the learning record

questions regarding the learning record

1.  Will our grade be entirely based on this method, or will more traditional means be employed?

2.  How effective has the learning record been in comparable intances (graduate-level, humanities courses)

3.  Is this an entirely new system for evaluating students?

4.  What is the thrust behind this new method of evaluating students?  The American over-emphasis on standardized testing was cited, but are there other reasons?

5.  Is this method expected to be employed just at the graduate, college level, secondary, or primary levels?  Or might it be better served (and serve its students better) at the earliest levels possble

usability as it pertains to me

i find the research that nielsen, loranger, and company to be quite thorough.  i could go on and explain what the reading talked about, but i don’t think that that would be of much assistance as everyone else in the class has read, or will soon read, most of this material.  with that in mind, i decided to try to assess some of their findings based on my own admittedly skewed observations. 

with about 11 years of experience on the web, and with a college degree under my belt, i have used the internet extensively.  when i first got online, i used the web primarily to look up areas of interest for me, primarily video games.  i used several sites at first, but found one site, gamespot, to be the best of its kind.  later i became interested in sports and checked the espn website and cnnsi website along with the local newspaper sites.  in highschool i was introduced to an online database, ebscohost, and later, online shopping.  thus, my experience on the web runs the gamut of the kinds of things most people do on the web. so, i have a substantial diversity of information from which to draw in my own discussion of web usibility.  while my own comments can in no way be considered gospel, i can say that i have seen much on the web, and have seen a great deal of development in the last 11 years or so.

the first website that i began to check religiously was gamespot.  it was extremely thorough, frequently updated, easy to navigate, and archived much of its information.  while recent developments have caused me to trust the site less than before, i will still periodically peruse its archive with various questions about old video games.   

other than gamespot, it wasn’t until recently that i began checking other sites frequently.  i attribute this two to factors: my poor (dial-up, 56k) connection, and also to those ridiculous graphics-heavy sites that were nigh-impossible to read with such a poor hook-up.

i was introduced to facebook by a friend who was not a big internet person about 3 years ago because it was so user-friendly.  he explained that it was much easier to use than myspace, so i followed suit.  i would shortly start a myspace page myself. 

at first glance, i found the reading to be somewhat humorous, especially when it talked about the problem of when new windows are opened up without the consent of the user.  it explained that many users were unable to use more than one window at once, and felt helpless or abandoned. i sort of laughed to myself, then remembered that i grew up with this thing.  many very intelligent older people were not exposed to computers and the internet until relatively late in life and were hesitant to adopt it.  it’s important for me to keep this in mind. 

it seems that while i am a “high experience” user, there are some things about the web that i have much to learn about.  i never got into blogging much (i wrote maybe 4 or 5) on myspace before i started this class. as a result, i think there are many things about the web that i should learn that will help me navigate it more effectively. 

a testament to the growing power of the online community

i recently came across a story that touches on some of the things i’m sure we’ll end up discussing in class, if not on the video that the professor recommended us to this week on blogs.

a full-blown (maybe partially blown) scandal erupted after author cooper lawrence derided the recent ea–published videogame mass effect for the xbox 360 console.  in a fox news interview, lawrence claimed that a sex scene in the game was tantamount to pornography. this claim was disputed by many who, unlike lawrence, have never played the game. the online gaming community, fueled largely by blogs, lashed out, giving lawrence’s book damning ratings on amazon’s and barnesandnoble’s websites.  the new york times recently did an article on the debacle, and i found it interesting, if not pertinent to our studies.

the link is here (maybe for next week i can learn to do that link thingy we learned in class) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/arts/television/26mass.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=mass+effect&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

on organization

for my entire academic career, going back even to the first or second grade, i have been told that “organization is the key to success.”  i don’t know if this is true or not, but i do know that i have generally been very unorganized throughout my academic career and that this has made things difficult.  i suppose that writing blogs will help me then for two reasons– first, because they don’t require any specific format– and second, because it they will force me to write more and in turn, find my way.  part of the problem is the way i think: my mind moves too quickly, and it quickly moves “from place to place.”  this can be a blessing and a curse as i am able to process information rapidly, but also am afflicted with what might be some sort of attention disorder.

i’m currently reading william blundell’s “the art and craft of feature writing” for my other class, and feel that it is addressing some of the questions i had about organization.  what is somewhat troubling to me is that my organizational problems are widespread– to dealing with paperwork for taxes, to putting together a paper, to answering a question someone has regarding an area of expertise for me.  i hope that the extensive reading and writing in this class will help me with this problem.

if anyone in this class has had similar organizational problems or has some familiarity with them, feel free to comment me with any advice.

Good Timing

My beloved HDTV went into the shop on Friday morning for repairs.  The guy that came to pick it up told me it would be at least three weeks, and could be more.  I wasn’t very surprised, but was disappointed anyway.  Later in the day, I received the Nielson book, Prioritizing Web Usability.  After checking it out, and  reading the introduction and the first chapter, I can say that the timing for losing my TV couldn’t have been any better. 

 My videogames will collect dust during this time, as will my DVR and DVD player.  My brain will have less time to vegetate and remain a passive acceptor of stimulae.  My brain will instead be forced grapple with the complex problems that we will read about this semester in our studies.  This is not to say that I expected to not work hard coming into the semester; it’s just that now fulfilling all of my academic requirements will quite a bit easier with fewer things vying for my time.  This is my first graduate level class, and I’m hoping to establish good study habits early on in my career.  I applied this strategy for the first year of my undergraduate work, and I was better off for it. 

Blogging for Grad Class

I was charged with starting a blog for my first graduate class, Writing for Electronic communities, which is quite fitting. This blog, though primarily started for academic reasons, will be used to discuss many other things as well.

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