In what specific ways, did I become a more information literate individual this semester?

           I defined information literacy in the field of my profession in my week 3 assignment saying, it is “the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand” (YouTube.com-what is it and who needs it).  I have become much more able to detect if an article is a reliable source or not and the best ways to search for key sources. As well, I think I possess the characteristic of being able to “determine the nature and extent of the information needed” (www.ala.org). For instance, in week 8, I created my Prezi presentation and one slide was devoted to how I knew the article I had chosen was considered a good choice. I said the article was reliable since “it clearly provided the multiple authors that wrote it, included citations at the end of the document proving its sources are factual, was organized and concise, and contained many important tables that were meaningful and related to the main topic” (Belsha, slide 11). Another assignment I gained some knowledge that contributes to my information literacy is the week 4 activities I completed. In week 4 I had to complete all the word challenge exercises. I learned “how important it is to identify specific keywords that will most benefit my searches and how searching more specifically can maximize my search options, by giving me the information I are looking for” (Belsha4, p. 2). Also during week 4 (during the Keyword Exercises) I had to identify which words were “keywords that are probably effective, intermediate words that represent important ideas but probably aren’t effective keywords, words that have little effect on the outcome, or stop words that are ignored by a Search Engine” (21cif.com/rkitp/challenge/Keyword). “In this exercise I learned how to identify which words are the most important to include in a search and which words are practically useless and are best to leave out” (Belsha4, p. 2). It was more difficult than I expected, but definitely helped me be able to differentiate between important and not so important words when searching.