Visualizations--Good and Bad

   Images seem to be one of the ubiquitous aspects of the internet.  A major website like SI.com will have hundreds of individual links.  Take a minute and really look at the image below:

   You've got box scores, you've got stories, blogs, front page articles, you have subscriptions, links to every major sport and other topics.  You can go from this page to almost any piece of information in the sports world.  One click.  That's no accident.  

    We are now used to this kind of visual delivery for content.  In the last few years, the internet has spawned the infographic.  A long, visual representation of ideas with text.  You have to scroll through these graphics just as you would a news articles, and they contain text.  What's key here though is how carefully they use color and simple images to get their ideas across.  Here's an interesting example:

Source: Frugal dad

     Some sites are not elegantly organized or barely use any images.  Our school formerly used groupfusion as a webportal.  We had pages that looked like the following:

Groupfusion... Bleh...

     Groupfusion was functional for our school.  You could have announcements and files, links and calendar updates.  But this wasn't much more than a glorified filing cabinet for resources.  There was no real way of prioritizing information by date or importance.  It was hard to group links and files together in a single folder.  But there wasn't the kind of graphical interface that makes other webportals effective.  The kids knew that when they were on Groupfusion, you were doing SCHOOL stuff.  And not in a good way.

How is a whale like a web-page?

   Students like linear texts.  Teachers like linear texts.  There is a reason why textbooks have nice bold vocabulary words, questions for comprehension, headings, and all that jazz.  It's possible to open a textbook, gather information, but not actually READ anything.  The kids are comfortable with this; these texts allow them to get through lots of reading, do well on their AP Bio exam, etc.

    But there's something to a text that is creative, non-linear, and different.  When students read Moby-Dick for the first time, it's incredibly disorienting.  Chapters spring from everywhere.  They have to work to understand the connections between chapters, that, on the surface, appear so different.  There is a lot of work, but the ultimate effect is masterpiece.

    Such is the case with hypertext.  Those that say that hypertext is a liability compared to linear text, that it puts increased cognitive demands on the learner, totally miss the point.

Digital Natives--Digital Immigrants

     Saying something new about Prensky's "Digital Natives Digital Immigrants" is now almost impossible.  I'm not sure if I know of any piece of writing that has produced more discussion or agreement.  Prensky spawned cliches and forced educators to take sides, to declare themselves.

     So what does my digital passport read?  I'm 27, so I was growing up when the promise of the personal computer was beginning to develop.  I remember tying up my parents phone line on AOL, playing the earliest version of the Oregon Trail, and downloading programs to hack Instant Messenger.  I was always more comfortable working with text on the screen, typing rather than writing.  Organizing my thoughts, files, and life, always seemed easier on the computer.