Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Pre-lunch session @ #ECIL2017 Pam liveblogs

Pavla Kovarova spoke about information behaviour and e-safety of primary school children in the Czech Republic. Previous research has shown that children download illegal and inappropriate content. They struggle to evaluate quality of material. There are issues to do with the sharing of personal information with many children having public profile information and getting involved in sexting activities. They engage in more risky online behaviours than the EU average. There is not much time given in the primary school curriculum to discuss issues of e-safety and information literacy. Pavla developed a series of lessons for primary school children based learning n constructivist theories, so student-centred,problem based and involvingactive and cooperative learning. The classes are 90 minutes long but don't actually involve use of computers, the focus is more on safety. The research methods were observation (59 classes, 1398 children), children's evaluations, 360 degree feedback, focus groups with teachers and pre- and post- tests for children. 5 schools and 2 libraries took part in the study.

 children in lower grades were happier with the sessions. Less traditional and more active teaching styles got better feedback from both children and teachers. There was a wide range of expertise and experience of using the internet in the children.

Anna Mierzecka spoke about school librarians attitudes to teaching information literacy. This reseRch project was undertaken in collaboration between Warsaw university and researchers in Lithuania. The literature says that school librarians take on a number of roles in their institutions, but there is lack of awareness of the school librarian as an IL educator. Several studies highlighted how emotions and lack of self esteem affect librarians' teaching.  A web survey was developed aimed at librarians from the 250 best secondary schools in Lithuania and Poland (500 school in total). Response rate was 45%,  143 responses from Lithunania and 87 from Poland. The majority of respondents were experienced librarians. There were big differences in how librarians from the 2 countries taught IL. The big six model was used to ask librarians what aspects of IL they taught. The study examined librarians emotional motivation for their teaching role, and generally respondents were really positive about their roles, and were also positive about their development in the future. People considered their role important, and that they made a difference in the world.

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