As well as being nominated for the ‘Strategic Education Initiative of the Year Award’ at next week’s TES independent School Awards, FOSIL’s successes continue apace.
In an exciting development, the value of FOSIL (https://www.oakham.rutland.sch.uk/academic/fosil) has been recognised at a national level, as the Information Literacy Group (ILG), which is a special interest group of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), has added FOSIL to its list of Models and frameworks on the Information Literacy website.
“I could not be more pleased,” says Darryl Toerien, Head of Library at Oakham School, and originator of FOSIL and the FOSIL Group. “This is a recognition of the value of FOSIL and the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum that it is based upon. FOSIL is now clearly placed on the Information Literacy website as an information literacy model and framework that can and should be considered alongside other prominent models and frameworks.”
“This national recognition is, in part, down to the outstanding work and growing success of the FOSIL Group,” adds Darryl. “With 164 members since its launch in April last year, this collaborative forum of educators (from a variety of stages, state and independent, in the UK and around the world) are proactively engaged in discussing and developing more effective ways to equip pupils with the kind of knowledge that they most need, which is the knowledge that will enable them to gain more knowledge.”
FOSIL has been in action for many years now at Oakham School, with pupils benefiting from being explicitly taught how to learn from information. The FOSIL Group enables the inquiry learning framework, along with many of Oakham’s curriculum resources, to be proactively shared and developed, for the benefit of all children – not just those at Oakham.
“With FOSIL’s addition to CILIP ILG’s Information Literacy website,” concludes Darryl, “I hope that even more educators will be encouraged and empowered to further develop their inquiry learning approaches, and to join the FOSIL Group to share their journey.”
