Peeling back the layers: Deconstructing information literacy discourse in higher education

The discourses of information literacy practice create epistemological assumptions about how the practice should happen, who should be responsible and under what conditions instruction should be given. Analysis of a wide range of documents and texts emerging from the Higher Education (HE) sector suggest that information literacy (IL) is shaped by two competing and incongruent narratives. The outward facing narrative of information literacy (located in information literacy standards and guidelines) positions information literacy as an empowering practice that arms students with the knowledge and skills to battle the complexity of the modern information world. In contrast, the inward facing narrative (located in information literacy texts) positions students as lacking appropriate knowledge, skills and agency. This deficit perception, which has the capacity to influence pedagogical practice, is at odds with constructivist and action-oriented views that are espoused within information literacy instructional pedagogy. This presentation represents the first paper in a research programme that interrogates the epistemological premises and discourses of information literacy within HE

Collecting Comet Samples by ER-2 Aircraft: Cosmic Dust Collection During the Draconid Meteor Shower in October 2012

Many tons of dust grains, including samples of asteroids and comets, fall from space into the Earth's atmosphere each day. NASA periodically collects some of these particles from the Earth's stratosphere using sticky collectors mounted on NASA's high-flying aircraft. Sometimes, especially when the Earth experiences a known meteor shower, a special opportunity is presented to associate cosmic dust particles with a known source. NASA JSC's Cosmic Dust Collection Program has made special attempts to collect dust from particular meteor showers and asteroid families when flights can be planned well in advance. However, it has rarely been possible to make collections on very short notice. In 2012, the Draconid meteor shower presented that opportunity. The Draconid meteor shower, originating from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, has produced both outbursts and storms several times during the last century, but the 2012 event was not predicted to be much of a show. Because of these predictions, the Cosmic Dust team had not targeted a stratospheric collection effort for the Draconids, despite the fact that they have one of the slowest atmospheric entry velocities (23 km/s) of any comet shower, and thus offer significant possibilities of successful dust capture. However, radar measurements obtained by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar during the 2012 Draconids shower indicated a meteor storm did occur October 8 with a peak at 16:38 (+/-5 min) UTC for a total duration of approximately 2 hours

Cyber pedagogy as critical social practice in a teacher education program

The policies and practices of higher education are reeling under the social, economic, and technological changes currently taking place in post-industrial, information societies. New communications and information technologies are constitutive factors in the philosophical and pedagogical shifts that are occurring in university classrooms. This paper uses a case-study methodology to investigate the use made of online technologies in one preservice teacher education context. Cyber technologies and their associated pedagogical activities are conceptualized in the paper not only as tools, but also as social practices. This approach enables a focus on learning and teaching as transformative practices. Following a description of the course content and delivery, the paper turns to an analysis of four key pedagogical features of cyber pedagogy as generated by the data. These are: Teaching and Learning as Self-directed Activity, Change in Student Identities and Self-perceptions, New forms of Technoliteracies, and E-tutorials. The research found that online pedagogies are forming new spatialities, multiliteracies, and identities of communication and learning

Information technology as cultural capital: Shifting the boundaries of power

Most researchers writing about the uses and applications of information technologies in schools adopt an `objective,' asocial perspective that represents the activities taking place as neutral, technical events or procedures. This paper uses the critical sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu to frame up a case study of the role played by a secondary student in an extensive upgrade to the computer network of the school at which he was a student. The application of social theory enables the reconceptualisation of technology as a material, social practice in the institutional site of the school. The implication is that pedagogical actions and relations are then open to analysis and modification. The paper proposes that, with appropriate support and guidance, it is feasible for students with technical `cultural capital' to move from the margins to the centre of technological innovation and educational change

The digital age: Libr@ries and the arobase: Changing information space and practice

Introduction to the collection: Libr@ries and the arobase: Changing information space and practice, edited by Cushla Kapitzke and Bertram C. Brucepublished or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Libr@ries : changing information space and practice

This volume examines the social, cultural, and political implications of the shift from traditional forms of print-based libraries to the delivery of online information in educational contexts. Despite the central role of libraries in literacy and learning, research of them has, in the main, remained isolated within the disciplinary boundaries of information and library science. By contrast, this book problematizes and thereby mainstreams the field. It brings together scholars from a wide range of academic fields to explore the dislodging of library discourse from its longstanding apolitical, modernist paradigm. Collectively, the authors interrogate the presuppositions of current library practice and examine how library as place and library as space blend together in ways that may be both complementary and contradictory. Seeking a suitable term to designate this rapidly evolving and much contested development, the editors devised the word “libr@ary,” and use the term arobase to signify the conditions of formation of new libraries within contexts of space, knowledge, and capital