21st Century Skills

Information and Communications Technology Skills Competencies

Knowing how to learn for a lifetime is the first characteristic of an information literate person. Mastering a set of information and communication technology skills while in high school will go a long way in helping ensure success in your freshman year of college and beyond. Each of the information literacy standards below has a subset of skills you should master before graduating. As often as possible, instruction in these skills will be integrated into your content-area subjects, but you will want to take the initiative to ensure that you can perform each with ease. Your librarian will be happy to help you with any of these skills.

Standard One: The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed.

Standard Two: The information literate student accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.

Standard Three: The information literate student evaluates information and its sources critically and incorporates selected information into his or her knowledge base.

Standard Four: The information literate student, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.

Standard Five: The information literate student understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.

The above information literacy standards are used and modified with permission (10/07/2005) from the Association of College and Research Libraries. They are based on the document "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education." ACRL is a division of the American Library Association. The original document is available: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm.