#metaliteracy

Wow, I've signed up for my first MOOC and in an area that has been occupying my mind quite a bit over the past few years - or at least aspects of information literacy (IL) have.  I have wrestled with communicating the idea of IL to our academic staff, introduced concepts of IL integration to our subject librarians through an on-going programme which has been running for 3 years now, and thought a lot about about the 'literacy' aspects of e-learning.  I basically came to the conclusion that IL was really only something that librarians cared about and I think that's still the case.  Other people care about the deficits they see in their students when IL has been absent, but few people really want to engage with the idea of IL - its a tarnished coin I'm afraid, and it has become tarnished because librarians have failed to make it clear what it really means. I've recently been working with academic staff and talking about "academic literacies" - this seems to be a handle that is much more easily grasped and has resulted in far more positive outcomes than trying to push the idea of IL. 

I'm not sure I agree with Mackey and Jacobsen that we need a definition of (information) literacy that takes account of changes in learning environments and tools. Is metaliteracy going to become the new black of information literacy? - are we just going to go down the same old path that bedevilled IL? Part of me wonders whether the use of "collaborative production and sharing of information using participatory interactive technologies" (p.70) is really such a big jump away from what we had.  Agreed that the way students participate is different and moves more towards the generation of collaborative content, but isn't this more related to the tools we are using rather than any inherent change in the way we should think about information?  Maybe this course will persuade me otherwise.  Looking forward to it :)