Media Literacy

1.) Yes, we can define what it means to be information literate (although we may not have a universal definition, each person can define what it means to them). For the most part however, being information literate means being able to understand whether or not what you're reading is an established and reliable source of information that can be cited without undermining your own work in the future. For instance, citing a source that is run in an honest and professional fashion would increase your own credibility, whereas citing a source that changes its information without apologizing and cuts corners would have a negative impact on your own work in the long run.

Essentially to be able to be information literate in my perspective, you have to make sure that the information used is fully analyzed (unlike the example of the underwear-literacy connection in the article), has a credible author, is located in some sort of published journal (so that the information on it can't be changed at will without causing publication issues, so it could remain an ever-reliant source), and the information itself is full and complete in terms of the subject it is covering. To me, if a person can cover these areas, I would consider them to be information literate (as might others), and these are rules that anyone should be able to learn how to do.

2) Yes, we can teach our students the skills necessary to become information literate. One of the keys to doing this however is to not try and teach this concept in a "swing for the fences" single lesson, but instead to teach them it throughout an entire course with every research project they do. Doing this would help cause the "rules" to come naturally to them, so that they become a common-sense habit. It must become something that they are aware of every time they do it, and eventually they will monitor themselves about it. For instance, if there's someone that I'm usually around on a routine basis and they say things like "I did good" I find myself correcting them; "you mean you did well." It gets annoying of course, but eventually it gets to the point where I don't even have to say it when they messed up, because they'll start correcting themselves on it, and then next thing I know they're correcting other people before I even get the chance. As long as they are constantly made aware of it, they will learn to monitor themselves, and even others of it.

3) Yes, we can teach students to become effective users of the most powerful medium. While it is not an easy task, it is something that everybody can learn; to take the internet with a grain of salt. I believe that there are two main keys to doing this; question and evaluate. To question is to simply be aware, to learn to question everything found on the internet and sources that come from the internet and other media outlets. To evaluate is simply to learn how to accurately decide whether the source of information is credible or not. If a person reads on the internet that "All elephants have blue eyes," they might simply go "Oh! That's a cool fact!" and move on from it. If a person was learning these two steps however, they should first say "Ok, now how can I tell if this is true?" And then they need to go behind the scenes a little bit to find out if the source seems credible or not, by walking through a teacher's "information literacy" steps. In this way a person can always be sure that they can back up their findings to the best of their abilities.