What will life be like if people stop reading?

by Caleb Crain from the New Yorker

Chronicle of Higher Education

Link

“The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, based on scores of longform interviews with teachers, shows that the fundamental goals of media literacy educationâ€â€?to cultivate critical thinking and expression about media and its social roleâ€â€?are compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions. As a result of poor guidance, counterproductive guidelines, and fear, teachers use less effective teaching techniques, teach and transmit erroneous copyright information, fail to share innovative instructional approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms.

This is not only unfortunate but unnecessary, since copyright law permits a wide range of uses of copyrighted material without permission or payment. However, educators today have no consensus around what constitutes acceptable fair use practices. The report concludes with a call for educators to develop a consensus around their interpretation of their most valuable copyright tool: fair use.”

“Forget Second Life. The real virtual world gold rush centers on the grammar-school set.” New York Times

Link

“Schools, libraries, and other organizations that aim to improve students’ reading skills have a new online tool to help them evaluate how well their literacy programs work: the Verizon Literacy Program Self-Assessment Tool (VLP-SAT).”

Link

Link to VLP-SAT

“Report says many teachers, schools define ‘fair use’ of digital materials too narrowly ”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryRSS.cfm?ArticleID=7430

The Summer 2007 issue of the Community Media Review, “Community

Media and Social Change,” is available. The guest editor of the

issue is Betty Yu, community outreach and media specialist at Manhattan

Neighborhood Network (MNN).

http://communitymediareview.org/archive/2007/number_2

“We all know that Internet filtering policies have the best interest of students in mind. But what are we sacrificing when we don’t allow educators to override filters at their own professional discretion? It’s something I’ve asked myself over the years, but I’d never had to confront it head-on as I did this week while participating in an educational workshop at the JFK Library in Boston.”

Raising Virtual Children

My Daughter, the Burger-Flipping Penguin

“The world’s libraries are heading for the internet, says Bryan Appleyard. If this means we lose touch with real books and treat their content as ‘information’, civilisation is the loser”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2557653,00.html