MSLA is happy to welcome Dean Shareski as a spotlight speaker for the Connecting Through Literacy Conference.  Dean will be presenting one spotlight session, 5 Minutes of Creativity, and two workshop sessions, The Three C's of Discovery Education and the Missing Links.

Dean Shareski is the Community Manager for Discovery Education Canada.He taught grades 1-8 for 14 years and spent 9 as a digital learning consultant for Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK.  In addition he teaches pre-service teachers at the University of Regina.  Dean began blogging in 2005. His blog consistently ranks
among the top educational blogs. Dean also writes for Tech Learning and the Huffington Post. As part of his role as digital learning consultant, Dean pushed many initiatives and is seen as an early adopter.

 From wireless access for all schools to cellphones in the classroom, Dean has been a part of many exciting and new ideas that support student and teacher learning. His work at the University of Regina has been seen as transformative for many beginning teachers.  In 2010 he won the ISTE Award for Outstanding Leader of the Year. His passion remains helping teachers explore the affordances of technology for learning. Dean has spoken and keynoted at conferences nationally and internationally. Dean brings a humility and sense of humor to his presentations and credits his extensive network of smart people as his greatest asset.

For more information on Dean please visit his blog, Ideas and Thoughts: Learning stuff since 1964

Information literacy in the digital age looks very different than it did even 5 years ago. Interestingly, I think the Wordle has the terms in the right order; the literacies focus on finding, using, and manipulating information in a variery of ways.There is a greater recognition that literacy encompasses a much larger set of skills and life skills than the 5Rs.
Kathy Schrock has provided a concise list of the literacies that are important in the digital age.
So, here is her list:

               
Information literacy                             
Tool literacy             Health literacy               Critical literacy        Media literacy
Digital literacy         Historical literacy           Global literacy        Civic literacy
Data literacy             Economic literacy          Visual literacy      Traditional literacy  
  From "Literacy in the Digital Age" by Kathy Schrock

The question becomes "What are we doing to teach these literacies within our classrooms?" How do we incorporate opportunities for our students to practice and become comfortable with these literacies?

Maybe the first question should be how comfortable am I with these new vocabularies?

    Well, that's a very good question. The concept of information literacy has changed over the years but I think that one of the best known definitions I have found still belongs to ACRL. In Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, information literacy is defined as "a set of abilities requiring individuals to 'recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information'" (ACRL, 2000, p. 2). 

    Part of the reason I like this definition is that it is general enough to encompass the changing digital environment. However, much of the literature in the field makes the point that information literacy encompasses a wide array of literacies including numeracy, language acquisition, and, yes, technology. So, let's consider some other terms that have begun to be used with, or in relation to, the concepts of information literacy.

   Terms such as 21st century learning, digital literacy, media literacy, data literacy, transliteracy, technology literacy, and critical thinking are common.  Simply, information literacy has become a term that encompasses a wide spectrum of specific skills and concepts.  AASL (2005) in Standards for the 21st century learner, states, “Information literacy has progressed from the simple definition of using reference resources to find information. Multiple literacies, including digital, visual, textual, and technological, have now joined information literacy as crucial skills for this century” (AASL, 2005).