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Last week Tim Gowers, Cambridge University mathematician and open access advocate who led the recent boycott of Elsevier, announced an exciting new open access initiative for mathematicians on his blog. The project, called the Episciences Project, will make it super quick and easy to set up open access journals called "epijournals".

Rheingold puts his thoughts, videos,course syllabi on the skills to be network smart on this site. Here is his introduction: The future of digital culture-yours, mine, and ours-depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives. How you employ a search engine, stream video from your phonecam, or update your Facebook status matters to you and everyone, because the ways people use new media in the first years of an emerging communication regime can influence the way those media end up being used and misused for decades to come. Instead of confining my exploration to whether or not Google is making us stupid, Facebook is commoditizing our privacy, or Twitter is chopping our attention into microslices (all good questions), I've been asking myself and others how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and above all mindfully. This book is about what I've learned.

This is a project is a production that has come out of a graduate course at the iSchool at the University of Toronto that touches on information overload, literacy and their definition of "post literacy". It is touches on thee multiliteracy that was mentioned in the reading by Kapitzke, and goes beyond into headier stuff. Check out their Pinterest bibliography, and their new recent endeavor with a Beyond Literacy podcast.

This study conducted by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda (ICMPA), documented the experiences of 200 students at the University of Maryland as they "unplugged" from all media for 24 hours. The results were simultaneously astounding and totally predictable. Their top five findings were: 1. Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their dependence on media. 2. Students hate going without media. In their world, going without media, means going without their friends and family. 3. Students show no significant loyalty to a news program, news personality or even news platform. Students have only a casual relationship to the originators of news, and in fact don't make fine distinctions between news and more personal information. They get news in a disaggregated way, often via friends. 4. 18-21 year old college students are constantly texting and on Facebook-with calling and email distant seconds as ways of staying in touch, especially with friends. 5. Students could live without their TVs and the newspaper, but they can't survive without their iPods.

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to create high-quality courses and contribute original research to improve learning and transform higher education.

Digital technologies and online learning environments permitting harvesting, analysis and use of student data is nothing new in higher education. They open up a number of opportunities and equally a number of perils - creating the need for higher education institutions to find ways to protect the harvested data.

University of the Witwatersrand second-year actuarial science student Awakhiwe Kona was awarded a R4?000 bursary by the Gauteng province to buy textbooks, but because they are so expensive he has not been able to afford to buy all the ones he needs. "My [six] textbooks were expensive, so I didn't buy [the] other textbooks [I needed].

Dr Jane McGonigal (a professional game developer) talks about the time spent playing video games (which approximates to the span of human evolution), and that this time has to increase to make any major changes to the world. I have selected this resource partially in relation to week 3's Clarke's lecture (and others), which talks about using our idle time to do something meaningful - participate in citizen science games, for example. Dr McGonigal's talk very much illustrates this point - except that it talks about solving global issues through indirect games, e.g. a World Without Oil online game simulates a world in which you have to survive oil shortage. Creator's research shows, that people maintain the skills and habits they have taken up after playing this intense game, which include making better choices for our changing environment. The only difference here from actual citizen science games is that Dr McGonigal's games are fictional (rather than providing direct data / input for actual scientific research), however, they empower people to influence global change, which is the topic of the other lectures this week, especially Morozov's thoughts about the power of internet and connectiveness to create "revolutions". Although Morozov has taken up a rather critical view, suggesting only those who want it, take the best from the Internet, Dr McGonigal's ideas might be what bridges the two - taking games, which are integral part of many people's lives, especially in the younger generation, and turning them into real "life schools" may help more people get the idea and the essential skills to "fix" their environments. In all honesty, this is a video I would watch again and again, and recommend it to anyone who would listen (and that doesn't happen often for me).

Gamification for learning - using game elements - sounds very promising. Prior to the internet, technology, there were board games or hands on projects - all with the intent to engage and interact with each other. So it is no surprise to me given the appropriate design/project that students can learn and solve real world problems. Letting students choose their persona and role also allows them to make their own future and take ownership for how they want to participate. Just like the original promise of multimedia training that was purported to replace the traditional classroom events and enable getting the "best" teacher recorded for all to have the same experience...I believe it was then thought that the learning experience needs o be "blended". Different techniques - online, face to face, etc.. This is not my field of expertise so these are just personal opinions. If the online game approach can be combined with face to face and tactile/outdoor activities, aka a blended approach - I think that might be very useful. I do also believe that design solutions should be encouraging win win situations to reinforce collaboration and the feeling that all can succeed. One question I might have is how do you measure success in learning?

Gaming promoters unfortunately for me have a commercial agenda and its always difficult to make that balance of pure learning and commercialization aspect

I would love to see things changing - the universities could be much more effective if they would select their students by having passed Basic MOOC modules. This would reduce basic lecturing and focus on quality.

Librarians love to get free books into the hands of scholars and students who need them. Publishers love it when their books find readers - but they also need to cover the costs of turning an idea into a finished monograph.

A Review of Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet Lisa NakamuraLondon: Routledge, 2002 ISBN: 0415938376 $18.95 pp. 192 Review by Samantha Blackmon Purdue University Lisa Nakamura's Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet aims to interrogate how the Internet shapes and reshapes our perceptions of race, ethnicity, and identity.

The year I graduated high school, the media was overrun with speculation about a new technology set to shake the foundation of the world. What was it? We weren't told, exactly. All we knew was that code name "IT" was so revolutionary that we would have to rebuild our cities from scratch.

It is interesting that whenever a new innovation is introduced, the current one is declared dead before its final time arrives. Books in whatever format are appealing to different audiences for various reasons. To think that the introduction of e-books was going to lead to a declaration of war on printed books is laughable. Books will be with us for as long as we are still in this world. Does format matter? only time will tell.

Long back Lancaster wrote about paperless society but still we are heavily depending on paper only. Technology has fast evolved. First we talked about e-libraries then virtual libraries and now contemplating cloud based libraries. Many technologies have come and gone but paper is still ubiquitous.

This is a brief synopsis covering the main aspects of Research4Life, including information about the creators and stakeholders, criteria for access, its composition and training given. In 2001 Research4Life was initially started by WHO with HINARI (Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative) to enable developing countries to access free or greatly subsidized biomedical and health literature. From 2003-09 this type of access to the AGORA, OARE and ARDI databases of scientific journals and books became available to over 77 poorer developing countries by Cornell and Yale Universities, FAO, UNEP and WIPO with other publishers. Institutions are required to meet specific criteria and categories to be entitled to the right to use of Research4Life resources. A few case studies are described which clearly show the impact Research4Life has had so far. We are informed of the future plans for the project too. This article gives a clear insight into how first world organisations are giving researchers and the populace of less developed countries the opportunity to advance their own research and development by providing access to current information and data.

As a librarian, research4life boosts my morale. Truly, librarians can be the unsung heroes in scientific researches. Librarians happily serve researchers without expecting anything but ensuring that they get the information they need. Research4life values the role of the librarians in the field of research and I appreciate that. I wish to express my gratitude to resesarch4life organization for giving value to the contribution of librarians in research

"So why do we have an emerging digital divide in society where one group has easy and instant access to new research often funded out of the public purse yet others face significant costs, delays or barriers to accessing knowledge?" "In the past, one might have expected society's 'critics and consciences' to be located in universities. Now many of these voices, including some who have retired, are outside these institutions."

This really long literature review by Giancarlo F. Frosio (University of Nottingham) discusses the disadvantages, advantages, problems and solutions, current trends, opportunities and barriers in open access publishing.