Thursday, March 7, 2013

Asus Transformer Book Now on Sale in Japan

asus_transformer_book

The Windows 8 based 13 inch Transformer Book that Asus had launched long back (at the June 2012 Computex to be precise) is now finally ready to make it to the store shelves. However, that is a Japan only phenomenon as of now and Asus hasn’t revealed when it is going to be extended to the rest of the world.

About the tablet, the Transformer Book lives up to what the Transformer range from Asus is known for. The tablet comprised of a 13 inch display that can be attached to a keypad unit, turning the entire thing into a notebook device. The tablet offers a 1920 x 1080 pixel display, weighs a shade less than a kilo, and is built around an Intel Core i5 chip, 4 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of internal storage. The keypad unit houses a separate hard drive of 500 GB capacity, as well as a separate battery unit, two USB 3.0 ports, and a full sized SD card slot, while adding another kilo to the overall weight. Unfortunately, the combined battery backup times add up to just about 6 hours, a far cry from the lofty figures that the Transformers are usually identified with. The tablet part alone is said to deliver five hours. In any case, six hours of run time is decent enough to be identified in the ultrabook space. In this state, the Transformer Book commands a price tag of around $1280.

A higher speced version is also in the works. One that will have Core i7 chip and maybe a batter battery unit, and (of course!) a bigger price tag.

Asus Transformer Book Now on Sale in Japan is a post from: E-Reader News

Galaxy Tab 3 Plus LTE Seen at Bluetooth SIG

Galaxy Tab 3

The Galaxy Note 8.0 is heralded as Samsung’s next move in the tablet space, though that does not mean the oldies (the original Galaxy Tab range) have been shoved to cold storage. Instead, the 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab 3 as well as the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus are both alive and well. In fact, the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus in its 4G LTE avatar has already made it to Bluetooth SIG, where it is known by the model number GT- P8220. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group also mentions the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus is meant for release in the European market, though the tablet will undoubtedly be made available in other regions of the world soon thereafter.

Meanwhile, while details about the tablet duo are scarce at the moment, we rely a lot on rumors. With that, what we know of the device is that the 10.1 inch Galaxy Tab 3 will offer a range topping 2560 x 1600 pixels. This will put the tablet in the same league as the Google Nexus 10. Android Jelly Bean as the operating system is a given, as is perhaps a quad core processor.

More details are awaited. Pity the two tablets didn’t get to show up during the just concluded MWC event.

Galaxy Tab 3 Plus LTE Seen at Bluetooth SIG is a post from: E-Reader News

Hacking the Minecraft world

If you’re a Minecraft fan and a Pi owner, you’ve probably already downloaded a copy of Minecraft: Pi Edition. But are you getting the most out of the fact that you can modify the world with code in-game?

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you’re looking for ideas (sometimes being given a blank canvas can be lousy for getting the brain sparking), Martin O’Hanlon at the marvellous <Stuff about=”code” /> has several tutorials on Minecraft: Pi Edition, from installing the game to using the Minecraft API to build wonderful things, like magical bridges that appear where’er you walk, games of hide and seek, and in-game analogue clocks.

The hide and seek hack is easy and rewarding: with a little coding you’ll be able to get the game to hide a diamond somewhere in the world for you to find, and to give you hints of the warmer/colder variety.

You can find code and an explanation of what’s going on over at Stuff About…

And we’re all agreed that the clock is just brilliant (it’s also big enough that you can go and stand on the hands). Again, the project has its own page with code and a spot of discussion.

We’d love to see what you’ve been doing in Minecraft – take some video, or write something about your experiments on your own website, and let us know about it!

What is with the Obsession with ePub Format?

Over the years I’ve come across dozens and dozens of articles and emails and forum posts about how great the ePub ebook format is and how much better it is than other formats, especially Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format. People think that Amazon should switch to using ePub format because it is more “open” and everyone [...]



Enter OverDrive’s Library eBook Tournament

 

March Madness is upon us, and regardless of whether you follow the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, here's your chance to experience the thrill of bracketology. This month, we're hosting the first-ever OverDrive Library eBook Tournament.

 

Like the Final Four, the eBook tourney will follow a single-elimination model, starting with a large, regional field of competitors and culminating in a championship match-up. In this case, the competitors are library eBooks and audiobooks. We've selected the entrants based on the most popular eBooks and audiobooks by region, based on OverDrive digital library statistics.  Now it's up to you to decide which titles advance to the next round! Simply vote for your favorite regional title using our Survey Monkey page. After each week-long round, we'll tally the votes to determine which titles advance to the next round.

 

Here's the best part: we'll award a Google Nexus 7 tablet to the library that fields the most participants!

 

Enter Round 1 of the OverDrive Library eBook Tournament to help determine which books advance to Round 2!

 

Round 1

 

South

"Barefoot Season" by Susan Mallery vs. "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis

"Calico Joe" by John Grisham vs. "Chomp" by Carl Hiaasen

 

East

"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer vs. "My Beloved World" by Sonia Sotomayor

"Cover of Snow" by Jenny Milchman vs. "One Fifth Avenue" by Candace Bushnell

 

Midwest

"The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson vs. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn

"The Year We Left Home" by Jean Thompson vs. "Burned" by Sara Shepard

 

West

"Notorious Nineteen" by Janet Evanovich vs. "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed

"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer vs. "Big Sky Mountain" by Linda Lael Miller

 

Michael Lovett is Public Relations and Social Media Specialist at OverDrive.

 

Apple’s Tim Cook in Discussion with Beats Audio Over Music Streaming

beats_audio

Apple is already reported to be keen on delivering a music streaming service, something that got a fresh impetus over reports of its CEO Tim Cook along with chief of media Eddy Cue meeting with Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine. The trio discussed Beat’s yet to be launched streaming music service codenamed Project Daisy. However, the discussion is said to have revolved around the service itself with no deal having being signed. Apple has been speculated to launch its own music streaming service sometime in Q1 that will put it in direct competition with the likes of Spotify and such.

Meanwhile, Project Daisy has secured a major funding from Russian billionaire Blavatnik to the tune of $60 million and is set for a end 2013 launch.

Apple’s Tim Cook in Discussion with Beats Audio Over Music Streaming is a post from: E-Reader News

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Marvel Offers Free Guardians of the Galaxy Digital Comic

Drax

Marvel is offering four free digital comics to introduce readers to the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy, and they have two good reasons to do that: A new Guardians of the Galaxy series, written by Brian Michael Bendis, launched just last week, and there’s a Guardians movie in the works for next year.

The Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in 1969, as a team of warriors from different planets, each the last of his or her kind, fighting to save the solar system from aliens called the Badoon in the 31st century. That series ended in the mid-1990s, and in 2008 a new Guardians of the Galaxy series was started by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, using existing characters from Marvel’s Annihilation: Conquest crossover event. These are the modern Guardians. Marvel’s problem, at the moment, is that these characters who will be starring in a big movie next year are relatively unknown to the general public.

Enter the digital comics. Each of them will focus on a different character. Bendis told Entertainment Weekly,

Each one is sort of a prologue to the very first issue that lets the readers know who these characters are and what their individual goals are outside of the team. What makes Gamora tick? What secret is rocket raccoon hiding? What cost comes from being one of the galaxies most famous warriors like Drax the Destroyer?

The first, featuring Drax the Destroyer, is available now from comiXology. These comics are part of Marvel’s Infinite Comics line and are made to be read on a tablet; most of the time, a single panel fills the page (sometimes with a second panel as an inset) and a swipe may bring up new word balloons or pictorial elements or a new page altogether. This is a completely different way of reading comics; rather than turning from page to page, the reader stays on a single panel for a while and it changes on each swipe.

On an iPad, the art is big and easy to read. Unfortunately, the art is weak in places; one early panel, in which Drax is drinking from a goblet, is so distorted it looks downright Cubist. The story is straightforward—Drax is hanging out, a trio of beings challenges him to a fight, and they battle for a while before he kind of blows everyone up. The fight scenes are a bit reminiscent of the old Batman TV series, with crazy angles and big sound effects like CRASH and BAM splashed across the page. Once Drax has beaten his challengers, some guy comes along and tells him he is needed on Earth; the Guardians are being reassembled. By the end of it I don’t know that much more about Drax than when I started; he’s a tough guy who usually wins in fights, but then, in superhero comics, who isn’t? Still, it’s a neat little comic, and there are some nice touches; it’s well worth a look just to see the story unfold in a new way.

Marvel Offers Free Guardians of the Galaxy Digital Comic is a post from: E-Reader News

Barnes and Noble Names Book Award Winners

images
Barnes and Noble hosted a ceremony today in New York where they announced the winners of this year’s Discover Great New Writers Award. The award, first presented in 1990 and now in its 22nd year, is bestowed on new and undiscovered authors whose work has great literary merit.

This year’s fiction category winner is Amanda Coplin for The Orchardist, while the non-fiction winner was Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, published by HarperCollins and Alfred A. Knopf, respectively. Second and third place honorees in the fiction category were Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles and The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey; the non-fiction second and third place winners were Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen.

In addition to the monetary awards presented to each of the top three honorees in both fiction and non-fiction, these titles, along with other mentionable works, will be featured in promotions from Barnes and Noble. The goal of the award and the inclusion in the honor is to enable readers to more readily find these works that may otherwise have been lost among the many titles sold by the online retailer, especially as more entities are working to address the obstacles to book discovery.

This award parallels the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, which are open to a decidedly more self-published pool of authors. The ABNA awards have finished the first-round cuts and will continue through different stages until the final presentation in late spring.

Barnes and Noble Names Book Award Winners is a post from: E-Reader News

Google Nexus 7 Review

nexus 7

The Google Nexus 7 is one of the only pure vanilla Android tablets on the market and boasts a bevy of hardware enhancements that put most other devices to shame. One of the benefits of buying this edition over the Kindle Fire HD and Nook HD is the fact you aren’t locked into one particular ecosystem. How does this tablet rank against the competition and is it a viable e-reader?

Hardware

google nexus 7

The Google Nexus 7 features a seven inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1280×800. The resolution overall is fairly solid and videos looked a little bit better than the Apple iPad Mini and Kindle Fire HD. One of the strongest elements this tablet has going for it is the processor. It crushes all other e-readers on the market with a Nvidia Tegra 3, quad-core 1.3 GHZ processor. In conjunction with 1 GB of RAM, you can multitask to your heart’s content and not experience stuttering while watching videos or turning the pages in ebooks.

There are two models available in either a 16 or 32 GB edition. There is no expandable memory, so you will have to ensure that you buy the one that suits your needs. Not being able to put in your own SD card might be a deal breaker for some, but most computing these days has your data in the cloud. Often high resolution comic books, movies, television episodes, and magazines are 200 to 500 MB each. If you deal with companies such as Amazon, Comixology, or Google, all of your purchases will remain on your account if you purge them from your device.

The Nexus 7 has plenty of extras that are sure to impress. You can get the stock WIFI model or opt into the HSPA+ 4G edition. It has Bluetooth, NFC, two microphones, and a front facing 1.2 MP webcam. Battery life is fairly solid at around 9.5 hours and will generally last a week with casual use and the screen dimmed.

The overall design feels like a generic Android tablet, with no distinctive features that make it really stand out in a crowd. If you put this down on the table next to many different devices that have been released over the years, it would blend right in. At least most Nook, Kindle, Blackberry, and other brands really do stand out.

Performance wise, the Nexus 7 trounces the competition. It is very hard to beat this tablet’s high resolution and processing power. Plus, many people really like a seven inch device that is lightweight and easy to carry around.

Software

google now nexus 7

The Nexus 7 features a stock Jellybean 4.2.2 Android operating system. You won’t find any of the bloatware that accompanies most devices issued by HTC, Samsung, and Acer. This will ensure that when new iterations of Android are released in the future, this model should get them first.

One of the most exciting elements that this tablet possesses is Google Now. This is a brand new feature with Jellybean that gives you a SIRI type of voice navigation. You can open up websites and get your tablet to open up common apps. There are also widgets called “Cards” that in the stock version give you bus-stops near your house, the weather, and places to eat near your house. There are a number of other ones you can easily install, such as sporting events. Google Now is one of the best new features found in Jellybean and really enhances the OS.

Google Play is celebrating its one year anniversary and has claimed an app library of over 700,000 and over 5 million ebooks. There are plenty of movies, music, apps, and magazines that you can purchase. Most is US only, which may alienate people who live in Canada and other international markets. Still, Play has the largest selection of Android apps in the world and it is fairly easy to find anything you want.

One of the problems with Android is the fact most first party developers don’t produce content on it. Android piracy is out of control and it doesn’t take very long to find paid games online. This is the main reason why iOS appeals to mainstream companies as a viable avenue to generate revenue from their paid content.

Most tablets released in the last six months do not have the latest version of the Jellybean Android OS. The Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD, Kobo Arc, and many other e-reading devices do not ship with the latest OS. Most say they will eventually upgrade, but many people are still waiting. There is a great appeal in going with a vanilla tablet without having to root your existing device.

e-Reading Experience

reading

The Nexus 7 makes a very good e-reader if you are looking to read pure text. If you are checking out ebooks or other apps like Pulse, Google Currents, or even Google Books, the reading experience is great. More image heavy content does not translate well on a seven inch screen. For example, comic books, magazines, and newspapers are often too small to effectively read.

If you are into ebooks, there is a huge selection found in Google Play. You can easily find Amazon, Kobo, Nook, Sony, Aldiko, Marvel, PressReader, Zinio and other apps. You have a great deal of choice in deciding what companies you want to do business with and can often buy content from different businesses to hunt for deals. Google tablets really allow you to have flexibility in the reading apps you want to download.

One of the downsides of going with Barnes and Noble or Amazon tablets is that you are locked into their ecosystems. Their own curated app markets do not let you download reading apps from their competition. Your only option is to sideload content onto your Kindle Fire, and with the Nook HD, it’s not even an option, as they lock you out of loading in your own apps.

The seven inch screen may have great resolution, but comic books are often lackluster. Even with Guided View or zooming in on specific panes on graphic novels or comic books, you are squinting your eyes to read the text. You are often made to pinch and zoom every single frame, which gets tedious. The comic book experience is indicative to how magazines and newspapers also look.

In in the end, if you are just reading ebooks and content without heavy images, the Nexus 7 may be for you. If you tend to read more content with images, you might want to go for an 8 or 10 inch model.

Wrap Up

wraup up

The Nexus 7 has a ton going for it. It is rare to find an Android tablet with no bloatware and no superfluous content to bog you down. Many people are obviously really drawn to Android and the ability to craft your own experience. The Nexus 7 blends high performance hardware with solid resolution to make movies and web content look amazing.

You will be hard-pressed to find another Android tablet that has the great price and high powered specs that this one does. You aren’t locked into any one content distribution system and can enjoy a pure and open experience.

On the downside, this may not make the most ideal e-reader if you are buying this to consume magazines, newspaper, comics, and RSS feeds. The screen is basically too small to effectively consume this type of content and you may elect to buy the iPad Mini, Kindle Fire HD 8.9, or various 10 inch devices.

PROS

Great hardware
Amazing resolution
No stuttering with multitasking
Optional 4G model
Movies look great

CONS

No expandable memory
32 GB is often not enough in today’s world
e-Reading suffers due to small screen

Rating 8/10


Google Nexus 7 Review is a post from: E-Reader News

The secret origins of Google's Chrome OS


Many people know that Chrome OS is based on Linux. But where did Google's operating system actually come from -- and what is it made of today? Here's its story.

The Command Line is Your Best Friend


The command line can either be your best friend, or your worst enemy. It simply depends on how you use it, and what you use it for. If you're one of the many people who cringe at the mere thought of using the command line, then you've come to the right place!

Get Ready to Shake at Digipalooza 2013

Here at OverDrive, everyone's counting down the days until Digipalooza 2013 (#digip13). Our fourth international user group conference takes place August 1 to 4 in Cleveland, and some members of our team just can't seem to contain their excitement.

 

We  hope to see you in August for education, networking, and fun. To register for Digipalooza, click here.

 

Don't miss: "10 Reasons to Register Now for Digipalooza 2013"

 

Michael Lovett is Public Relations and Social Media Specialist at OverDrive.

 

March 6, 1992: False Alarm

The doomsday that wasn't: MS-DOS users are quaking in their boots over reports that the Michelangelo computer virus has infected their computers and is going to wipe out all their data on this date.

comiXology Submit – Self-Publishing Program for Digital Comics Goes Live

comiXology_Submit_Logo

Aspiring graphic novel and comic book writers often don’t have many avenues to self-publish their works and have them available in major digital stores to sell. comiXology announced today that its new comic self-publishing program has exited the beta phase and has officially opened to the public.

comiXology originally announced its move into the self-publishing market back in October 2012, at the New York Comic Con, when it unveiled its comiXology Submit program. Since November, the platform was in closed beta, where it allowed authors to publish their works and sell them side by side with major studios like Marvel and DC. The program will allow creators to submit their work directly to comiXology for publication on its digital platform, which stretches across the web, iOS devices, Android, Kindle Fire, and even a Windows 8 app.

Digital Comics staff writer Brigid Alverson of Good e-Reader asked, “So why does comiXology Submit make sense? For creators, it's an opportunity to get their work onto what is currently the biggest platform for serious comics fans. Furthermore, comiXology takes its cut on the back end, as a percentage of sales, so creators don't have to pay up front. Graphicly, a former digital comics distributor that now offers a similar self-publishing service, will publish for free on the web (and take 30% of sales as its share) but charges $150 to make the comic into an ebook and $500 to create an app. ComiXology takes 50% of sales, but there is no upfront cost. (All these percentages are what's left over after certain outside fees, such as Apple's 30% cut of all sales that go through iTunes). So essentially, comiXology assumes some of the risk; it could publish these comics and not make a dime. And while it doesn't make a separate ebook or app for each comic, it does put them in the comiXology storefront, which is the biggest digital comics store in existence right now.

More details of the program will be revealed next week at the South by Southwest show in Austin. Creators interested in submitting works for approval can visit http://submit.comixology.com. Comic book fans interested in finding works by independent creators now available on comiXology are invited to visit http://www.comixology.com/submit.

comiXology Submit – Self-Publishing Program for Digital Comics Goes Live is a post from: E-Reader News

News Corps Launches Student’s Tablet for $300

Amplify

Amplify has announced the launch of a 10 inch Android tablet designed specifically for the student community. Amplify is the education sector of the Robert Mudroch owned News Corps, and the device will act as the perfect platform to extend its student oriented services at the K-12 level. The tablet is being heralded as a device that will carry forward the technological leap the educational sector is witnessing and is being considered an absolute necessity towards creating the best learning environment. Amplify offers what it prefers to call “blended learning,” a term coined to signify the perfect cocktail of traditional and tech based teaching method that has been created by former teachers.

“If we didn't see a dramatic technological change, we were not going to be able to move this country forward,” is how Joel I. Klein, the chief executive at Amplify and a former chancellor of New York schools, justifies the inclusion of tech based teaching methods.

Coming back to the tablet, it will cost $300 in its Wi-Fi only state, while the 4G LTE compatible models have been priced $350. A two year subscription of the educational service that Amplify offers will cost an extra $100. The bezels are done up in bright orange, perhaps a bit of an unusual color choice for a tablet that is not aimed at children. That said, the tablet does look good with its simple screen layout. However, the mischievous be fore-warned. The tablet has enough surveillance capabilities built-in to track down wandering eyes with an “eyes on teacher” prompt popping up to ensure students stay focused on what the teacher is saying. Amplify has also identified the ample scope that educational games provides to teach students a few good tricks or tips. Towards this, the tablet also allows for some game playing as well, though only for outside the class.

While all of the above does sound good, what could hamper large scale adoption of the Amplify tablet is its price. Klien believes funds via Education Department’s Race to the Top grant program could come in handy here. It will be interesting to see if that is how things work out.

News Corps Launches Student’s Tablet for $300 is a post from: E-Reader News

Recantha’s only gone and made a tricorder.

I’ve been waiting for…ooh, just over a year, for someone to do this. Recantha, an old hand here in the comments and on the forums, has built a tricorder.

There surely can’t be anyone here without a passing familiarity with Star Trek, but just in case: the tricorder is a made-up thing used by the crew of the Enterprise to measure stuff, store data and scout ahead remotely when exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations, and all that jazz. Despite its made-up-ness, the tricorder remains a terribly desirable thing. I’ve always wanted to be able to tell whether my planet is M-class or not.

Recantha has bodged together his home-made tricorder using a Pi, some sensors (two for temperature, and one each for magnetism and distance), an LCD display, some switches, a light-resistant resistor, a thermistor and an Arduino Leonardo clone. We hope he keeps adding sensors to it, and maybe, later on, a camera board, until he runs out of space. How about a Geiger counter (this one already works with the Pi)?

Here’s a spot of video explaining what everything on the Picorder does:

(Best of all, the whole thing is cased in LEGO.)

And here’s some more video, showing the thing in action.

If you’re interested in reproducing or building on this project, Recantha’s blogged about it (he has an excellent website, all about Raspberry Pi), and has left a guide to the project over at Pideas, the new site for collecting Raspberry Pi projects. (Go and add something of your own!) Thanks very much for this, Recantha; our office costume parties will now have a dash of added realism. Jamesh has drawn the short straw and will be dressed as Nog.

First Look: Word 2013 Tutorial

The first lessons of our new Word 2013 tutorial are now available. Be one of the "first" to check them out!

MUD Pi

Readers of a certain age are in for a shot of delicious nostalgia today. Back in the dawn of time (i.e. the 1990s), many of us had our first taste of multiplayer gaming in text mode, playing things called MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons. MUDs are where games like World of Warcraft and virtual worlds like Second Life have their roots – and they were enormous fun.

Duncan Jauncey wrote something called Alternate Universe MUD ten years ago, and he’s just ported it to the Pi.

If you want to relive some of the text-based fun you had back in the 90s, head over to Duncan’s website, where you’ll find some more information and installation instructions for your Pi.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

New Digital Pilot Program from Internet2 and EDUCAUSE

Photo courtesy of velositor,com

Photo courtesy of velositor,com

A new pilot program has been put into place to allow more universities and higher education institutions to work within the online media model for student learning. This program, developed by EDUCAUSE and Internet2, includes over fifty publishers, notably the CourseSmart platform. GoodEReader spoke with Cindy Clarke, Senior VP of Marketing for CourseSmart, about the goals for this program.

“The spring pilot was very well subscribed and we’ve had feedback that more institutions are very keen to take part in the fall term,” explained Clarke, speaking of the original rollout which involved five schools and about eight hundred students.

While the offering will remain largely the same for this new fall 2013 program, there are some key differences based on that feedback. “One of the things that we’re adding to the subscription pilot is a faculty access program, giving those faculty members direct access to CourseSmart through their faculty access program. They can use CourseSmart for finding and evaluating textbooks for their adoption cycle.”

CourseSmart has learned from the original pilot program that both the students and the teachers were in favor of the subscription model, which affords students a significant savings over purchasing stand-alone titles while also giving them nearly limitless portability and access to their course materials. The savings through the subscription pack gives students twelve individual spots on their bookshelves that they can rotate their books through; the findings of the survey indicate that students tend to keep about five titles on that bookshelf at any given time, so the subscription model allows them to rotate their selected books through their bookshelves.

Of the large numbers of publishers who are participating in the fall pilot, McGraw-Hill, who has proven itself to be an educational publisher who stays at the forefront of digital textbook innovation, will once again be on board. In a press release on the fall pilot, McGraw-Hill’s spokesman explained the importance this type of program can play on the educational landscape.

"McGraw-Hill is excited to partner with Internet2 and EDUCAUSE to offer a pilot option that will deliver cutting-edge adaptive learning tools that take full advantage of the digital learning environment to enhance teaching and learning," said Tom Malek, vice president, McGraw-Hill Higher Education Learning Solutions. "We're looking forward to working closely with a select group of institutions and faculty that are interested in assessing the impact of these digital-first tools on teaching and learning."

New Digital Pilot Program from Internet2 and EDUCAUSE is a post from: E-Reader News

Results of Credo Survey Suggest Students Unprepared for Digital Literacy

Photo courtesy of english.sxu.edu

Photo courtesy of english.sxu.edu

A survey compiled by Credo has found some disturbing news about the skill set that students are bringing with them to the higher education setting: while many are proficient in information gathering, they lack the ability to process that information for application. In the survey, the results showed that students with this level of disconnect between digital processes may be unprepared for the technological demands of the workforce upon graduation.

"These results are eye-opening," commented Credo CEO Mike Sweet in a press release. "This is clear evidence that many students are not learning the basics of how to research, skills that transfer beyond the classroom to ensure success in the workforce and beyond.  At Credo, we have the innovative learning technology and the collaborative relationships with librarians and educators that will ensure that the 'Fourth R' is covered both earlier and more often so students can be more successful."

While the full results of the survey will not be presented until April at the ACRL Conference, some of the data already shows an alarming trend. According to the release on the upcoming survey report, most of the more than 1500 survey respondents demonstrated that they were adept at locating some form of information but less than half of the students reported that they could cite the information source as being reliable. More than half of the students responded that they were unfamiliar with the purposes of standard scholarly journals.

This survey was actually compiled by librarians, so the level of questions for the respondents were focused on information gathering, especially via technology and digital catalog. Unfortunately, the early results of the survey show that it is the students who have a false sense of security and confidence when it comes to perceiving their own abilities with digital information; students had far more confidence in their research skills than the data actually demonstrates.

Results of Credo Survey Suggest Students Unprepared for Digital Literacy is a post from: E-Reader News