Agreed Drew. 'Needle in a haystack' only relates to that situation where people are looking for a specific item or that there is a specific item that relates to their needs. It doesn't relate to the exploratory process. It was just an example of how a metaphor can be used when facilitating IL - and stems from the work of Bruce, Edwards and Lupton in Australia. It's not meant to be a metaphor for information literacy!
So far I've been sent all sort of interesting ideas that relate to explaining different aspects of IL including:
1. mapping metaphor ... mapping the information landscape (students map the landscape)
2. text books as basic guides to a 'place' (i.e. subject)
3. cooking metaphor:
What ingredients do you need?
Incorporates:
Decide what you need to know
Types of information
Identify the resources you need
Learn how to search (building a search strategy)
Where can you get the ingredients?
Incorporates:
Using books, journals, databases, internet
What, which, how
How does it taste?
Incorporates:
Evaluate the search results
Evaluate your search strategy
What is the recipe?
Incorporates:
Referencing
Plagiarism
4. the information landscape http://findit.port.ac.uk/Nuggets/index.html
5. "sporty reader" for students to describe their research habits. In sporty readers you have to describe how you read in terms of a sport (i.e.: " I am a deep-sea diver, I like to immerse myself in a new environment, sometimes it is murky, sometimes beautiful and colourful etc " you get the idea). For researching so far I had an orienteer (brilliant!), a hill-walker ("long and slow process but you get a great view at the top", fly-fishing (dips in)
6. themes that play on constructive activities like gardening, or environmental protection more generally. Information is a constitutive part of the human environment, just as much as is any "natural" resource. It can be polluted, enclosed, degraded, exploited in unsustainable ways. Or it can be nurtured, protected against pests and neglect, healthily managed in a sustainable way.
Let's have some more! We should have a prize ! )
I hope people don't mind me circulating these. Not sure if I should credit people. Please say if you want me to or would rather I didn't.
Best wishes,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Information literacy and information skills teaching discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Drew Whitworth
Sent: 08 June 2009 13:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kayaking and information liteacy
Quoting "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>:
> Hi,
>
> I'd be interested to hear people's comments on a kayaking metaphor
> for teaching information literacy found at
> http://markhepworthsblog.blogspot.com/. Plus I'm still interested in
> the metaphors other people use to help learners relate to IL. It
> doesn't have to be elaborate. It could be something that helps
> visualise one aspect of information literacy, such as, using
> 'finding a needle in a haystack' when talking about information
> seeking. In fact the latter required explanation when working with
> international students - and should be used with caution!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mark
>
Actually I disagree with the "Needle in a haystack" metaphor in the
first place: I don't think it is best to cast IL as purely a process
of _finding_, as if we know full well the right answer is "there" and
if only we looked hard enough, for long enough, it'll appear. I don't
think that's a good metaphor at all.
Better for me are those themes that play on constructive activities
like gardening, or environmental protection more generally.
Information is a constitutive part of the human environment, just as
much as is any "natural" resource. It can be polluted, enclosed,
degraded, exploited in unsustainable ways. Or it can be nurtured,
protected against pests and neglect, healthily managed in a
sustainable way.
As I've written elsewhere (in Susie Andretta's edited 2007 collection
"Change and Challenge" and now my "Information Obesity"), IL is about
nurturing in people (all people, not just "students") the
"communicative competence" needed to take care of the informational
resources one is not only using now, but building for the future.
Drew Whitworth
--
"Many substances, when ingested, make the concepts of work and authority seem
highly unimportant. This is why they are almost always made illegal."
http://www.MAdigitaltechnologies.com, http://www.informationobesity.com,
http://informationobesity.ning.com
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