Parents Encouraging Information Literacy

Encourage and guide your children in exploring their interests. Point them to various resources — such as printed materials, videos, and computers — that they can use to find out about the things that interest them.

Use The Big Six to help your children with their homework. Help them (1) determine what is expected from their homework assignments, (2) identify the necessary resources for the tasks, (3) locate the needed resources, (4) read or use the information, (5) apply the information to the tasks, and (6) evaluate the quality of their final product.

Show your children how to evaluate information. Teach them to ask the following questions: Who or what is the authority? How current is the information? How might different people perceive this message? What is omitted?

Teach your children about authors. Point out the authors of the books they read. Explain to them that they must acknowledge the ideas from other people, and show them how to document their sources.

Instruct your children to consider the reliability of information from the Internet. Explain to them that anyone can put information on the Internet. Teach them to look for the qualifications of each author and all sources. Ask them to consider whether the information on a web site is being used to sell a product.

Discuss information literacy with teachers. Ask them how they encourage information literacy and what you can do to help. For more information about teaching information literacy, visit

http://www.accesseric.org/resources/parent/infoltrcy.html .

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Community Update, (2001, May). U.S. Department of Education (ED), Parents Encouraging Information Literacy. [On-line]. Number 86, May 2001, p.2.
Full text available: http://www.ed.gov/G2K/community/archive.html