Readin’, writin’ and information literacy

While students are able to simultaneously instant-message, download music, check Facebook to learn what 172 of their closest friends did last night, and Google five sources in five minutes for that history paper due in two hours, the Educational Testing Service says kids today are lacking on the information literacy front. Over the past two years, ETS has created a new standardized test that measures how well high school and college students can use computer software and judge the validity of information they find online. In October, ETS released the finding from its first test of 3,000 college students and 800 high school students. The results: Only 13 percent of test takers were information-literate. ETS is hoping to build support for new information literacy standards in schools and colleges. To that end, the National Forum on Information Literacy has created a panel of people from academia, government and business to set and review the standards. To learn more, go to www.ets.org and look for ICT Literacy Assessment.

I’ll Take one Blue movie with that Diploma

Employees from the White House, the National Security Agency, the State Department and Department of Health and Human Services were among the the 135 federal employees and 6,000 people who have paid thousands of dollars to purchase phony degrees from a diploma mill. The operation used a variety of different institutional titles, according to an Associated Press story, including James Monroe University and St. Regis University. Five of the mill’s operators are on trial in U.S. District Court; one of them also faces pornography charges. The defendants also are accused of bribing Liberian diplomats in order to get their online institutions accredited by the Liberian board of education. Because about 40 percent of the 6,000 bogus degrees went to foreign residents seeking entry into the U.S., many of them in Saudi Arabia, the diploma mill also has raised national security concerns.

Harnessing collective intelligence

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched a Center for Collective Intelligence that will answer this question: “How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups or computers have ever done before?” One of the first projects of the CCI will be a book compiled on the theme “We Are Smarter Than Me” (“we>me”). Writing the book will entail the use of wiki technology. Registered writers (www.wearesmarterthanme.org) will be able to add, delete and edit at will, allowing “the book to benefit from the collective wisdom of the community,” says the Web site.