reading #2

Mikayla Chiarello
Reading#2
9/15/2008

"Information Navigion 101"

In this reading I learned a lot about how librarians and other information imparters are going to start teaching their methods and information finding strategies to college and high school students. We have been learning a lot in class about how there is going to be a whole new wave of technology and information access and it did occur to me that not everyone would know how to use or take advantage of it. In this reading I’ve learned that even students my age in colleges around the country seem to think they know more than they actually do about computer and information technology. We all certainly know how to type keywords into a search engine, but its what comes after that that we need some work on. Students know little about determining whether a website is authentic and is copyrighted and not just false information that somebody who knows little on the subject made a website on. Because of the technology up to now people are overloaded with information, but the problem now stems with being able to decipher what’s important and also being able to find what’s important and not have to bother with the un-authentic information. This article says that we need to teach students how to “develop effective research skills” so they can get right to the point of the matter on what they are looking for. They say we need to embrace what they call “information literacy” because if it is becoming the major research method in the future we need to make sure it is done correctly and efficiently. They are even going as far as testing students to make sure their information literacy skills are up to par. In these tests they are tested on finding, sorting, analyzing and communicating information and the technology that now goes with it. In my opinion this is probably a good idea because, as said in the beginning of this reading, our generation is completely savvy with the new technologies having to do with our social lives like facebook and text messaging, but our technology is allowing us to do so much more and it would be a shame to not learn how to take advantage of it.