Week 11

I felt that this was an interesting article. Companies spend a lot of time and money to determine what kind of websites are appealing to different groups of people. I would have assumed that a graphically rich website such as Disney would be more appealing to younger students and therefore they would find information more easily on such as website. But, the findings of this article suggest that students were able to find the same amount of information on a graphically rich website as they were in website without many graphics. As I thought about this more and search the internet I discovered that websites with too many graphics makes it much harder for me to navigate. The thought behind more graphics is to capture the attention of the audience. But, the developer needs to walk a line between enough graphics to gain attention and not too many graphics which leads to a cluttered and hard to navigate website. I think that websites such as Google have the right idea in that they are very clean and free from the clutter. Nothing bothers me more then when I open a website and I am attacked by visuals and audio that really have nothing to do with the information I am searching for. I believe studies such as this one are important because we are still learning how to create a new form of media to present information to the world. Too much technology can be harmful to the purpose of the website. Websites are interesting in that they provide information in text form such as a book but also present information in a way that an artist presents an idea to the world. We navigate the internet as a virtual library of information. If websites are not easy to navigate then they become as useless as a textbook that has a lot of information that is not categorized properly.

Teeneagers and the Internet

I thought that the most significant point made in all of the articles was that teenagers respond very well to websites that engage them through sound, video, and other forms of interactive technologies. This means that they would all probably hate the websites we created for our classrooms. Our classroom websites were designed primarily to get information across to students and parents. As the articles suggested, teenagers do not like to read. They like to be blow away by special effects. Teenagers are so use to playing games with incredible graphics and going to movies with action scenes that took months to create. So, it is hard to please teenagers on the Internet. Teenagers always want new technology to surprise them and exceed their expectations.

In order to create engaging websites for our students, we have to be up to date with the latest technology. The problem is that by the time teachers learn a form of technology, it is already outdated. But, the articles also state that teenagers are not "Tech-Wizards" as we assume. Teenagers in fact have a hard time learning new technology themselves. I believe they catch on quicker because they spend more time using technology. It is the same as the IT guy who can fix your computer in a second because her does it for a living and has much more experience using different forms of technology.

Kids are not going to be blown away bu a website with a lot of text. We have to engage our students with different forms of multimedia. I believe that video will be the key to reaching the largest number of students. Television is still the most common form of technology people use. Most prefer obtaining information on the television because it is easy, quick, and entertaining. I would suggest focusing on how video and the Internet can be used to help our students learn.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog spot. I have always been a little anti-Myspace/Facebook because I never really wanted to be so connected with people that I know. But, this blog site is cool. I hope to use it to stay in touch with friends, collaborate with colleagues, and meet new friends.