Mid-December Conference Promises to Lend
"Insights on Innovation"
The Center for Digital Literacy has sponsored a number of Institutes on Digital Empowerment over the past few years. In 2006, the conference focused on K-12 "Inquiry, Imagination and Invention in the Digital Age." The December 2008 conference follows up on that theme with "Insights Incite Innovation."
This year's conference explores how public libraries can support the innovation process for youngsters and adults. The conference brings together researchers, librarians, innovators, and representatives from business and professional organizations.
Pam Berger, international library consultant and publisher of InfoSearcher will facilitate what we expect to be lively collaborative sessions in which participants roll up their sleeves and plan potential ideas for furthering the role of public libraries as a vital resource for innovators. In the next issue, we'll report on the outcomes of this conference.
Reported by Marilyn P. Arnone
Perceptions of Principal Support
We learned in the previous issue of ESD that findings in the latest State study of school library impact (New York) conducted by Dr. Ruth Small and her associates indicate that the library media specialist (LMS) has a direct effect on student learning with a significant impact on elementary students. Now, we’re going to reveal another interesting finding from that study.
In the first phase of the study, a general survey was administered to both LMS and principals. One part of the survey asked LMS how much they believe their principals support them and their work and asked principals how much they believe they support their LMS and the work their LMS does. The results show a significant difference in perception between these two groups; i.e., principals believe they are more strongly supporting their LMS (on a 5-point scale, 4.4) than the LMS perceive their principals are supportive (3.8). This could be an actual difference in the amount of support principals give to their LMS OR it could simply mean that principals need to do a better job of showing their support of their LMS (for example, publicly recognizing their work at faculty and parent meetings or fostering librarian/teacher collaboration). Stay tuned…more findings will be shared in the next issue of ESD.
Reported by Kori M. Gerbig
IMLS National Leadership Grant Awarded to
S.O.S. for Information Literacy
The S.O.S. for Information Literacy project which has been maintained by the Center for Digital Literacy with support from volunteers was given a boost in October when the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced an award to build on the successful project. The award will be used to update the technical interface to support the new AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner. To date, the project has continued to employ the information literacy standards (i.e., Information Power standards) published by ALA in 1998. Now that the indicators have been refined, it is a good time to begin this process which is estimated to take about 15 months including retrofitting older lesson plans with the new standards.
As part of the same project, teacher-librarians will contribute to a volume of 100 model lesson plans that use the new standards. Finally, the Center for Natural Language Processing is working with the Center for Digital Literacy and Data Momentum to incorporate state level content standards into the system.
Reported by Marilyn P. Arnone
New Study Finds Perceived Competence in Information Skills Predicts Actual Competence
Inital findings from a study that explored both digital and information literacy shows the importance of students' confidence in their ability to do research and utilize information skills is significantly related to actual performance in a knowledge test of information literacy. Also related to performance was the disposition to read for enjoyment and perceived reading ability. These three factors accounted for more than 30% of the variation in scores on the knowledge test demonstrating the role of affect and motivation in information literacy competence. The initial findings will be reported in the 2009 Proceedings of the Association for Library and Information Science Education but are available online now as part of a partipatory paper blog at http://blogs.iis.syr.edu/alise/archives/77.
Another aspect of this two year study is reported by Rebecca Reynolds in this issue's TIPS column.
Reported by Marilyn P. Arnone
New Web Site for Center for Digital Literacy
Syracuse University's Center for Digital Literacy (CDL) has a brand new Web site at http://digital-literacy.syr.edu. Check out the the upcoming events, ongoing projects, and other CDL activities that are intended to promote collaborative research on the impact of multiple literacies on children and adults, and develop programs and tools for acquiring those literacies.
Reported by Ruth V. Small
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