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How to have fun with history is available |
If you wake up to discover that the Internet and all cell phone towers are down, could you:
- Get directions by reading a physical map
- Identify north, south, east, west visually
- Do basic arithmetic, i.e. add, subtract, multiply and divide, in your head or on paper without the help of an electronic crutch
- Source the information you use and need on a daily basis manually
- And, if the downtime for the Internet and your cell was due to some disaster, could you source basic survival information manually?
If you said no to one of the above, you should be on alert. If you could not answer two or more of the above, you are not information literate, regardless of education or profession.
Information literacy is the ability to access, extract and comprehend information effectively and efficiently. If your only skill for accessing information is to google an answer, then the rest of the pyramid collapses.
Information literacy exists within the individual not within his or her ability to manipulate and bundle key terms on the Internet.
Alternative sources include individuals such as specialists, organizations, knowledge repositories such as libraries, and physical sources such as books, maps or documents. Two important factors in accessing information is to know what is available to you, and where. The process of discovering these can be fun and the journey packed with happy surprises.
The ability to memorize or retain information is also key to information literacy. This process is called building general knowledge. General knowledge is a personal database of useful - and sometimes trivial - information which can be relied upon when technology fails to deliver the answers - or when party talk flags.
Heather Vallance is the author of How to have fun with history which explores the principles of information literacy in the context of historical research. She is also the coauthor of How to be information literate which is a textbook for tertiary level education, particularly for students with English second language skills.
