"Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a large-scale, national study about early adults and their research habits, conducted in partnership with the University of Washington's iSchool." This website contains a wealth of knowledge about the literacy habits of students making the transition into university. In particular, check out the "publications" tab for some of the project's preliminary results, and both published and news articles on the topic. The site also contains links to other relevant resources on the same topic (in the "Practical PIL" tab).

I love this lecture by David Levy at GoogleTechTalks from 2008. I found the required video by Levy to be a bit too short for my taste, so for anyone who is interested in hearing more, I would recommend this lecture.

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.

A recently published report by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance shows the results of a 2013 survey of web archiving institutions in the US. "from October through November of 2013, a team of National Digital Stewardship Alliance members, led by the Content Working Group, conducted a survey of institutions in the United States that are actively involved in, or planning to start, programs to archive content from the web."

The wonderful blog, Hack Library School, has recently posted a piece on open access publishing. This piece is a great overview, which covers many of the basic concepts covered in Module 6. The article discusses what open access is (and what it isn't) and some of the biggest discussion points on the issue today. It's a great overview and well worth the read if you want an overview or a refresher on the topic!

"Team Open is a project to collect and share stories of the power of Creative Commons licenses." (http://teamopen.cc/all/) This site is a project by Creative Commons to advertise the power of creative commons licensing; it includes trading cards (!) for donating, and powerful stories about how CC has been used for good in the world and why it is such an important movement. This is a great piece of advertising for CC, and it really captures some of the ways that CC can be used. I think all too often, copyright is not seen as something "sexy" or interesting, but using clear language, simple but elegant graphics, and some really captivating stories, this site is a very useful tool.

The competencies discussed by Dr. Jenkins in the Module 3 video, for those who are interested, are: "Play - the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking - the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms."

The course video on open platforms reminded me of this amazing documentary, "Terms and Conditions May Apply". Can Facebook really be considered an open platform when they have a financial incentive to not keep users' best interests in mind?