break from teaching though.  I need to recharge for next semester.

I finished reading a study this week titled “Information Behavior of the Reasearcher of the Future.“  It was put out early this year and some of the findings were fascinating.  It once again reminded me of all the barriers that our users face as opposed to getting information from the free web.  These are things like waiting for an interlibrary loan, confusing search interfaces, poorly presented search results, etc.

I see this in my work as well. Yesterday I was helping a student who had found two e-books but she was having problems accessing them.  I was surprised that the student continued trying to access them.  I am sure that many just give it up and go to Google.  Speed seems to be the most important criteria for information these days.

One quote, though, really stood out as interesting and something that I had never thought of.

No private sector corporation would survive on the basis of failing to invest in consumer profiling, market research and loyalty programmes. No library we are aware of has a department devoted to the evaluation of the user, how can that be?

This seems like a very innovative idea.  Innovation can often be just taking something that is commonplace in one arena and applying it in another.  Why aren’t there any user-evaluation librarians?  Or why aren’t there more consultants that evaluate library user groups and make reccomendations for action?

I strongly urge librarians who are charged with the task of education to read this study.  Students are finding information faster, but they are questioning it less and not thinking in depth about it.

Photo by Eric @ Flickr

Tonight I remembered why I went into librarianship in the first place — to make a difference and actually help people.

Often in your career (and in life) you get caught up in the mundane, day to day stuff: going to meetings, prepping for classes or presentations, whatever project you are working on next.  You put yourself on autopilot or stress out about things that do not go your way.  Or, especially with librarians, you get overwhelmed with all that you have to do, often leading to burnout.

Sometimes though, it is nice to step back and recognize, “hey, there is a reason I am doing this,” or “is this really worth worrying about…isn’t this just minor in the grand scheme of life?”

Every once in a while you get reminders of this.  One great example are reference sessions when you are able to find the perfect information for someone and they get really excited and thank you for all your help.  You can actually see yourself making a difference.

Tonight I did an instruction session with a Sports Management class.  I thought it went pretty decent for my first one of the year, except for a slight setback with setting up wireless for laptops.  The one thing that I really was pleased about was the information literacy gem that I presented them without even realizing I was going to do it.  I told them that sometimes in order to find information you must be creative.  You can’t get caught up always going to the same place for your information, no matter if that place is Google or the library catalog, or your uncle Jerry.  Information comes from a plethora of different places.  You may need to go out and observe a basketball game and document it, or e-mail someone at Burton Snowboards to get what you are looking for.  Don’t handcuff yourself by using only one source of information.  Think creatively…be a detective!

I didn’t say all that, but that was my general message.

What was really rewarding though was that after the session the instructor e-mailed me and told me, based on student feedback, that I “opened their eyes.  One said you hit a home run.”  I guess that is a little Sports Management humor.  Getting comments like that would make anybody’s day.  But it really made me realize once again why I went into this profession.

I take two things out of this:

1. Write more thank you letters.  They are really powerful and appreciated.
2. Even if you don’t get praise every day, try at least once a day to step back an look at the big picture.  We may get caught up in the mundane, but seeing things in their larger context puts things in perspective.  Stressful things don’t seem to be as big of a deal, and simple things have some of the most power to them.

The panel was composed of Steve Benen a political pundit blogger from the Washington Monthly, Cathy Resmer online editor of Seven Days Newspaper, and Ann DeMarle, head of the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College.  It was moderated by Jeff Rutenbeck Dean for the Division of Communication and Creative Media at Champlain College.

One thing that got people going in the audience was when Jeff said that books were an inefficient means of communication. Publishing online is much quicker and people can interact and have a conversation with the information, whereas books take years to publish and you cannot interact with a book.  The audience got defensive and sentimental about books, expressing that they did not want them to go away.  Someone actually stated how books were one of the most perfectly evolved forms of media.  Jeff also passed around a Kindle for people to gawk at.  The guy next to me was ogling it for about five minutes.

Photo by davidking

What was especially interesting was the discussion that ensued after Jeff brought up the idea that textbooks are “so superficial.”  He said that for his classes, “you could get 90 percent of the information in the textbooks from Wikipedia.”  At this a student commented that he did not go to textbooks first.  He went to Google or YouTube or blogs or other online sources.  Barbara Shatara, a librarian at the Fletcher Free Library asked him the same question I was thinking: how do you evaluate this information for credibility?  His answer was that he evaluated by cross referencing.  If he found info on one blog he would look and see if it was confirmed in other places.  If there were more people agreeing with something than disagreeing then he would believe it.

This gives a good insight into how information is being evaluated in this era.  Instead of looking for some authority people look to the masses.  “Do a lot of people believe this?  Ok, good then I will too.”  A lot of people believe that evolution is a falsehood and that global warming is a fabrication.   A great danger with this is when looking to corroborate or disprove a piece of information on the web, it very much depends on how you are searching.  If you search with keywords only  related to creationism, or find a creationist website and start following their links, the information your find is going to be colored in a very specific way.  With a mindset such as this, the tyranny of the majority can then determine what is true and not true, and that is very dangerous.

There were a number of debates back and forth and everyone really got into the session.  I was surprised at how many people were engaged and actually caring about these issues.  I guess information literacy is a real issue that people outside of libraries or academia care about.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the effects of the interweb on reading.  Nicholas Carr and his fascinating article, “Is Google Making us Stoopid?,” brought up the idea that Google and the nature of the internet in general is making it more and more difficult to thoughtfully read books and longer texts.  The typical internet experience is made up of little kernels of information plucked from different locations, allowing you to create your own whole.  This is in opposition to the previous model where an expert writes his own coherent view of a certain topic and you get one view in its entirety.  These are two very different ways of thinking, as well as two very different ways of reading.

Another article, “Literacy Debate – Online, R U Really Reading?” by Mokoto Rich asks us if this new type of internet reading is an enemy of traditional reading or if it too should be respected as another type of literacy.  It is fascinating to hear how one of the children in the article, Nadia, does read, but instead of books it is fan fiction. These are stories produced by regular people who can have the story go whatever direction they want.  Nadia even writes her own story about a person who dies and is reincarnated as a half cat half human.  It is instances like this in which the internet really amazes me.

I am of the opinion that this sort of literacy is equally as valid as traditional book literacy.  In Nadia’s case, she is reading other people’s work, engaging with the material, and inspired to create her own.  This is literacy at its finest.  But what I have come to realize is there are all different sorts of literacy.  There is the basic literacy level where you gain knowledge of reading, grammar, spelling and can understand sentences.  But from there there are countless types of specialized literacies.  Being able to read a legal brief, a medical chart, or a philosophical tome aren’t things that many of us have to do unless we work in one of those professions, but they still all constitute different modes of literacy.  My point is that you can be literate in only the things that are necessary for you, your career and your interests.

I would argue, though, that in order to be a well rounded individual in this day and age one needs to have in some measure the two diametrically opposed types of literacy: web reading and book reading.  The web is so ubiquitous that there is no escaping it.  Even print newspapers refer you to their online content.  This is not anything groundbreaking but, the internet is shaping our culture, and if people want to be a part of that culture they need to know how to get information from the web and understand it.  A person is not engaged in society if they shun the web.

On the other hand, those who spend all their time on the internet reading blogs and social networking are missing out on a big part of humanity as well.  No matter how many wikipedia articles, blog posts, or sparknotes, you read about The Odyssey you will still never capture the same feeling as actually reading it.  You will not be able to understand Odysseus’ unbounded joy when he again sees his beloved Ithaca.  So much of our culture and knowledge is contained in books.  You can get much of this knowledge from the web, but it will be very superficial.  You will not have the same depth of understanding you would get from reading a book.  Thus, being able to sit down, concentrate, and read in depth books will continue to be a desirable skill.

Therefore, some degree of literacy is necessary to succeed in life, such as the ability to read and write.  It is not necessary though to be able to sort through web pages (John McCain has his wife do it).  It also isn’t necessary to read books or even long articles.  Even though neither of these things is necessary, I believe that they are still both essential to live a full and flourishing human life.