A Fair(y) Use Tale

Many of you may have already seen this video, but in case you haven’t I wanted to pass it along. I think it would make a great teaching tool about copyright! We’re always looking for content that addresses a topic such as copyright in a format that will engage students to think about the deeper [...]

Wikipedia Wins in PEW Report

On his blog, Tame the Web, Michael Stephens pointed towards the following new report from the PEW Internet and American Life Project: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Wikipedia07.pdf
In this report, “Pew reports that 36% of online American adults consult Wikipedia. A table included in the report details top sites used for reference and education. Wikipedia has 24% use in [...]

iDunno

I really loved the post below from Barbara Fister at ACRLog. I’m picturing our library with giant earbuds. Our library is six stories tall. It would certainly capture students’ interest. The ETS’ ICT exam measures not only computer skills but also information literacy skills. We have been interested in a trial here on our [...]

Information Communication Technology Literacy

Back in November, Inside Higher Ed, ran a story about Information Literacy. They linked to a new report the ETS published with preliminary results from its new Information Communication Technology (ICT) Assessment. If you haven’t heard about it, this test assesses students abilities to use information technology to solve information problems using life like [...]

Educause Gets Net Savvy

Here’s a new white paper published by Educause that is right on the money in describing students’ habits and attitudes and the need for information literacy. I haven’t had time to read the entire paper yet, but just the quote below looks highly promising. Thanks Diana Oblinger! Sorry you couldn’t make it to our CALC [...]

The Machine is Us/ing Us - We are the Web

This is the video of the week! Everyone is talking about this video, which was created by Professor Michael Wesch and his class of Digital Ethnography students at Kansas State University.

Some of the important statements he makes in this video are:

XML allows us to separate content from form. This is important because content can then [...]

Master Plan - About the power of Google

In his blog, Unit Structures, Fred Stutzman pointed to this site. It is a documentary, a la Googlezon, created by a team of undergraduates from the University of Ulm, Germany. It paints a sinister picture of Google’s intentions and its ability to compromise individual privacy rights. I think it would be a great discussion [...]

Inside Higher Ed :: A Stand Against Wikipedia

Today must be wiki Friday A report from Inside Higher Ed, quotes Wikipedia officials’ reaction to policies by university professors that ban the citing of Wikipedia in student bibliographies. Note that neither policy mentioned was designed to stop students from using Wikipedia as a starting point for research, but rather to keep them from [...]

Association of American Colleges and Universities Embraces Information Literacy

Today on the Association of College and Research Libraries’ blog, ACRLog, Barbara Fister reported that, while attending the AACU Midwinter meeting, she “was struck by how much faculty and administrators embraced information literacy as one of several key intellectual and practical skills, identified in the AAC&U’s Greater Expectations report and revisited in a just-released publication, [...]

When it Rains it Pours

Well, as you’ve probably noticed by now, I’ve posted three times today! After hardly posting at all in the last month. I also finally got through all 450 or so unread blog postings in my Bloglines reader. I feel sooo much better. I also figured out how to add my avatar to my site. That’s [...]