Recently, researchers from StanfordUniversity found out that there’s no good multi-tasker when it comes to media activity. When we are using different media simultaneously, we are actually bad at concentrating and organising information. It’s like the more you try to do, the worse you can do.
I personally find it very true. Because I tend to watch TV dramas when I’m drawing, but when my friends try to discuss what happened in those dramas, I usually have little idea about what they are talking about. When I try to remember the plot, nothing really comes to me except the faces of the leading characters. The situation is the same with reading online for me. When I read things online, I have to mute the TV, otherwise, my brain will constantly try to decode the messages I hear from the TV. However, when I read from books—the traditional sort of books—I think sometimes I manage to ignore the noises around. Of course it depends on how interesting the book is.
This reminds me of a report saying nowadays many Britons watch TV only because they are surfing online at the same time. So if the researchers from StanfordUniversity are right about people can’t multitask, it would be obvious people devote their attentions to the Internet, not the TV. No wonder TV stations have to worry about the effectiveness of advertisements since the prosperity of the Internet.
The same report also said instead of sitting on the sofa together, family members tend to do their individual things. Therefore, new technologies become a destructive force driving families apart. Although I’m not from UK—I’m from China—I find the report sadly true for my family. We have three laptops at home, and we do our own things quietly after dinner in different corners of our apartment: My dad usually read news online; my mom simply uses her laptop to play games; I spend hours reading online novels.
So what do you think? Have you successfully done different things simultaneously with different media? And do you think new technologies become destructive force for family unity?
During the tutorial of another subject, I had a discussion with other classmates about the possibility of using electronic materials instead of papers and books in classrooms. We all agreed that in a way, e-learning can reduce the burden of students – at least they don’t have to carry all those books everyday. I remember when I was in junior high school, I had to carry about 13 books (around 6-7kg) everyday. I always blame those books for the fact that I couldn’t grow taller (smile).
However, many students actually resist to using high-tech things in the classrooms. I personally find it true. For example, when we are not familiar with certain operating system, we tend to become too frustrated with our computer to follow the lecturer. Speaking for myself, if I have to use computers, I would prefer to use the hardware and software that I am already comfortable with.
Sometimes, I also think using computer during class is distracting. Nearly all student start to check their email accounts immediately after they get their hands on a computer. And it’s difficult to stop the urge to check Facebook during the two-hour tutorial (Particularly, if the internet speed is faster in uni than at home).
Also, using e-material can slow down the learning process. According to Bowles and Borden (2000) people read 25% slower on screen than on paper. Morkes and Nielsen(1997) even said people do not actually read online – they scan. I’m sure lecturers don’t want students to merely scan all the course readings.
Till now, it’s pretty obvious I’m not a big fan of using new-technologies in classroom. But I can’t help thinking: maybe my reluctance is due to the fact that I’m not really the generation grows up with the internet? I mean I started to use computer when I was in elementary school, and started to use the Internet when I became 18. But unlike the kids these days, I don’t surf the web since kindergarten-age. I feel more comfortable with reading printouts than reading on screen. But perhaps the kids now (or in future) can read faster on screen. They may find it’s weird to read on papers. After all, the reading habit has been going through tremendous change since the inernet became popular worldwide. Maybe we will find out the idea of “reading on screen is slower” is not biologically designed. It’s actually a long-term trainable ability.
Finally, I’d like to mention I saw a portable e-reader in Japan, which suits people like me very much. The e-reader looked like a mobile; but after you unfold it, it would look like a portable sized book. And it’s like you are reading the actual book except you don’t have to flip the pages. I personally would love to buy something like this if I have the money.
What do you think? Do you support the idea of using e-materials in classrooms? Do you think the reading habit will change completely for the kids growing up with the Internet? What kind of portable e-reader would you like to buy?
Bibliography
Bowles, DA & Borden, DL 2000, ‘editing for the web’, Creative editing, Wadsworth, Belmont.
Nielsen, J 1997, ‘ Concise, scannable and objective: how to write for the web’, Useit.com, viewed 20th August 2009, at .
Since I began to take this course, there’s a big question mark hanging in my head – how can we make money through blogging? I have been writing a blog for years, but I feel like I’m constantly talking to myself. I used to think people love blogging just because they don’t have real social life and they want to find another channel to complain about things. Well, maybe some people do. But recently I realised there are some clever people making huge amount of money by writing blogs at home. So with the hope I can do something like that in future, I dig a bit further with great interest (towards money), and find out those clever people are mainly generating profits through several streams that some of us are already familiar with. Most professional bloggers make money through advertising. There’s not much difference between the advertisements on blogs and those on portal websites. You just need to copy some codes to your page. Then every time a person clicks an ad, you get paid. But usually the payment is very low, say less than one US dollar per click. And sometimes, you have to reach a certain amount of money in total every month to receive your payment. The most widely used advertisements nowadays seem to be Google AdSense. Moreover, bloggers can also make money from writing reviews and recommendations for certain products. The niche of the products they write about should match the readerships of their blogs. There’s an article written by Steve Pavlina, who makes more than US$1000 every day from his self-development blog. He explained the whole topic pretty comprehensively. But the length of the article (over 7000 words! ) contradicts to what we have learnt in class. You need enormous patience to make it to the end of the article. There’s also a much shorter piece published on DoshDosh. The writer listed out the pros and cons of several money making strategies. I also found a piece teaching people how to make money on Twitter. Anyway, either you want to make money from advertisement or affiliated products, you have to attract enough traffic for your blog. So it all comes down to how to attract readers online. There’s a super-clever guy named John Chow who makes more than US$40,000 every month from his blog. He started a link-exchange program - every time people published a review about his blog, he would add the link of your blog on his blog. At the end of the program, his blog became the first result would appear on Google when you searched ‘make money online’. He also organised many activities offline so that readers of his blogs could meet up in real life. Once you get closer to your readers, you will receive more reviews hence more traffic. There’s much more to be explored about making money through blogging. What do you think? How do you want to generate profit through your blog? Or have you heard of any interesting idea about promoting your blog online?
According to the Age (10 August 2009), dogs can be as smart as a two-year-old toddler. The smartest breeds can learn up to 250 words. It’s just so surprising to me that dogs are actually this smart. They must have lots of things going on in their cute little heads. The news piece also provided a ranking, saying border collies and poodles are the smartest, followed by German shepherds, golden retrievers, Doberman pinschers, Shetland sheepdogs and Labrador retrievers.
I’ve realised my post last week contained several editorial errors so I decided to revise the whole article and post it again. So here’s my post for week 2.
After covering the features of Web 2.0 during the lecture, I’d like to share some thoughts in association with my personal experiences to further explore what Web 2.0 means to web administrators/content creators. Less complicated jobs In the era of Web 2.0, web administrator/content creator’s job has been simplified a lot. When I built up my first personal website in 2000, I had to create every single web page by writing HTML or using editing software such as Microsoft FrontPage. I also had to maintain the site regularly by using FTP to upload web pages one by one. In fact, at the beginning of 21 century, most personal websites couldn’t afford to use technologies that allowed more interactions between users and web administrators/content creators. Renting a big enough web space that supported such technologies could also cost a fortune. So the majority of personal websites were still using the most basic HTML. Nowadays an administrator does not have to know how to write HTML or anything more complicated than writing a post. If you want to build up a website, you can always download relative templates and sources for free, upload it onto your space and install it by double clicking a document for installation (who can’t do that!). Your websites will update automatically every time a user submits a post. Your virtual host provider (if you are renting one) will backup your database everyday. All you need to do are to read posts and delete the ones causing trouble in your website.
More equal with users Nowadays, the power relationship between users and web administrator/content creator is more balanced. Web 2.0 technologies are designed to generate users’ feedbacks. When we were still using Web 1.0, users could read web pages but there was no convenient way for users to provide instant feedbacks. The only option was to send administrator emails, but many people would not go through the troubles. So the online contents were created by minority but read by majority. Web 2.0 technologies allow users to give feedbacks right after reading the contents on web pages. For example, in forums, there is ‘reply’ button available under each post. On blogs, there is ‘comment’ button under each entry. All these sorts of design encourage users to interact with content creators and other users in a more active way. Therefore, content creators are not isolated from users anymore; they take advices and hence are under more influences from the users. Moreover, for websites using Web 2.0 technologies, users are content creators and information providers too. Forums and discussion board are heavily relying on users’ interactions and creations. Wikipedia is a typical example of how traditional form of website now turns into user generated website.
More constrains In the era of Web 2.0, web administrators/content creators can enjoy less freedom. When people were still using HTML and JAVA to write web pages, we have more room to design the page layouts according to our own preference and with more creativity. Nowadays, web administrators/content creators don’t have to possess professional knowledge, hence they tend to choose the website software that is easy to adopt. Such softwares are similarly designed. Thus most smaller websites are using similar layouts. Particularly personal websites do not have many choices but to use the limited number of free or cheap templates, which are like invisible frames constraining the things we can do online. In other words, they are like laws in cyberspace except they are not written down. For example, the design of a blog decides it will never function like a discussion board. A blogs shows the owner’s posts on the main page. Comments will only show if you decide to check out the whole content of a particular entry. Such arrangement puts more emphasis on the blog owner’s creation than the blog readers’. So arrangement of layouts and spaces can limit the creativity of web administrators/content creators.
Recently I read some articles and have some thoughts on digital divide.
“Digital divide’ is the term used to refer to the gap between those who can effectively use new information and communication technologies and those who cannot (Hubregtse 2005).
Some people believe new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can help poorer countries to accelerate development because they have access to lower cost and easier-to-use technology as later adopters (Shin, Kraemer & Dedrick 2008). And they can learn from the experiences from developed countries who have already adopted the technologies (Shin, Kraemer & Dedrick 2008).
However, studies showed that ICT investment has a positive and significant relationship with productivity growth at the macroeconomic level in developed countries, not in developing countries (Shin, Kraemer & Dedrick 2008). The difference of productivity in developed and developing countries is becoming bigger and bigger in recent decades.
The factors contributing to this continuously growing gap between developed countries and developing countries may include poverty, lack of infrastructure, low awareness of ICT, and particular political, cultural and language reasons.
One of the most important factors might be developing countries are lack of technological infrastructure (Hubregtse 2005; Shih, Kraemer & Dedrick 2008). Research found out that digital divide exists in terms of the installation of telephone lines instead of internet (Dasgupta, Lall & Wheeler 2005). Manhattan has more telephone connections than the whole Africa (Hubregtse 2005). Usually two out of three telephones in Africa are out of order (Hubregtse 2005). This reflects digital divide dose not only accompany new technologies but is a longstanding problem of the availability of mainline telecom services in developing countries (Dasgupta, Lall & Wheeler 2005).
Unfortunately installing ICT infrastructures requires lots of money while many developing countries are still suffering poverty. For example, it has been said that money is the single most important factor in bringing the internet to the African continent. When basic educational and health services satisfying human beings’ basic needs remain scarce, it is difficult to acquire ICT service to satisfy higher level of needs. therefore international aid is a necessary solution.
Moreover, governmental attitude towards ICT is another factor determining how much investment new ICT can receive. Thus it is very important to raise awareness in developing countries about ICT as an important tool guiding national development policies. Moreover, the benefits of ICT should be realised by the citizens as a whole, not just by the government (Ono 2006). Educating exhibitions and programs in museums can be one feasible solution to raise social awareness.
Language may be another factor that differentiates one country’s access and use of ICT (Ono 2006). Over 90 percent of online content is in English, which may have become a barrier to access for non-English-speaking groups (Ono 2006).
Bibliography:
Dasgupta, S, Lall, S & Wheeler, D 2005, ‘Policy reform, economic growth and the digital divide’, Oxford Development Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, June. No page references.
Hubregtse, S 2005, ‘ the digital divide within the European Union’, New Library World, vol. 106, no. 3/4, pp. 164-72.
Ono, H 2006, ‘Digital inequality in East Asia: Evidence from Japan, South Korea and Singapore’, Asian Economic Papers, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 116-39.
