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IAS > My Day > Categories

6/15/2008

Writing for readers who use the Web
Boy, do I love Bloglines - it has given me the excuse to read the news online every morning and check out the latest gadgets in instructional technologies. 
 
A great article today on Slate by Michael Aggers, "How we read online," summarizes work by  Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert looking at Jielsen's biweekly column and in particular, eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness.  Aggers says that writers using the web need to change - cut nearly half the word count, rely on bulleted items, and use only one idea per paragraph.   Since profs need to remember that on-screen reading is 25 percent slower than reading on paper, there should be less of it than is normally put on a paper handout. Some more tips to make online reading more comfortable:
  • Choose a default font designed for screen reading; e.g., Verdana, Trebuchet, Georgia.
  • Remember that readers will tend to skip long lines of text, which promote fatigue.
  • Tell your students they should rest their eyes for 10 minutes every 30 minutes of online reading.

Of course, there are many who say that online reading habits are destroying our literate civilization and its youth... and that this sort of writing/reading culture carries over to the paper-based writing/reading.  I am not convinced... and neither are those who commented on this Chronicle article that brings those sceptics together in a rather sad and cynical way.

Posted at 8:21 AM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: June 2008 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

6/10/2008

Hitwise's study on top 20 social networking sites
Saw an article in Tech.Blorge about a study on the top 20 social networking websites - MySpace is still the most popular social networking environment with over 80% market share of visits from a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.  Facebook, interestingly, garnered just over 10% of visits by that same sample.  Though Bebo held only 1% of that market share, I really like the video tutorial on Bebo safety which was "designed to to help educate young people, parents and teachers about the safe and positive use of Bebo."
Posted at 8:54 AM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: June 2008 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/3/2008

MIT's campus in Second Life
Here's a short video by a Chronicle on Higher Education reporter showing the Second Life campus for MIT - including classroom space and strings of "pods" where students can show how their dorm room looks like... cool idea - if Patsy will let me, we'll steal it for our Discovery Seminar using the UKY SL island this fall!
 
 
Posted at 4:13 PM by Hollingsworth, Randolph | Category: June 2008 | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)