International Association of School Librarianship (IASL)

2003 Annual Conference, Durban, South Africa, 7-11 July 2003

DR ROSS TODD
Keynote Speaker

Learning in the Information Age School:
Opportunities, Outcomes and Options

Dr Ross Todd is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and formerly a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Arts, Communication and Information at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Prior to his university appointment, he was a secondary school teacher and teacher-librarian in Australian and New Zealand schools. His primary teaching and research interests focus on adolescent information seeking and use, the information and critical literacies with emphasis on digital information environments, information technology and learning, cognitive information utilization, how school libraries and the role of teacher-librarians may more effectively empower student learning, and knowledge management and building schools as effective information-knowledge sharing communities. He has published over 80 papers and book chapters on these areas, and has been an invited speaker at many international conferences. His current research, with Professor Carol Kuhlthau at Rutgers University, focuses on two key themes: examining the impact of implementing an inquiry-based approach to learning centering on the Information Search Process developed by Kuhlthau (1993), on student learning outcomes; and understanding more fully the cognitive dynamics of the Information Search Process by identifying how knowledge structures are changed, and understanding some of the behavioral, cognitive and affective dimensions that bring about the changed knowledge structures.