Late posting on the blog this week, as I’ve been attending and presenting 2 papers at the i3 (pr. i cubed) conference in Aberdeen, a city in the north of Scotland. The 3 ‘i’s stand for Information: interactions and impact and the conference covered a wide range of issues relating to information literacy, information seeking and use, information practice and knowledge management. Context was a common word used and the contexts included higher education, the workplace and schools. One of the keynote speakers of most interest to us in the schools area was Louise Limberg who gave an insightful talk which explored a range of aspects of information literacy, including what Louise called the “rhetoric of information literacy” i.e. statements about information literacy including definitions and standards. Louise was critical of many of these statements and argued that information literacy must be seen differently in different contexts. If you get a chance to read Louise Limberg’s work, you should do so.
The countryside around Dunbar at the moment is bursting with growth. The barley and wheat is standing high and the grain tops are fully developed. Some of the grain fields are starting to turn from green to yellow. The local fruit farm has a voluminous supply of strawberries which are very tasty. For those of you in most of Australia who are used to fairly tasteless Queensland strawberries, Scottish strawberries (like their Tasmanian counterparts) are full of flavour. East Lothian is also famous for growing tatties i.e. potatoes and there are many fields of tatties which are now just about to come into flower. The picture below shows a field of tatties near Dunbar and you can also see the recently constructed wind turbines on the hilltop.
Tattie field near Dunbar
