Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0: new book

Godwin, P. and Parker, J. (Eds) (2012) Information Literacy Beyond Library 2.0. London: Facet. ISBN: 978-1-85604-762-3
"Part 1 explores the most recent trends in technology, consumption and literacy, while Part 2 is a resource bank of international case studies that demonstrate the key trends and their effect on information literacy and offer innovative ideas to put into practice. Part 3 assesses the impact of these changes on librarians and what skills and knowledge they must acquire to evolve alongside their users."
More info at http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=7623
You can download chapter 1, by Peter Godwin, for free "Library 2.0: a retrospective": http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/downloads/file/godwin&p-ch1.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry Blossom, March 2012.
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Planet Wikimedia & Wikilit: review of wiki literature

Whilst googling to see whether I could find an open access version of the article I blogged yesterday, I came across a couple of interesting sites. Firstly, Planet Wikimedia. http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/ "The Planet Wikimedia is a weblog aggregator operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, to bring together on-topic posts about Wikimedia projects, other wiki sites, the free culture movement, the "wisdom of crowds", etc." Since it aggregates a lot of blogs, there is some duplication and some slightly baffling (to me) content, but also a lot of useful news, views and links.
One of the links I found was to WikiLit: A literature review of scholarly research on Wikipedia, http://wikilit.referata.com/wiki/Main_Page. There is a draft paper ("The People’s Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia") which outlines the methodology and starts to summarise selected papers. On the Wikilit home page you can expand some fairly broad categories (e.g. Quality of Wikipedia) to reveal titles of identified articles and then you click through to see the extraction sheet with the details of the article.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Cherry blossom in Botanic Gardens, March 2012.
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Wikipedia and the University, a case study

Thanks to Lyn Parker for alerting me to this new article (priced):
Knight, C. and Pryke, S. (2012)"Wikipedia and the University, a case study."
Teaching in Higher Education. (Currently listed as a "forthcoming article, available online DOI:10.1080/13562517.2012.666734)
I was interested to see that "use of Wikipedia is highest amongst trainee teachers, a finding that corresponds to our perception based on anecdotal observation that use of the encyclopaedia is widespread; possibly even a predominant resource, for teachers and children within British schools" since this has some relevance to the research into school children's information behaviour being carried out here in the iSchool. Another interesting finding was that a good number of lecturers who forbid their students to use Wikipedia, use it themselves, feeling that they are able to discriminate when to use Wikipedia, whereas their students aren't.
The abstract reads "This article discusses the use of Wikipedia by academics and students for learning and teaching activities at Liverpool Hope University. [...] Based upon a sample of 133 academics and 1222 students, our principal findings were: (1) 75% of academics and students use Wikipedia; (2) student use is typically confined to the initial stages of assessments; (3) a quarter of academics provide guidance on how to use Wikipedia and (4) 70% of academics use Wikipedia for background information for teaching purposes, something that it is not influenced by whether student use is tolerated or not. Our conclusion is that whilst Wikipedia is now unofficially integrated into universities, it is not ‘the’ information resource as feared by many and that an enlightened minority of academics have attempted to assimilate it into their teaching."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Spring in the park, Sheffield, March 2012
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Webcast on April 4th: Lessons for Learning: Putting Project Information Literacy to Work

On 4th April at 4pm US Eastern time (9pm UK time), there is a webcast in the Blended Librarian series: Lessons for Learning: Putting Project Information Literacy to Work. The guest speaker is Michael Eisenber, co-Principal Investigator of Project Information Literacy (PIL) and he will "delve into the implications of PIL findings for learning, teaching, and library services, resources, and facilities." The hosts for the webcast are Steven Bell and John Shank, co-founders of the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community.
The event is free, with no need for registration: the first 200 people will get the "seats". You need to join the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community if you are not already a member: go to http://blendedlibrarian.org, click on the join button and follow instructions. When you are asked for the invitation key enter the word blended. Once you are registered, you will be able to go to http://home.learningtimes.net/library?go=6031692 to log in for the session. The organisers advise leaving time to log into the Elluminate webcasting software and "recommend that those participating in the webcast obtain a microphone or headset in order to make use of the VoIP technology that allows conversation between the speakers and participants. A microphone or headset is not required to participate."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Daffodil, Sheffield, March 2012
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Nurse educator leads discussion on infolit article in SL

What: Journal Club in the virtual world, Second Life. You need a SL avatar and a computer with the SL browser installed, to participate.
When: Tuesday March 27th 12 noon SL time (which is the same as US Pacific time; 8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/778na9a for times elsewhere)
What: Evelyn McElhinney, Nurse Lecturer at Glasgow Calendonian University, Scotland (Kali Pizzaro in SL) leads discussion on: Hegerty, N. and Carbery, A. (2010) “Piloting a dedicated information literacy programme for nursing students at Waterford Institute of Technology libraries.” Library Review, 59 (8), 606-614. http://repository.wit.ie/1562/1/EmeraldPaper_Sept2010.pdf
Where: Journal Club room on Infolit iSchool, Second Life. http://slurl.com/secondlife/infolit%20ischool/106/208/30/
This is a Sheffield iSchool Centre for Information Literacy Research event
The picture shows the journal club meeting held on 16th March 2012
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"Last Wednesday" infolit discussion 28th March

The Last Wednesday Information Literacy discussion on tinychat, sponsored by the ACRL Science and Technology Section’s Information Literacy Committee, takes place on Wednesday 28 March, 2012 at 2PM USA Eastern time, which is 7pm UK time. To join the discussion, go to http://tinychat.com/steminfolit at the scheduled time and join the conversation. The topic this month is Professional Development: : what's required of you, what do you attend, what have you liked not/liked?
Photo by Sheila Webber: another student placard, Sheffield University, March 2012.
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LOEX of the West 2012 registration opens 26th March

Registration for the LOEX of the West 2012 Conference (at Woodbury University in Burbank, California, USA, June 6-8, 2012) opens at 9am Pacific time (that's 5pm UK time) on March 26th. The theme is: Our theme is Creative Landscapes: Information Literacy for all Terrains. Esther Grassian is the keynote speaker talking on Occupy Their Minds! The Politics of Information Literacy. Go to http://woodbury.libguides.com/lotw2012
Picture by Sheila Webber: Placards for student elections, University of Sheffield, 2012. Haines didn't get elected.
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Pew Internet reports: use of smartphones; hyperconnected millennials; privacy management

I have a backlog of reports that I meant to read before I blogged, but I think I had better just blog them, starting with some Pew Internet and American Life project reports. On March 19th they published a report about Teens, Smartphones & Texting. They did "telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 799 teens ages 12 to 17 years old and their parents living in the continental United States". "Teens are fervent communicators ... they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions. This report examines the tools teens use to communicate, with a particular focus on mobile devices, and then places the use of those tools in the broader context of how teens choose to communicate with people in their lives."
Just dipping in (since we have been discussing use of email in my department), texting dominates: "8% of teens say they email daily with friends, down from 14% in 2006. More than half (54%) of all teens now say they never use email to talk with friends, and one third of teens say they never use instant messaging or send messages via social media sites."

Another fairly recent report, released on March 1st, revealed that Nearly half of American adults are smartphone owners. "46% of American adults now have a smartphone of some kind, and for the first time smartphone owners outnumber users of more basic phones." "The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from January 20 to February 19, 2012, among a sample of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older."

Then on 29 February, they revealed that Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives "A Pew Internet/Elon University survey reveals experts’ hopes and fears about the hyperconnected generation, from their ability to juggle many tasks to their thirst for instant gratification and lack of patience." "Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts."
I must say my immediate reaction is to trouble the expert opinions, as I don't think those things all necessarily follow on from one another. Still it does say that "Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results [i.e. the opinions in the report] are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample."

Finally, on 24th February a report was released on Privacy management on social media sites "Social network users are becoming more active in pruning and managing their accounts. Women and younger users tend to unfriend more than others" "The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 26 to May 22, 2011, among a sample of 2,277 adults, age 18 and older."
Photo by Sheila Webber: more forsythia, March 2012
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Children searchers; First year students

Articles in the latest issue of the priced journal, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology:
- Foss, E. et al. (2012) "Children's search roles at home: Implications for designers, researchers, educators, and parents. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63 (3), 558–573. "This paper presents the results of a large-scale, qualitative study conducted in the homes of children aged 7, 9, and 11 investigating internet searching processes on Google. Seven search roles, representing distinct behavior patterns displayed by children when interacting with the Google search engine, are described, including Developing Searchers, Domain-specific Searchers, Power Searchers, Nonmotivated Searchers, Distracted Searchers, Rule-bound Searchers, and Visual Searchers. Other trends are described and selected to present a view of the whole child searcher. These roles and trends are used to make recommendations to designers, researchers, educators, and parents about the directions to take when considering how to best aid children to become search literate."
- Gross, M. and Latham, D. (2012) "What's skill got to do with it?: Information literacy skills and self-views of ability among first-year college students."Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63 (3), 574–583. "This study replicates a previous study based on work in psychology, which demonstrates that students who score as below proficient in information literacy (IL) skills have a miscalibrated self-view of their ability. Simply stated, these students tend to believe that they have above-average IL skills, when, in fact, an objective test of their ability indicates that they are below-proficient in terms of their actual skills. This investigation was part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded project and includes demographic data about participants, their scores on an objective test of their information literacy skills, and self-estimates of their ability. Findings support previous research that indicates many students come to college without proficient IL skills, that students with below-proficient IL skills have inflated views of their ability, and that this miscalibration can also be expressed by students who test as proficient. Implications for research and practice are discussed."
Photo by Sheila Webber: Forsythia, March 2012
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First Year Experience: nursing curriculum; arts students

Two articles from this issue of the International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education (an open access journal).
Cassar, A., Funk, R., Hutchings, D., Henderson, F. & Pancini, G. (2012). "Student transitions – evaluation of an embedded skills approach to scaffolded learning in the nursing curriculum." The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 3(1), 35-48. This included collaboration with librarians on information literacy. "The embedded skills approach adopted in this unit attempts to ensure that students transitioning from a variety of contexts acquire a range of introductory academic skills in a supported learning environment. A mixed methods evaluation of the unit of study over two years (2009-2010) has revealed that students are mostly appreciative of the scaffolded and embedded skills delivery format and cite that elements of the model have supported their learning needs." pdf at https://www.fyhe.com.au/journal/index.php/intjfyhe/article/viewFile/102/103

Secondly there is this article, which focuses on information literacy:
Cameron, C., George, L. & Henley, M. (2012). "All hands on deck: A team approach to preparing year one arts students for their first major assignment. A Practice Report." The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 3(1), 101-108.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Trees reflected in windscreen, March 2012.
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London LibTeachMeet #ldnlibtm

London (UK) LibTeachMeet 2012 is on 14th May 2012 6.00 - 9.00pm. This year's theme is Supporting Diverse Learners. People share ideas through 2 or 5 minute presentations. "Presentations will be about ways of teaching or technology used to support 'diverse learners'. Diverse learners is taken to include learners who may be new, dyslexic, mature, international, autistic, part-time, have a learning/physical difficulty or uses English as a further language, distance learners, e-learners - anyone outside your "usual" teaching group." It will take place in the Haldane Room of the Wilkins Building of University College London. Go to http://ldnlibtmeet.eventbrite.co.uk to register. Twitter is @ldnlibtm and the hashtag #ldnlibtm
Photo by Sheila Webber: Euphorbia, March 2012
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Multimedia resources for librarians

Another useful powerpoint from Phil Bradley, listing loads of sites where you can edit videos, make customised pictures etc. He writes in the slide description "Don’t expect them to make too much sense without me talking over them, but you might find the tools themselves helpful."
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Teaching and Learning in Second Life as Part of a Blended Approach: Reflections and Lessons learned #vwbpe

Today Ridvan Ata and I gave our presentation about the Second Life activities that the first year class is engaged with, at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference: here's a picture of us presenting and here is the presentation:
You have read this article academic sector / My teaching / Pedagogy / Second Life / vwbpe with the title March 2012. You can bookmark this page URL http://monochromaticstyle.blogspot.com/2012/03/teaching-and-learning-in-second-life-as.html. Thanks!

1st Annual Indiana University Libraries Information Literacy Colloquium

The 1st Annual Indiana University Libraries Information Literacy Colloquium has a call for papers for the conference theme: Learning Out Loud: Information Literacy Pedagogy for the Non-Shushing Librarian. "We seek stimulating proposals that examine the implications Learning Out Loud has for information literacy pedagogy. How can instruction librarians take into account the sometimes chaotic, highly complex learning process when planning and delivering instruction sessions? How do we reach diverse learners with diverse learning styles? How might instruction librarians partner with other campus entities in order to foster student learning and enhance information literacy pedagogy? How do we envision the future of library instruction?" Proposals for breakout sessions of up to 250 words, mentioning at least 2 learning outcomes should be submitted at http://ius.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_2sqrL75u53mzK0k Deadline is April 30, 2012. More info at http://libguides.ius.edu/colloquium
Photo by Sheila Webber: Trees, March 2012.
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16th March: talk and Journal Club in Second Life @ #vwbpe

The Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference takes place in the virtual world, Second Life, starting now and continuing until Saturday. I have been involved in several ways, and tomorrow I'm doing a couple of events. You need a SL avatar and the SL browser on your computer to participate.
1. Presentation with Ridvan Ata: Teaching and learning in Second Life as Part of a Blended approach: reflections and lessons learnt. This takes place on Friday 16th March at 11am SL time, which is 6pm UK time (see http://tinyurl.com/7y7yjxf for times elsewhere). The location is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/CAVE/225/220/25

2. There is also a virtual journal club meeting on Friday 16th March:
When: 16th March, 1pm SL time (8pm UK time, see see http://tinyurl.com/7ulvad2 for times elsewhere)
Where: The virtual world, Second Life. http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduCommons%20Alpha/171/51/40/
What: Marshall Dozier (Edinburgh University Library) will lead discussion on: Young, P. and Vilelle, L. (2011) “The Prevalence and Practices of Academic Library Journal Clubs” http://hdl.handle.net/10760/15531 [authors’ preprint] Published in: The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 37 (2), 130-136.

This is taking place on our exhibition stand about Running a Journal Club in Second Life (pictured above) which you can visit anytime now, and next week. The location is http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduCommons%20Alpha/171/46/25/
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Lecciones aprendidas en programas de AlfabetizaciĆ³n Informacional en IberoamĆ©rica

There is the final programme for the conference Lecciones aprendidas en programas de AlfabetizaciĆ³n Informacional en IberoamĆ©rica (Lessons Learned in Information Literacy Programmes in Latin America), taking place 17-19 April as part of Congreso INFO 2012 in Havana, Cuba. The INFO conference website is at http://www.congreso-info.cu/ and the Information Literacy programme is at http://groups.google.com/group/alfin-iberoamerica/browse_thread/thread/d20823bf4fe16e00
Photo by Sheila Webber: Beech tree, Sheffield, March 2012.
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LILAC booking closes 20th March

Booking for the UK information literacy conference, LILAC closes on 20th March 2012. The conference is to be held at Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, Scotland, 11-13 April 2012. Those who have booked can now register for the parallel sessions.
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Report: Search Search Engine Use 2012


A new report from the Pew Internet project is:
Purcell, K., Brenner, J. and Rainie, L. (2012) Search Engine Use 2012. Washington: Pew Research Center.
The sample of Americans consisted of 2,253 adults, who were surveyed via telephone interview in Jan/Feb 2012. Apart from the fact that use of search engines has increased and the dominance of Google has increased, a few findings are:
"65% say… It’s a BAD thing if a search engine collected information about your searches and then used it to rank your future search results, because it may limit the information you get online and what search results you see. 29% say… It’s a GOOD thing if a search engine collected information about your searches and then used it to rank your future search results, because it gives you results that are more relevant to you"
"91% of search engine users say they always or most of the time find the information they are seeking when they use search engines. 73% of search engine users say that most or all the information they find as they use search engines is accurate and trustworthy. 66% of search engine users say search engines are a fair and unbiased source of information."
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012.aspx
Photo by Sheila Webber: Nigel's room, photoshopped, March 2012.
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Medical information specialist as a teacher

In the Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL), 2011, Vol. 7, issue 3, there are articles based on prize winning presentations and posters from the previous EAHIL Workshop. These include:
- Medical information specialist as a teacher: teaching searching skills: by L. Lodenius and M. Honkanen (reports on the findings from a survey of information professionals in Finnish medical schools)
- Keeping students engaged by simulating continuing medical education; by D. Storie
The whole issue is here: http://www.eahil.net/journal/journal_2011_vol7_n3.pdf and the journal home page is here http://www.eahil.net/journal/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Daffodils, Sheffield, March 2012
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LILAC award nominations announced

Nominees for Information Literacy Practitioner of the Year award are: Emily Allbon, Law Librarian, City University Library; Judy Atkinson, LIS Manager, Royal College of Nursing; Emma Coonan, Research Skills and Development Librarian, Cambridge University Library; Christopher Gibson, Faculty Team Librarian, John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester; Andrew Walsh, Academic Librarian, University of Huddersfield.

The nominees for the Credo Reference Digital Award for Information Literacy are:
- The 23 Things Project Group for the 23 Things programme
- Julie Adams, Andrea Hatton and Kathleen Morgan for RefZone
- The CPD23 Project Team led by Niamh Page for the CPD23: 23 Things for Professional Development Training Course.
- Uma Devalapalli for the Patricia Bowen Library & Knowledge Service Current Awareness Portal
- Carol Elston, Jade Kelsall and Dave Burns for the Flying Start Project.
- Carol Elston, Jade Kelsall, Michelle Schneider and Lizzie Caperon for the Library Guide – an online introduction to the library
- Jade Kelsall and Michelle Schneider for the Plagiarism Tutorial
- Ella Mitchell, Simone Okolo, Erica Plowman, Sue Harrison and Cathy Walsh for the Info skills online tool
- Skills@Library Team, University of Leeds for the Skills@Library lecturer pages
- Jennifer Wilson, Susan Smith, Karen Fisher and Alison Park for the Little Book of Info Skills Online

The winner of the sponsored student place is Thasya Elliott, who is a Learning Resource Centre Assistant at Haringey Sixth Form Centre and is studying on the MA Information Management course at London Metropolitan University.
The winners will be announced at the LILAC conference in April.

Picture of lilac taken in Second Life
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Summer School in User Studies

The Department of Information Sciences, University of Zadar, Croatia is hosting a summer school 11-14 April 2012. "It targets Croatian and international Ph.D. students studying theories and studies of information needs and use, information literacy and reading, and learning concepts and strategies in the digital environment." "The programme is organised around three sub-themes: Users’ information behaviour, Literacy and reading in the digital environment, and Learning and education in the digital age." More info at http://ozk.unizd.hr/ssus/
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Information literacy, e-learning and the changing role of the librarian

Jane Secker gave a talk to students here in the Sheffield iSchool last week, as part of the Academic & Research Libraries module. She also put it up on Slideshare:
You have read this article academic sector / Information Literacy / librarians / Pedagogy with the title March 2012. You can bookmark this page URL http://monochromaticstyle.blogspot.com/2012/03/information-literacy-e-learning-and.html. Thanks!

Information for Civic Literacy: call for papers

An IFLA pre-conference, taking place 8-10 August 2012 in Riga, Latvia, is Information for Civic Literacy. It is organised by the Access to Information Network - Africa (ATINA) & Information Literacy Section & Africa Section of IFLA. It is hosted by the Riga Central Library and the National Library of Latvia, in collaboration with the Education, Culture and Sports Department of the Riga City Council.
The conference "will explore the role of information professionals, educators and public actors in promoting civic literacy and informed public choices by citizens. This is not a matter of advocating particular political or public policy positions, but of education for responsible citizenship through the ways in which we provide information for citizens' decision making in the public forum." This can include issues such as: reference and information services to encourage democratic choice & citizen participation; "awareness of selective information delivery, propaganda and media bias as a new component of information literacy training"; helping citizens source information about governments etc.
"Special areas of interest to the conference include the development of civic literacy in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as increasing professional and public awareness of information control and manipulation in the Western democracies."
Proposals for papers should be submitted by e-mail (subject line "Riga 2012 proposal"), deadline 15 March 2012, sent to Frank Kirkwood, kirkwood.professional@sympatico.ca, copied to Denise Rosemary Nicholson, denise.nicholson@wits.ac.za ; Antonin BenoƮt Diouf, antoninbenoit@gmail.com ; Dalia Naujokaitis, dalia@sympatico.ca ; Franziska Wein, franziska.wein@uni-erfurt.de
Include: Abstract in English (250 words) summarizing the paper or other proposed program element (panel, exhibition, interactive discussion); Speaker's name, professional affiliation, postal address, telephone numbers, e-mail address and brief biographical note.
If selected, papers may be submitted and delivered in English, or in French, Spanish, German, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian or Estonian with an accompanying English translation. Authors must be prepared to give presentations in person at the satellite meeting in Riga.
An online conference registration form and other detailed info is at http://www.lnb.lv/iflariga2012
Photo by Sheila Webber: snowdrops, Sheffield Botanic Gardens, February 2012
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Social Media: Strategies in Higher Education

A new free book: Cheal, C., Coughlin, J., & Moore, S. (Eds) (2012) Transformation in Teaching: Social Media: Strategies in Higher Education. Informing Science Press.
This is not specifically about information literacy, but some of the chapters are particularly relevant. It includes chapters about a variety of Web 2.0 applications, and also some on using Second Life in education. The digital version can be found free at GoogleBooks, Informing Science and Amazon. The links and the table of contents are here: http://www2.oakland.edu/elis/book.cfm Chapters include:
- Taxonomy of Web 2.0 Applications with Educational Potential
- YouTube: Beyond Lectures and Papers in Leadership Education
- Diigo: Social Bookmarking in a Professional Communication Course
- GLEAN: Social Learning for Business Students
- Facebook vs. Web Courseware: A Comparison
- Twitter: Integration into Developmental English and Technology
- Chat: Transforming the Social Work Classroom
Photo by Sheila Webber: Iris reticulata, February 2012
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Phil Bradley on Social Media

Phil says by his slideshare presentation Why librarians must use social media that it "Won’t make too much sense without me talking through it, but it does point to various resources": it is 86 slides of useful stuff.
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University of Bedfordshire TeachMeet, 21 June 2012

The University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK, hosts a TeachMeet on 21 June 2011 10.00-13.00. Free event. "This TeachMeet welcomes learning technologists, librarians and study support staff working in any sector. It's an informal gathering for those who want to share innovative ideas they have tried with their students/clients.
You can come along to chat, watch, listen or give a seven or two minutes presentation. You don't need to be working in the education sector to present - everyone is welcome. A LCD projector connected to the internet will be available, if you want to use it." Booking: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3000962961
Photo by Sheila Webber: Crocus, Sheffield Botanic Gradens, February 2012.
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Live chat on digital literacy, 2nd March, noon UK time

At noon UK time (that's 7am US Eastern time) there is a live event about digital literacy today, Friday 2nd March. More info at http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2012/feb/28/developing-digital-literacy?CMP=twt_gu
I was searching for a link for where to go for the chat: however I think what happens is that you chat via comments on that page (at least, that seems to be what happened the previous time). The panel includes Sue Thomas and Alison MacKenzie. Thanks to Ruth Jenkins for alerting me to this.
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World Book Day (UK & Ireland) #WorldBookDay

Today is World Book Day: at least in the United Kingdom and Ireland (elsewhere in the world it is on 23 April "for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died").
For the UK/Irish day there are free £1 book tokens (14 million of them) that can be exchanged for one of the special £1 books, or put towards the price of another book. The 8 £1 books include ones by popular authors, such as Jacqueline Wilson. On the official website http://www.worldbookday.com there are "resources, lesson plans and activity sheets about the latest books" (and there are lot of these). World Book Day tweets at https://twitter.com/#!/WorldBookDayUK/ and Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/worldbookday2012
Picture taken by me, in Second Life
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