260 Days of Learning Project
 
I read.  I read a lot.  I read things daily, hourly, minutely.  But much of what I read is to grab one piece of information and move one, and many of the things I read for learning, I find uninteresting or boring.  Sometimes I think this is my fault.  Like most students, undergrad and grad, reading things for class, even a class I might be teaching, I often find to be drudgery. 

This brings up the question of whether or not I should be asking my students to read these things.  I struggle with that question quite frequently, but I have to keep reminding myself that things I find interesting may not interest my students.  Likewise, things I find boring might just hit a chord with them, or at least a couple of them.

I have been reading tonight, again, about web design.  Learning about how you should create "Style Guides" to go with sites you design to make sure the site remains consistent during updates and modifications in the future.  While that is very sound advice, I know that unless this is a large corporation where strict guides must be adhered to, most people take ownership of sites they 'take over" and want to do things their own way.  I also learned that "editors" are a wise decision when it comes to content (no news there) and that home pages are your first impression of a site.  As I said, "blah, blah, blah . . ." 

But one article did give me an idea for class tomorrow.  It discusses paper prototyping, and I think this might be a great way to get my students to think about what they would like their sites to look like before they actually jump in and start choosing a design.  So tomorrow will involve scissors, construction paper, magazines, and glue sticks.  Sounds like fun to me, and I look forwarded to tomorrow's class.
Marilee
9/21/2010 12:41:03 pm

Just today I was talking with another student in the R&W program about how some texts let students in and how others don't. And, we've been thinking about how we can help students find a way in, but it seems like, with some texts, it might not even be worth it.

Reading is great, but sometimes you need to make something with scissors and construction paper. Maybe that's an activity that will help let students into some texts, too.

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