Information School News

Celebrate UNESCO Global Media and Information Literacy week with the Information school Sheila Webber and Dr Pam McKinney Unesco’s Global Media and Information Literacy Week is an annual event to celebrate and promote Media and Information Literacy worldwide. This year the week of international (virtual!) events is taking place 24th-31st October, with the theme “Resisting Disinfodemic: Media and Information Literacy for everyone and, by everyone”. The Information School has co-organised two key contributions to the week: an expert panel on 28th October , chaired by Sheila Webber, and on 29th October a programme of exciting insights from Media and Information Literacy research . Both these free events are held in collaboration with FOIL: the Forum on Information Literacy. Sheila Webber and Pam McKinney are members of this new national network of information literacy researchers in the UK, FOIL, who aim to discuss and challenge ideas, and engage in critical reflection and enquiry about ...

7 Top tips for working from home!! #workfromhome #stayhomesavelives  By Sheila Webber Our Senior Lecturer, Sheila Webber, has written a blog about working from home during the current pandemic. It's full of some great tips... and a little giggle!  "I am working from home. I would rather not be. I have never, ever, fantasised about delivering online lessons in althleisurewear from my kitchen table or from under a duvet." To raise a much-needed smile at this time, you can read more on Sheila's Information Literacy blog here. 

Global Media and Information Literacy week   is a UNESCO-sponsored annual celebration of media and Information Literacy, with events organised around the world. This year’s theme is Media and Information Literate Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered and the centre for Information Literacy Research (Information School, University of Sheffield)  is responding with events and activities on this theme --------------------------------------------------------- Free bite-sized webinar for Global Media and Information literacy Week: Dr Pamela McKinney: The Information literacy of food and activity logging in three communities. 11-11.30am UK time, Thursday 24 October 2019 (check the time in your country at https://tinyurl.com/globalmila ) To join the webinar go to https://tinyurl.com/globalmilabb just before the webinar start time. It uses Blackboard Collaborate (see here  for details on how to use it). You do not have to register for the webinar in advance, but i...

Later today, Sheila Webber will be contributing to a compass point session,  Nonprofit Commons past reflections, future directions, at the 12th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference , taking place 4-6 April 2019 in the 3D virtual world, Second Life. She was invited onto the panel as Leader of the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable , a weekly educators discussion forum that has been running for 10 years. The other panellists are Dr. Cynthia Calongne (Professor with Colorado Technical University); Joyce Bettencourt (co-founder of AvaCon, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the growth and development of 3D immersive spaces, and Creative Director of The Vesuvius Group); Renne Emiko Brock, Multimedia Communications Program Coordinator at Peninsula College, teacher and artist;  and Buffy Beale, retired educational technology expert, and representing Bridges for Women, a Canadian nonprofit. The session takes place 6pm to 7pm UK time, at https://maps.second...

Experts from the iSchool present a free and open 30 minute webinar on Friday March 22nd 2019, 10.00-10.30 UK time (see here for times elsewhere in the world): Media and Information Literacy for Informed Citizens in the Digital Age. They will highlight the value of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) for citizens’ lives, and the contribution that information and library professionals can make to developing MIL. This celebrates the first European Media Literacy week , set up to recognise the societal importance of media literacy and promote media literacy initiatives and projects. Sheila Webber (Interim Co-Chair of the European Chapter of the Global Alliance for Partnerships in Media and Information Literacy, former Standing Committee member of IFLA's Information Literacy Section and Head of the iSchool's Libraries and Information Society Research Group) will chair the webinar. She'll give her perspective on the European Media Literacy conference held earlier in the we...

24th-31st October is Global Media and Information Literacy week , the initiative sponsored by UNESCO. The iSchool is celebrating with a number activities that demonstrate its engagement with this field. We have organised three webinars, free and open to all: 2pm-2.30 pm UK time (which is 10-10.30am US EST) Tuesday 30th Oct. Dr Laura Sbaffi  (Information School) presents her research on What makes us trust online information? The perspective of health information . Join the webinar (via Adobe Connect) at https://sheffield.adobeconnect.com/globalmilweek2 Enter as a "guest". You may need to download the free Adobe Connect application, so please allow a few minutes for that. 2pm-2.30 pm (which is 10-10.30am US EST) Wednesday 31st Oct. Sheila Webber  (Information School) and Stephen Wyber (IFLA Manager, Policy and Advocacy.) will give their  Impressions of Global MIL Week feature conference. Join the webinar at  https://sheffield.adobeconnect.com/globalmil...

Information School Senior Lecturer Dr Andrew Cox has been involved in a collaboration to edit a major new collection of papers about Information and the body for the journal Library Trends. The centrality of embodied experience in all aspects of human life makes the relative neglect of the body in information behaviour studies surprising and potentially problematic. Two special issues of Library Trends bring together an international group of researchers interested in embodied information, including how we receive information through the senses, what the body knows and the way the body is used as a sign that can be interpreted by others. Contributing authors include Professor Marcia Bates. The first of the two issues has just been published. The second issue is due out later in the year, and includes a paper by former student Kondwani Wella, with Senior Lecturer Sheila Webber. Read the full text here.

My name is Wasim Ahmed , and I am a doctoral student at the Information School. I recently attended the launch of the Information School research magazine Inform . This blog post highlights my key take-homes from the launch of the research magazine. Information is all around us and due to technological developments information is more readily available at speed. Our research at the Information School focuses on understanding the power of information and how it affects people, organisations, and society. The new research magazine Inform provides a cross-section of the research within the school, stories about our research, impact, recent successes, facts and figures, research culture and environment, and provides an overview of staff and students within the school. The event highlighted the international reputation of the department for world-class research. It was wonderful to see the range of multi-disciplinary areas of research which the school undertakes. The event a...