In all my readings for assignment one the same thing seems to ring true through the process. That is the focus on information literacy and the needs of students who wish to succeed later in life to become information literate from a young age. When I think back to my days in primary school when we were given a research task to complete it meant that we all headed off to the library to plagarise the life out of the encyclopedias. Occassionally we may look at some of the books in the non fiction section but this was a rarity. That part of the library was often left abandoned as it was perceived as uninteretesting and containing books that were older than my parents (which seemed very old as a child).
It's now 18 years since I finished primary school and the situation is very different, or is it? Instead of copying a chunk out of an encyclopedia it seems that my students opt to hit google with their query and then just copy and paste what they find on their top result. Despite the emergence of a plentitude of information, it seems the result is quite similar to my encyclopedia copying of the early 90s. The difference in the situation is they have an endless number of websites in which to obtain this information. When they go to the effort of consulting more than one reference they often find conflicting information and are unsure how to proceed. Due to the internet being a resource that is open to anyone who can type it means that there is little to no filter as to what people can claim as the truth. This means that it is down to the reader to determine the authenticity of what they are reading. How can a 10 year old determine what is real and what is someone's opinion that may be skewed?? I guess this is the job of the 21st century TL.
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