History Final Paper
The student presentation committee was an excellent experience and was something I had never done before. When first told to research information literacy I was not even sure where to begin, but after a few hours of reading it I learned a lot. While there are some things I may have done differently, with the time crunch and everyone’s busy schedules it was a relatively smooth process.
Within this committee my biggest contribution was the in class discussion we had as a group. We were debating the best way to split up the different proposals and making sure everyone was assigned to a group. I helped bounce ideas off of others, but the one idea I had was to vote for what method we would like to use to split up the proposals between groups. Using that idea it was determined that we should vote right there, which is where professor Ackert told us to vote right then for which idea we liked best. This process in class was highly beneficial because we got to meet face to face with our group members and we were able to bounce ideas off of each other. To discuss how to select the proposals I made a thread on BBLearn. Once we read the proposals we discussed which three we liked best.
While trying to figure out who we wanted to select to present I did more research on information literacy. During my research I found a lot of information on how to read citations. This was interesting to me because I never knew there was so much a person could learn from looking at the citations. There are also a lot of abbreviations used in citations, which helped a lot when looking over the sources within the proposals. “The general form for citing technical articles published in conference proceedings is to list the author/s and title of the paper, followed by the name (and location, if given) of the conference publication in italics using these standard abbreviations.” (IEEE citation guide, pg 2) There was also a table with the most common abbreviations and what they mean. An ‘information literate person’, “Determines the nature and extent of information needed. Accesses the needed information effectively and efficiently. Evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base and value system. Uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. Understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.” (Stanford, pg 4) This caught my eye because a lot of websites and books focused on how to use information or research, but this focused on what an information literate person does with their information. It also showed how information should be evaluated and set up. “Through IL courses, individuals are expected to become independent critical thinkers, excellent team players, and proficient users of information technologies.” (Tuominen, Savolainen, Talja, pg 333) I found the