ILILE, Initiatives, Teacher Education Resources, Universities Involved

To form teams of English teachers, library media specialists and prospective English language arts teachers in order to help high school students evaluate both the source and the content of Internet information.
To add information literacy to the English teacher preparation curriculum.

In Winter 2006, fifteen teams were developed with each team comprised of a perspective English teacher, a public school library media specialist and a school-based mentor teacher.
Students attended a two hour workshop on information literacy in the methods course, “Teaching Language Arts in the Secondary School.”
Following the workshop, teacher candidates designed a project that engaged high school students in the critical use of the Internet. The project required the students to evaluate both the source and the content of Internet information.
In Fall 2006,the 15 teacher candidates were placed in full-time teaching settings and were responsible for all classroom planning and teaching. In the accompany methods course taken by students, “Applied Secondary Teaching Methods: English Language Arts” candidates were asked to create and implement an information literacy project in their new setting.

Library media specialists who had previously felt underutilized were provided an opportunity to collaborate and their services were highlighted and valued as a result.
Prospective teachers found that they could easily tie their information literacy activities to local, state and national English language arts standards.
University library media specialists modeled instruction in the methods courses and prospective teachers were able to implement these activities in actual high school classrooms.
It was observed that a large number of the teacher candidates lacked information literacy skills.
Prospective teachers felt that collaborating with the school’s library media specialist greatly enhanced the quality of the information literacy activities they designed.
The project tied in nicely to the new NCTE Standards for the preparation in English language arts teachers that include standards relating to engaging students in the critical use of the Internet.

ILILE