87 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2025
    1. Learning anything coherently amid such a multiplicity of voicesrequires developing sophisticated synthesis skills.

      I think there has been a tendency to leave synthesis to the domain of disciplinary specialists. But at the undergraduate level it should be recognized as a generalist skill.

  2. Jan 2024
    1. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people - perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger

      nice case ofr liberal education

  3. Sep 2023
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  5. Jun 2022
  6. May 2022
    1. In a role reversal, media and retail platforms, such as Amazon, had begun to evaluate their users to determine what information they should receive

      targeting info and ads to consumers has long been a goal of media companies.

  7. Feb 2022
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  13. Oct 2018
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  17. Dec 2017
    1. The human mind, however, is arguably broken, and educators must implement a rigorous curriculum of informal logic before our gathering gloom of fallacies, magical thinking, conspiracy theories, and dogma make the Dark Ages look sunny by comparison.

      One problem is people spend much more time and attention outside of educational curricula. The messages from family, friends and media tend to take precedence.

  18. Nov 2017
    1. the ability to connect the dots between people and ideas, where others see no possible connection. An informed perspective is more important than ever

      This points to the value of a broad based liberal education. One needs to see and understand the dots in order to make connections. "Informed perspective" suggests informed learning and info lit.

    1. have the literacies to understand the work

      Great point. Information literacies are for everyone, and we all need to continually develop our own to keep up with evolving modes of communication. Should we be evaluated by people who can only evaluate traditional publishing?

    1. when Americans get news online, they increasingly reach for a smartphone (55%), with computer use falling significantly

      Does this impact the quality of the news people receive? News on a phone would have less depth, and possibly trend towards clickbait. Is it more personalized, more subject to algorithmic interference?

    1. the figure is just 53 percent when people are asked specifically about the news that they themselves use

      This bears further investigation. Is it low by historical standards? If so, might it be a result of marketing efforts by media outlets, as they try to distinguish themselves from the competition?

    2. people do not always distinguish between news reports and advertising on news sites, and the contrast between a professionally reported story and the “around the web” recommendations that may accompany it can be jarring

      In the online environment these sites and articles are mixed together as if they were equivalent. When we encounter newspapers in stores, they are generally not adjacent to tabloids.

  19. Oct 2017
    1. Technology is the problem. When the profit motive trumps the public good

      That second thing is the major problem - the attitude that money matters and people don't. Truth becomes a casualty. Humanity becomes a casualty. It manifests itself in the precarious employment situation and the opioid crisis as well as the media.

  20. Sep 2017
    1. The studying strategy with “the greatest power,” she adds, involves deeply questioning the text — asking yourself if you agree with the author, and why or why not.

      Etexts have an advantage in the annotation department in that they're not limited to the marginal space. Annotations can be as lengthy as they need to be. They can also be organized through tags, and thus easily searched. They can contain hyperlinks and be hyperlinked, tying texts together. I wonder how many people are taught, in any meaningful or systematic way, to use digital texts. And if they were, how would that change this dilemma.

  21. Aug 2017
    1. Sometimes, even people immersed in a discipline don’t quite understand how or why information is organized

      an example of how literacy is a continuum. People immersed in a discipline are hardly "info illiterate," but how and why info is organized is a discipline in itself

  22. Mar 2017
    1. many students I met were being told that Wikipedia was untrustworthy and were, instead, being encouraged to do research

      Is this a problem with media literacy? Or does it stem from a mindless bias against Wikipedia? The problem described sounds like literacy taught poorly.

    1. For the past 40 years, society has demanded information literacy of students

      Some people have been advocating for information literacy, but I have not seen evidence of a societal demand. In my experience, info lit is regarded as something that would be nice to have as part of the curriculum, if there was time and as long as someone else is responsible for it. We've spent 40 years trying to get it on the radar of faculty and administration.

    2. Information literacy presumes a set of unbiased institutions and incorruptible instructors are waiting in the wings to begin inculcating the masses with the proper truth procedures.

      I'm not sure of the basis of this characterization of information literacy. It makes it sound as if we assume a mantle of papal infallibility, and it seems to ignore the complexities of info lit.

  23. Feb 2017
    1. ‘information literacy’ suffers from a lack of descriptive power. It is too ambitious in scope, too wide-ranging in application and not precise enough in detail to be useful in an actionable way.

      Interesting point - information literacy is "too big to know." One response has been to define it down, others would fracture it into multiple literacies. While it may be necessary to break it down to make it manageable, the larger view is important too.

    1. Open is a purposeful path towards connection and community. Open pedagogy could be considered as a blend of strategies, technologies, and networked communities that make the process and products of education more transparent, understandable, and available to all the people involved
  24. Oct 2016
    1. citizens are to be intelligent shapers of the information society rather than its pawns

      Creating and communicating information are vital parts of info lit - parts that libraries should embrace

    2. a new liberal art that extends from knowing how to use computers and access information to critical reflection on the nature of information itself, its technical infrastructure, and its social, cultural and even philosophical context and impact

      Information comes in many forms and flows through many channels. It is important to understand the grammar and syntax of the forms, and the functions and workings of the channels, in order to understand the information.

    3. Should everyone take a course in creating a Web page, computer programming, TCP/IP protocols or multimedia authoring?

      Over the past 20 years, the web has become a basic communications platform, and multimedia a basic form. We need to know them like we need to know keyboarding and MS Word.

  25. May 2016
    1. students who are new to this kind of web and this kind of approach to interaction. Significantly, most students haven’t been taught to think about how the natures of knowledge, authority, composition, and learning have changed/are changing.

      This is an information issue, not a digital one. understanding how info flows through different channels, how new channels impact the nature of information,

    1. Identifying what information is needed Finding the information Evaluating the information

      Some situate info lit here. It makes it easy to instruct & assess, but the other three matter just as much if not more. Number 2 is vital - asking good questions is where it starts, and formulating questions is a creative and information skill that is valued in the workplace, and seen as lacking in education. Number 5 is entirely within the librarian's field of expertise. Number 6 may belong to the disciplines in part, but it is a place to connect with them.

  26. Apr 2016
    1. efficiency is not always the primary goal in gathering information

      This definition/description limits IL mainly to finding & evaluating. Why aren't using and creating and communicating in the mix?

    1. it is not simply about the ability to evaluate information for features such as authenticity, quality, relevance, accuracy, currency, value, credibility and potential bias.

      Of course, neither is information literacy by any definition that I am aware of.

    1. 6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

      Purdue method gave methodology the short shrift. The goal there was information extraction rather than deep understanding. "Satisficing"