Information Skills
Skills to apply, evaluate, and manage information across digital and physical environments.
Guiding Questions
- Can I use search strategies to find relevant information?
- Am I able to decide if information is current, accurate, reliable, and relevant?
- Can I organize information so that I can find it when I need it?
- Am I able to use and apply the information to meet a need or solve a problem?
- Am I able to recognize when I need to upskill?
Information skills involve being able to efficiently locate, evaluate, share, and sto information and digital content. Proficiency requires users to understand how to use various technologies to search for information online, strategies for evaluating information they find and engage with online (both content that is actively and passively encountered), and awareness of the variety of ways information and digital content is created, accessed, presented, distributed, and stored.
| Tool Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Cloud Storage | Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox |
| Digital Skill Assessments | Northstar Digital Literacy Assessment |
| Fact Checkers | Snopes, Fact Checker Explorer (Google), FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, OpenSecrets.org, Internet Archive Wayback Machine |
| File Storage and Retrieval (Computer) | File Explorer (Windows), Finder (Mac) |
| Online Encyclopedias | Wikipedia, Britannica |
| Search Engines | Google Search, Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo |
| Social Media | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, LinkedIn |
| Web Browsers | Google, Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, DuckDuckGo |