Blog Post 3: Reflection on Class 2 and Week 3 Readings

I think the discussion we had regarding the differences between empty and appropriate praise raised some interesting ideas and really helped hammer the understanding down, for me at least, about how to approach progress with others. It was relieving once we got into this discussion a little bit that our misunderstandings about this particular issue and the abstractness it still seems to have is not just an issue for me. I think that applies for all of our discussion that focused around distinctions that can hold different meanings for different people, like the conversation we also held about the novice and the expert. This particular line of inquiry and discussion made it easier to understand the ACRL Framework on another level, which I had not looked at as thoroughly in the experience I have had with the Framework in the recent past.

The Mackey/Jacobson reading regarding metaliteracy was extremely hard for me. I think this stemmed from my previous experience with so many types of literacy being used interchangeably with one another. As Mackey and Jacobson are trying to make these forms of literacy distinct, as to show that information literacy is insufficient but metaliteracy is a workable framework, I think I let myself get bogged down by the intricacies of all the different types of literacies being discussed. I think the biggest take-away from this was that metaliteracy FRAMES information literacy to allow for connections across various types of literacies. Of course, the idea of frames speaks to the authors’ contributions to the ACRL Framework and the move away from learning objectives that so many groups seem to be doing in the recent past.

While I have some prior experience with both the AASL Standards Framework and the ACRL Framework, I wanted to focus on taking something from both of them that I had not previously done. For the AASL, I had spent so much time critically looking at the visual representations that I completely overlooked that it too was a framework. While I still have some very strong opinions about the visual representations, a closer look at the table provided did give me less of a visceral response this time. This time I was capable of seeing how, box-by-box, this table could be extremely helpful, though I believe its presentation in the table is cumbersome and hard to digest as a whole. The ACRL Framework really emphasizes this idea of collaboration, even after the discussion of collaborative work that is explicit for the frames themselves. This issue of collaboration has steered much of the conversation about the framework in the profession in the practical implementation of the framework in reality, but I had completely missed the discussion of this expectation that was laid out in the appendices in my other instances with the framework.

I thought the Obama proclamation was interesting as well, mostly because I did not know there was an Information Literacy Awareness Month. The comments made in the short proclamation truly make sense though. This call for awareness is essential to the adaptation of the ever-changing information world, where people are constantly being hammered with information they are expected to process. This evaluation of information has become an even greater focus as available information is monitored less and less. On top of the usual suspects of literacy, deciphering information is becoming even more paramount.

Author: West Virginia Raven K

Student. Traveler. Lover of Knowledge. View all posts by West Virginia Raven K