Doesn’t it just figure that when I open Google and do a search for digital literacy, that it is the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse that is the first site in the search results! It seems as if the people at Syracuse are always on top of things. According to the CDL website,

CDL is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research and development center dedicated to understanding the impact of information, technology and media literacies on children and adults in today’s technology-intensive society.

The Department of Public Communication at Syracuse is one of three departments associated with the CDL. While clicking around on the PC website, I found this news item:

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications announced it has received a $3 million grant from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Cultural Understanding to endow the Alexia Tsairis Chair in Documentary Photography.

If you click to read the entire press release, you’ll see that the foundation is also sponsoring a photo exhibit at the UN (runs through mid-april), including a book where “14 seniors in Professor Sherri Taylor’s Graphic Arts Problems course worked on the book [Eyes on the World (Cohber Press, 2006)] this semester, editing images and creating layouts”.

Wow. Now that is funding! It is also a wonderful opportunity for students to work on a real book project.