Literacy - response to ACRL article

This was interesting - it listed literacies I hadn't heard of before! It made me think of Jamie McKenzie's description of multiple literacies at MEMO this fall. Not too many years ago, "literacy" simply meant being able to read & write. Then there was talk of "math literacy" or "numeracy," which made a lot of sense. Math is like a foreign language to a lot of people.

This article identified these five literacies:

• Tool literacy - The ability to use print and electronic resources including software and online resources.
• Resource literacy - The ability to understand the form, format, location and methods for accessing information resources.
• Social-structural literacy - Knowledge of how information is socially situated and produced. It includes understanding the scholarly publishing process.
• Research literacy - The ability to understand and use information technology tools to carry out research, including the use of discipline-related software and online resources.
• Publishing literacy - The ability to produce a text or multimedia report of research results.

Wow. If one were to assess our students on these literacies, where would they be strongest and where would they need more instruction? Some of these literacies require much deeper thinking skills than we usually require them to use.

I also found the list of exemplary schools at the bottom of the article interesting. I had never heard of any of those schools' programs before.