Quotes & Sayings About Information Literacy

Our students should be playing Beethoven with research processes, but instead we are hearing Mary Had a Little Lamb. — William Badke

Assessment can be either formal and/or informal measures that gather information. In education, meaningful assessment is data that guides and informs the teacher and/or stakeholders of students' abilities, strategies, performance, content knowledge, feelings and/or attitudes. Information obtained is used to make educational judgements or evaluative statements. Most useful assessment is data which is used to adjust curriculum in order to benefit the students. Assessment should be used to inform instruction. Diagnosis and assessment should document literacy in real-world contexts using data as performance indicators of students' growth and development. — Dan Greathouse & Kathleen Donalson

While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling. — David Gelernter

By contrast, a man who has just learned to read and write responds, "To go by your words, they should all be white." To go by your words - in that phrase, a level is crossed. The information has been detached from any person, detached from the speaker's experience. Now it lives in the words, little life-support modules. Spoken words also transport information, but not with the self-consciousness that writing brings. Literate people take for granted their own awareness of words, along with the array of word-related machinery: classification, reference, definition. Before literacy, there is nothing obvious about such techniques. "Try to explain to me what a tree is," Luria says, and a peasant replies, "Why should I? Everyone knows what a tree is, they don't need me telling them. — James Gleick

Scientific literacy is a rather noble ideal. Achieving it, however, is problematic thanks to our tribal brains. If science is equated with knowledge, then communicating facts, figures, and theories should be a way to increase the public's level of engagement with it. However, this boils down to the authority distributing the information. Who do you listen to when there are conflicting sources? Our brain's desire for certainty and its tendency to evaluate new information based on social clues means anybody painted as an expert, who sounds confident, shares our values and flatters our expectations, is more likely to win over our opinion...regardless of the scientific merits of their argument. — Mike McRae

The next question is how? How does news find us?
What you need is a certain critical literacy about the fact that you are almost always subject to an algorithm. The most powerful thing in your world now is an algorithm about which you know nothing about. — Kelly McBride

As the American Library Association presciently concluded in their 1989 report Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, students must be taught to play an active role in knowing, identifying, finding, evaluating, organizing, and using information. — Daniel J. Levitin

Never believe all that you hear.
Always verify the original source of information. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Not long ago I was invited to a librarians' event by a lady who cheerfully told me, "We like to think of ourselves as 'information providers.'" I was appalled by this want of ambition; I made my excuses and didn't go. After all, if you have a choice, why not call yourselves "Shining Acolytes of the Sacred Flame of Literacy in a Dark and Encroaching Universe"? I admit this is hard to put on a button, so why not abbreviate it to "librarians"? — Terry Pratchett

When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I've been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That's a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we're in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Acquiring literacy is an empowering process, enabling millions to enjoy access to knowledge and information which broadens horizons, increases opportunities and creates alternatives for building a better life. — Kofi Annan

It is intolerable that around 1 in 5 of the world's adults are illiterate. How can we build equitable information societies or thriving democracies if so many remain without the basic tools of literacy? — Koichiro Matsuura

Part of what it is to be scientifically-literate, it's not simply, 'Do you know what DNA is? Or what the Big Bang is?' That's an aspect of science literacy. The biggest part of it is do you know how to think about information that's presented in front of you. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Not enough of our society is trained how to understand and interpret quantitative information. This activity is a centerpiece of science literacy to which we should all strive-the future health, wealth, and security of our democracy depend on it. Until that is achieved, we are at risk of making under-informed decisions that affect ourselves, our communities, our country, and even the world. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The question is not why should we change but rather what sort of death wish are we promoting by refusing to change? — William Badke

For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don't read, the loss of a library is a tragedy hat might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading-or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life. — Michael Moore

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? — Dorothy L. Sayers

Camfed graduates are active in their villages using their skills and resources to improve as many lives as possible. They are teaching financial literacy to marginalized women and bringing vital health care information to rural schoolchildren. Through example, they are demonstrating the power of philanthropy. — Ann Cotton

The professor is not merely an information dispensing machine, but a skilled navigator of a complex landscape. — William Badke

Every citizen's vote should count in America, not just the votes of partisan insiders in the Electoral College. The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case. — Gene Green