Re: A tithe of pages: towards an animated browsing environment

Titus and Jonathon,

	I very much enjoyed the comments and observations about the use of
pre-literacy sites on the web. There are two sites I've recently looked and
(and used one), to provide as extreme examples. An author, who apparently
cannot convince his illustrator to go public, perhaps in an attempt to
increase sale of books, has an all-text site of books usable with young
readers: http://www.aaronshep.com Everything is in plain, change-it
yourself text, and there are no illustrations anywhere. There is an audio
track for at least one of the stories (Lightening Larry), but there are no
graphics to be viewed while listening. For my purposes, it's a useless
site! .... On the other hand, there is the Lily Frog site created at
Va.Tech ... http://www.ext.vt.edu/resources/4h/lillyfrog/ which became a
successful lesson on the wetlands environment and habitat for my 2nd grade
teachers doing their first online lesson! 

Across the room, the librarian was doing Curious George with the
Kindergarteners, and there was just one site and one simple game available,
on the publisher's site. Normally, the librarian will use Curious George
stories for several weeks, but can incorporate the web in those lessons
just once ... Publishers will have to do better than they are doing so far! 

The "Lilyfrog" Wetland lessons are part of a year-long "training" of 2nd
grade teachers to use the Internet routinely as a supplement to other
teaching materials.... Hopefully, by next year, they will be able to do the
same thing in their classrooms instead of coming to the lab, and will use
it even more often ... the sites need to be there... If I were teaching in
a 3rd grade to 5th grade school (age 8-11), I'm certainly be looking for a
better search engine than any I've found! In VA. 5th graders (11 year olds)
are expected by state standards to be able to use a search engine on a
database ... to meet that need at  3rd grade level would be a major
overhaul for Altavista! 

But the needs of "children", in part, reflect the needs of folks with
various cognitive, learning and reading disabilities ... Animation more
than graphics, and audio of text, best when you can click through it
instead of it running on it's own time .... better yet, when it ends with
some sort of a "review of points" that let the user review what has been
inputted in an intelligent way (the Lilyfrog site has two excellent
reviews, one graphic, one text, that the kids did, some in groups, others
individually, with success cut short by time) ... (When the technology is
available directly in the classroom, time can be stretched to be similar to
individual use by disabled adults whose needs are similar (but far from
identical) to childrens' ...

				Anne



 


At 09:01 PM 10/4/00 GMT, TITUS SINGH wrote:
>I am sorry not to be present, please accept my apologies and my contribution 
>herewith with my best wishes.
>
>	When creating content for early readers, repetition, illustration, word 
>count and point size are intimately related. Whilst Dr Seuss would not 
>appeal to all, his work, both with illustration and text is known to most. 
>Quentin Blake & Roald Dahl have had a long relationship, as also have Janet 
>and Allan Ahlberg, though they may be less well known.
>	A brief survey of such books published in the last century could no doubt 
>demonstrate an improvement in our understanding of literacy. However the 
>commonalities are perhaps more evident.
>	To author suitable materials requires experience and sensitivity. Scripting 
>and storyboarding are separate disciplines and if we are to enable the 
>individual to author both, whilst developing literacy skills, we will have 
>work to do.
>	There are a number of proprietary authoring programs* that
>present graphics, as illustrations of words, or word groupings. They
>inevitably do not have illustrations for every word. A few abstract 
>subjects, some adjectives, most parts of speech and even verbs may prove 
>unsuitable or difficult to illustrate in this manner. The graphics will need 
>to be learnt and this may not be appropriate.
>
><it is easy to imagine situations where the back button will not be 
>interpreted as such>
>
>	If we attempt to build on the skills of users in a non-didactic manner, the 
>context will be the mediator. The example of games and computer games 
>demonstrates this. Every game has its own rules, and if it is graphical, 
>usually the graphical format is explicit. Altering the graphical design 
>interferes with gameplay too dramatically to be
>attempted, one may instead design a new game. I am not proposing at this 
>stage that our clients develop games titles, though I should be surprised if 
>they are not involved, once the tools are in place, or under development.
>
>	Navigating the web is a complex and demanding skill, and one that we all 
>find can be hard to achieve efficiently. It is an essential skill to learn 
>and for this reason it is necessary that suitable sites are linked to 
>external resources. Much curent streaming and multimedia content 
>unfortunately fails on this issue. The user is denied interactivity, or the 
>interactivity is limited to onsite use. There are a growing number of online 
>applications available. Search engines are perhaps currently the most 
>succesful.  We can imagine that the mediation of web content will develop 
>over the coming years. Publishers and users will both be concerned to 
>maintain control.
>
>	People with poor literacy are in the main economically independent. It is a 
>defining experience of adults with learning difficulties that they are 
>financially dependent throughout their lives. Few even have the experience 
>of handling loose change. It is clear that commercial publishers will not be 
>able to validate the creation of suitable sites, in economic terms. Equally 
>teachers and social workers do not have the time, the skills or access to 
>suitable equipment to author and serve such materials. I'd therefore like to 
>suggest that large publishers ensure that 5-10% of their content be suitable 
>for people learning to read. For these reasons I ask you to commend your 
>fellows to design and author suitable materials and set a suitable example 
>for others.
>
>I wish to thank Wendy Chisholm for taking the time, to help me define and 
>perhaps clarify my somewhat muddled ideas.
>
>For my own attempts, all of which are notably unsuccessful, a variety of 
>graphical browsing environments are at http://www.signbrowser.org.uk, 
>unfortunately the Java version with a 2.2D perspective, is currently 
>offline.
>My only comment is that they are different attempts to present a variety of 
>offsite resources within an animated or graphical environment, and have been 
>designed for people with under-developed reading skills .
>
>
>* WIDGIT and CLICKER are available in the UK.
>
>--
>
>jonathan chetwynd
>jc@signbrowser.org.uk
>IT teacher (learning difficulties)
>& accessibility consultant
>
>
>
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Anne L. Pemberton
http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Pav/Academy1
http://www.erols.com/stevepem/Homeschooling
apembert@crosslink.net
Enabling Support Foundation
http://www.enabling.org

Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2000 18:30:42 UTC