OU Study on Social Software

In recent years, there has been a growing popularity among online users of “web 2.0” sites covering social networking (e.g. Facebook), social bookmarking (e.g del.icio.us) and blogging (e.g. WordPress) to name a few.  Recognising this trend, the OU are now conducting a study on their use within UK higher and further education.  They aim to help the educational community explore the potential benefits and problems of this new technology. 

The plan is to collate data from ten case studies into a report that will be published in early 2009 via the JISC website.

Link: Study on the effective use of social software…

Call for basic adult digital media literacy

The Irish Times has highlighted the need for basic digital media literacy amongst adults in an article entitled: You can fool some of the people ….

“It is adults who regularly get scammed and phished online …”

It states that this lack of literacy can be addressed for students, who are still in education, but not so easily for adults who are not.  There is a need for media literacy to be targeted at adults so they can authenticate and interpret online information.  As the author says:

“Online street smarts are needed by adults as well as kids.”