What is information fluency? That’s a great question! Information fluency is all about how to effectively use the internet. There are several key questions that can help us to understand how to understand information fluency:

What am I looking for?
Where will I look?
How will I get there?
How good is the information?
How will I ethically use this information

These steps show us in a straight forward way what information fluency is. These steps can be used in the classroom to help students when using the internet. With the new 21st  century technologies, it is crucial that students know how to use the internet and information fluency helps with that. First, when students need to research a topic, it is important for them to know how specific they should get. My answering the first questions on our list, students can work to narrow their topic and understand what they should be looking for. Second, students should know what sites they can use and which are reliable.  A great source to start with would be Wikipedia. This site actually has all the sources that the writers pulled from; therefore, students can read and get a better feel for where to look. A mini-lesson about how to properly use Wikipedia would be a great starting point for students. Third, students should understand how to navigate the web in order to find what they are looking for. It is up to us as teachers to show students how they will get the information. We should take the time to show students how to use online databases because it will help them understand the many places they can go to get their information. Forth, it is so important to help students to be able to identify what is a reliable source and what is unreliable. We can show students different ways to look at sources for reliability: where was it published?  when was it last revised? who are the authors? has it been peer reviewed by scholars? All of these steps will help students to sort through their sources. And finally, it is crucial that students know how to be ethical on the web. As teachers, we want to show students what is ethical and what is not. Think about what will be acceptable in your classroom and what will not. We need to help our students to understand they will leave a digital footprint for many people to see and it must be appropriate.

                                                                                                                                               Understanding and knowing about information fluency will guide teachers in helping their students to navigate the web safely and efficiently!