Literacy Lariat

The word "literacy" has become sort of a buzz word in the Education field, but not in the way most people would expect. Of course, it's important that a teacher is actually literate and is capable of helping students become literate, but I guess it's all relative. Apart from this however, there is a growing concern for teachers to be literate in many other ways. For instance, most teachers these days are expected to be computer literate. Although it is probably a neologism, I think the term "information literate" has more meaning than it has in any other time period. I would describe information literacy as the ability to retrieve, identify and interpret the information we receive or require. Because technology has changed so drastically how we store and create data, information is flowing around us in a variety of formats and channels and we have to sort through the postmodern muck in an organized fashion. Our ability to do this makes us information literate. A couple years ago I was watching an old SNL with Bill Paxton who was playing an anchor in a sketch. At first, the show runs normally. At the bottom of the screen was the typical stock market streamer. Then once Bill Paxton moves on to various other topics like weather, sports, etc. he keeps putting up different graphs and images until eventually the entire screen is flooded with information. Eventually Tim Meadows for no apparent reason decides to superimpose a huge picture of a skeleton Terminator in the middle of the screen and Bill is left with this tiny gap of free space to talk through. Although the sketch was humorous because it was an exaggeration, I think it was a perfect example of information literacy as we know it. Being able to watch the news makes us information literate. Being able to navigate the web proficiently makes us information literate. And with this literacy also comes the ability to immediately evaluate the information that bombards us by identifying simple cues that we often take for granted. I guess judging from my description so far, being information literate usually does not require any training, but is simply a result of our socialization. In fact, you could even argue that one had little choice in the matter and the process was purely a matter of reflex, even survival.