Turning techno-savvy into info-savvy: authentically integrating information literacy into the college curriculum

It is no longer effective to provide information literacy instruction that is thought to be “good for” college students, but rather, instruction must focus on the learning styles and preferences of the target population. This case study reports a series of hands-on/minds-on information literacy activities that dissolve student's misconception that “techno-savvy” is synonymous with information literate. Careful and thorough instruction in the mining of popular Internet search engines for authoritative information was coupled with instruction in the use of traditional library resources. It was found that the college students studied possess a high need for clarity and a low tolerance for ambiguity, and therefore any activities assigned must be thoroughly, yet succinctly, described in order to achieve success. Combining traditional information literacy instruction with novel approaches appeals to the confidence in and reliance on Internet search engines that college students exhibit, while it moves this microcosm toward a higher level of information literacy and commitment to life long learning.     

Where Did All the Data Go? Internet Security for Web‐Based Assessments

The purpose of this article is to enumerate a series of security steps that might be taken by those researchers or organizations that are contemplating web-based tests and performance assessments. From a security viewpoint, much of what goes on with web-based transactions is similar to other general computer activity, but the recommendations here focus on what can be done to avoid the loss, compromising, or modification of data collected by or stored through the Internet.     

Seizing the moment: scientists' authorship rights in the digital age

The American Association for the Advancement of Science carried out a study on intellectual property and electronic journal publishing with the aim of identifying those aspects of the intellectual property regime that facilitate or constrain the effective development of electronic scientific publishing. This paper summarizes the conclusions reached, emphasizes the continuing need to maintain the legal framework offered by copyright law, but makes recommendations both for its modification and in its application to ensure that the potential benefits of electronic publishing are fully realized. The full report by AAAS is posted on the Web at www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/epub/finalrept.html     

Where are we now in the economics of education?

This essay offers a bird's eye view of new directions in the economics of education. An increasing awareness of the socialization function of education, of the screening hypothesis, of the ‘incomplete’ employment contract and of labour market segmentation is leading, it is argued, to a picture of the economic value of schooling which is simply miles removed from the old-fashioned belief that education enhances cognitive knowledge and that employers pay educated people more because they know more. The new way of looking at the economic value of schooling is illustrated by the example of youth training and work experience programmes.     

Vivarium

This contribution is an introduction to an online forum, Vivarium, at the new open¦ed web site. The site will be accessible to an audience of: educationalists, artists, producers, development agencies and funding bodies. The forum will discuss the artist as educator, the culture of art in education, and explicitly Live Art as tool for rendering social issues for exploration in the classrooms of the future. In an era of global ecologies of information, offering users data on everything from hydroponics to Derrida's text The Truth in Painting, fertile knowledge is increasingly accessed through non‐hierarchical networks. In such a terrain, a new post‐pedagogical approach to creativity appears essential if we hope to excite, channel and challenge young people. This paper charts a series of critical issues that readers are invited to develop and discuss online, but perhaps more importantly signifies potential topics that might return in a series of subsequent dialogues commissioned by the Arts Council England for Vivarium. The broader aim of Vivarium is to create a context to frame potential initiatives that might be delivered through Creative Partnerships, the unprecedented Arts Council England initiative, promoting cultural and creative activity for young people.     

The perception,management and performance of risk amongst Forest School educators

This article investigates how risk perception amongst teachers within an outdoor educational initiative, Forest School, both shape and are shaped by their understandings of childhood, pedagogy and their own professional identity. Drawing on a social constructionist perspective in theorising risk and childhood, the article argues that contemporary, hyper-sensitised concerns regarding children’s vulnerability emanate from both fears of the modern world, and the proclivity towards over-protection which these fears precipitate. Rather than treating this hyper-sensitivity as irrational or paranoid, the paper draws on socio-cultural theories and qualitative methods to interrogate how risk is perceived, managed and performed by teachers within an initiative which aims to reintroduce risk into children’s lives. The research found that while these teachers’ motivations to participate in Forest School were derived from a desire to expose children to formative risk-taking in the outdoors, the hegemonic cultural and institutional risk aversion which they were attempting to counter, aligned with their contested occupational identity, created tensions in how they managed and performed risk which militated against the full realisation of a Forest School pedagogy.