Today I helped a kindergartener and a 65 year old do the same thing: find what they wanted to do on their iPad.

The five year old kindergartener wanted “Big Cat’s” microphone to record his voice (on a child’s app) and it wasn’t working.

The 65 year old wanted to share a Facebook post to specific friends on his iPad FB account.

Both the 5 year old and the 65 year old sat beside me (one during school hours and one after school) with their ipads on a day which was overwhelmingly spent solving iPad issues. Some of the issues I encountered were update needs, restriction issues, apps not working, wifi settings wrong, locked-out passcodes, and numerous emails about iPads. Tech issues with iPads has overtaken my job as a school librarian. But that is not the point here.

I sat beside two individuals today who are 60 years apart in age. I had the same feeling, as I sat with both of them. I felt a sense of “please help” and I felt a sense of “this is so important to me”.

Who am I to judge their information literacy needs?

Well, actually, I am an information literacy specialist. So, I suppose this is the topic I could write on for hours; however, information literacy is rapidly changing as we move into digital culture- whether at age 5 or 65.

Shall we play a game? Share a youtube video? Shall we critically evaluate our information intake with meaningful purpose using best research practices?

Learning….the quest for life. Caring for the individual….where they are in life.

I shall remember doing what my colleague, Kristin Fontichiaro, would call “nudging toward inquiry.”