Chapter 4:  Accessing and Assessing Information
In this chapter, we discuss the use of apps to foster literacy practices used in accessing and and assessing online information or data and informational literacies that are essential for understanding and constructing knowledge in all disciplines.  Students need to know how to acquire relevant, scholarly information and data for use in writing reports/essays, creating presentations, or voicing their opinions.  However, since most students lack these informational literacies there is a clear need need to provide them with instruction and to assist them in acquiring the affordances fostered by uses of information literacies apps.  Students’ abilities to effectively access and assess information often depends on the guidance teachers provide them through assignments or modeling of search strategies.  

The informational literacies, are identified by the Association of College & Research Libraries: A Division of the American Library Association  http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm  and include the following competences of what the American Library Association describes as practices of "information literate" students 

 

In this chapter, we discuss in-depth, the following topics: