These resources have been gathered for students and teachers who wish to improve information literacy skills. Four simple exercises are provided to help with content integration. kc/05

Information Literacy is defined as the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand. http://www.infolit.org/

1. Information literacy skills are included in every content area and are woven into the Content Standards for California Public Schools.
CA Standards online:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/

2. Association of College and Research Libraries
Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education
Standards, Performance Indicators, and Outcomes:
http://www.ala.org/acrl/ilcomstan.html

Ask...

3. "Questions and questioning may be the most powerful technologies of all." Jamie McKenzie
A student guide to questioning skills:
http://questioning.org/qtech.html

4. The Big6, the most widely-known and widely-used approach to teaching information and technology skills in the world. Information literacy lesson plans, research guidelines, etc.
http://big6.com/index.php

Exercise #1

5. Chart of the best features of the best search tools. Has a PDF version.
http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html

6. Librarians Index to the Internet is arranged by broad subject areas by knowledgeable humans. "Information you can trust."
http://lii.org/

7. Billed as the "ultimate source of free information." Links to search engines and indexes. Click on "general" category for lists of engines.
http://www.beaucoup.com/

Exercise #2

8. QUICK---the quality information checklist. Here are eight ways of checking information on web sites.
http://www.quick.org.uk/menu.htm

9. Web Site Evaluation Guide, from Kathy Schrock.
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html

10. To find the owner of web sites with addresses that end in, .com, .edu, .net, .org go to: www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois.

11. To find who else links to the page. Go to:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search.html. Highly recommended.

12. Web Page Evaluation Checklist from the U.C. Berkeley library. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/EvalForm.pdf

14. Reliable Internet Sources Worksheet, by SRVHS teacher Christie Pacheco (MSWord)

15. Internet Search Tips student handout by SRVHS teacher Jeff Davis (MSWord)

Exercise #3

16. Here are some places to go for recommended electronic information citation guides.
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/netciteFARQ.html

17. Step by Step Research & Writing. A step by step web site for students will guide them through the process from getting the assignment to writing the paper.
http://www.ipl.org/div/aplus/toc.htm

18. Fight plagiarism with Turnitin.com (fee based),  or use google.com to search for passages (see exercise #4).

19. For writers: worried about plagiarizing? The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University explains what it is an how to avoid it. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html

 

Exercise #4

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20. To avoid all of this "nonsense" ;-) on the Internet go to bona fide information database subscriptions at the SRVHS Library :
http://www.srvhs.org/RESOURCES/LIBRARY/index.html

21. To get a printable version (PDF) of the CTAP Information Literacy brochure, click here: http://www.ctap4.org/infolit/