Having read “A framework for considering technology's effectiveness” by Kathleen Fulton I browsed the dictionary and found the phrase in latin “caveat empor” that interested me as I am a teacher at trade institute.

We can speak a lot about the effectiveness. But it depends on both teachers and students. Some of my students were not pleased when they were asked to work in the Internet as sitting in the classroom with about twenty other students they had the possibility to sit and do nothing.
Below some of my ideas. The article will provide you with my point of view on the problem. I am ready to answer all the questions you have.

T.N.Yamskikh


FORMATION OF INFORMATION LITERACY


The information society needs cultural specialists being able to find and position themselves in a rapidly changing world. Integration processes in sphere of culture, science and education have led to occurrence of a new category of culture - information. Among others this notion includes information literacy. At its broadest, information literacy refers to a person's ability to access and understand a variety of information resources: Whether information comes from a computer, a book, a government agency, a film, a conversation, a poster, or any number of other possible sources, inherent in the concept of information literacy is the ability to dissect and understand what a person sees on the page or the television screen, in posters, pictures, and other images, as well what he hears.
Becoming information literate is the key to dealing with that mass of information one faces every day. People have to know how to identify, locate, evaluate, and communicate the best, most relevant and most appropriate information, whether it's on their jobs, at home, or anywhere else. Business leaders, academics, politicians, students, scientists, parents... it affects everybody in one way or another.
The beginning of the 21st century has been called the Information Age because of the explosion of information output and information sources. If a person is going to make it in the global neighborhood, he has to learn how to deal with the constantly growing and changing world of information. It has become increasingly clear that students cannot learn everything they need to know in their field of study in a few years of college or University. Information literacy equips them with the critical skills necessary to become independent lifelong learners.
Too often we assume that as students write research papers and read textbooks they are gaining sufficient Information Literacy skills. This is not so. Information Literacy skills may be introduced but what is needed is a parallel curriculum in Information Literacy forming a strong foundation of higher education. All these dictate the educational establishments the necessity to look through the curricula and bring some necessary changes.
The present paper attempts to examine a specific problem of updating the curriculum for students-economists. We tried to identify strategies to replicate and integrate effective innovations in information and linguistic competence.
Traditional methods of publishing and broadcasting information, in combination with the worldwide network called the Internet, make it possible for information to be generated, transmitted, and used at an unprecedented rate. The Internet contains a wealth of information published by governments, organizations, educational institutions, commercial enterprises, and private individuals. Since there are no standards for quality, users must evaluate all information carefully to make sure it is reliable. This new information environment demands special approach.
Some educational institutions have already included into the curriculum such subject as information culture. Its detailed analysis allows to conclude that it does not have differences with that one called earlier as bibliography. Students master the methods of working with published paper materials and nothing more. We will not underestimate the importance of such competence. Although the Internet provides a vast amount of information, it does not include everything. Books, periodicals, databases, and other publications that are commercially available are not usually available for open access on the Internet. Thus, some of the most reliable information in existence must still be obtained from traditional print sources or electronic sources available by subscription only. Nevertheless a person living and working in the XXI century should possess information literacy as knowledge of telecommunication technologies becomes an indispensable element of successful professional work. If we are to teach information literacy, we must teach students to sort, to discriminate, to select, and to analyze the array of messages that are presented.
A specialist nowadays is expected to be able to use current computer tools, have excellent writing skills and the ability to gather and interpret data. In other words an information literate specialist is one who:
• recognizes that accurate and complete information is the basis for intelligent decision making;
• ecognizes the need for information;
• formulates questions based on information needs;
• identifies potential sources of information;
• develops successful search strategies;
• access sources of information including computer-based and other technologies;
• evaluates information;
• organizes information for practical application;
• integrates new information into an existing body of knowledge;
• uses information in critical thinking and problem solving.
The best way to ensure that students have the skills that they need is to design an information competence program integrated into the curriculum and built on strong alliances between classroom faculty and library faculty. This can not be done at once. First of all we need the information literacy standards to be established.
As there are some subjects in the curriculum that will help students to get acquainted with computers and telecommunication technologies (computer science, information technologies, the automated working place of a specialist, etc.) we concentrated on skills connected to gathering and interpreting the information. In this connection we decided to make an experiment on forming the skills of information competence while teaching English language students-economists with the help of Internet recourses, as this subject is obviously the only one in a non humanitarian higher educational institution that refers to the text analysis. Globalization in all spheres of human activity made English language the language of international communication and future specialists are more likely to practice their linguistic knowledge in real situations of the Internet communication.
In order to become adept at research, an economist needs to achieve information literacy. An information literate individual is able to:
• determine the extent of information needed;
• access the needed information effectively and efficiently;
• evaluate information and its sources critically;
• incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base;
• use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose;
• understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information;
• access and use information ethically and legally.
Working out the educational program we try to use and formulate tasks in accordance with these necessary skills to be formed. In this connection we classified Internet resources that are particularly useful to economists into nine categories:
• primary resources - including policy documents from governments, banks or interest groups;
• news - national and international economic issues;
• opinion and discussion - analysis and perspectives on economic theory and applications;
• data - time series from thousands of sources, downloaded straight into the spreadsheet or statistical analysis package;
• job notices - national and international job opportunities for academic economists;
• book catalogues - including university library catalogues, book publishers' sites and online bookstores;
• research - from indices of printed papers, via online journals, to the latest research downloaded straight from an economist's home page. It is even possible to use university library catalogues to locate the book or journal referred to on the Web;
• contacts - information on researchers, institutions and courses as well as discussion for specific topics or interests;
• teaching and learning materials - including text to explain economic principles, interactive simulations to hone the intuitions and online quizzes to test progress.
Productive use of the Web requires that a person gets in the habit of looking for clues for quality. The information a person wants might be on any of the millions of economics-related pages, so it pays to learn how to search the Internet effectively. That is why we try to work out Search Tips.
More and more students are beginning to rely on the Internet for inspiration and ideas. People are usually required to cite or reference the sources of information they have used when they're doing course work, research and/or working in academic situations (eg at university). The point of citation is that it helps lecturers check the research that students have done and it helps other people to find the information if they need it later. One more problem is that students do not know how to «cite» or «reference» the material they find on the Web. During the course students will know some rules that one might be asked to follow if he is using Internet resources in his course work.
Besides we make a list of links (help pages). Among them Web based programs for delivering information seeking skills http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/tutorial/interneteconomist?, http://www.sjlibrary.org, http://www.lib.jmu.edu/library/gold, http://multiweb.lib.calpoly.edu, http://gemini.lib.purdue.edu/core, etc.
They provide students access to a vast array of ideas and information. These sources are in English and can not be useful for the majority of Russians. The necessity to develop such programs in Russian is obvious.
Unfortunately, there is no any suitable education curriculum and appropriate training modalities for information and linguistically competent practices. Besides there are financial and human resource limitations that make a real problem. Solving this problem will help to economize time and reduce expenses to prepare highly qualified specialists ready for lifelong learning, because they can always find the information needed for any task or decision at hand.