Information literacy in Second Life

Sheila Yoshikawa (Second Life name) invited all Second Life to her students' exhibits on information literacy. The students are first year BSc Information Management students at the University of Sheffield The class used the SCONUL Seven Pillars Model for Information Literacy (http://www.sconul.ac.uk/groups/information_literacy/seven_pillars.html ) to look at the way information about the H1N1 flu was conveyed in the British press. (The students had been given a choice of five topics and they themselves selected the topic. ) The class used posters and notecards to display the information at seven stations representing . They developed a mind map , included a list of the newspapers reviewed, posted an analysis of sources quoted in various newspaper articles, assessed whether or not the articles were reliable.

The students started with some metasearch engines, looked at Google searches compared to NHS website searches, etc. They compared government sites noting that some sites had info more fit for physicians and some more fit for consumers. Some sites had basic facts such as the number of people who had gotten the swine flu in a certain amount of time. I was able to talk to a couple of the students: One student had already had the flu. (Original research? ) One student reported their information seeking changed and planned to work harder to find reliable sources of information. They had learning that it is important to review search results and that advanced searching in Google was a help.

The "seven pillars" exhibit is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit iSchool/135/213/350/ .
For more on Information Literacy week (November 9 - 15) in Second Life, see
http://infolit-week-in-SL.ning.com/