Computer Enhanced Learning: Electronic Communication

Computer Enhanced Learning:Electronic Communication Rick Matthews Dept. of Physics, Wake Forest University matthews@wfu.edu http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews Clayton College

Electronic Communications • Outline • A New Pedagogy? • Communication • E-mail • Listservs • Usenet • The Web • Pedagogy, again Clayton College and State University

A New Pedagogy? • Is the computer really going to revolutionize education? In what way? • Where is the technology going? Where will it be 5 years from now? Ten years from now? • What are our broad educational goals, and how does computer technology serve these goals? • What do we want to change, and what should we be careful to preserve? Clayton College and State University

A New Pedagogy? Let’s hope the traditional lecture is NOT a good way to teach! Do we want to be the Tea Room or the Tastee Freeze? Classroom time is too valuable to waste on one-directional transmission of information. Clayton College and State University

Short term • More initial impact on what happens outside the classroom than what happens in the classroom! Clayton College and State University

Communications • E-mail • Listservs • Usenet • Web pages Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages E-mail: Familiar, omnipresent. Students are more willing to send e-mail than to call. If it works well for the students, it can be very time consuming. Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages Listservs: an electronic mailing list You can subscribe members, or invite users to subscribe themselves. No new application for users to learn; messages appear with regular mail. Excellent forum for discussions outside of class. Example: English literature. More efficient, and perhaps better, than e-mail for answering student questions. Disadvantages: All discussions are mixed with your regular e-mail. (Solution: Filters.) Discussions are not threaded. Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages Network News, or Usenet, is a set of thousands of online discussion groups You can create local groups accessible to just your faculty and students. Discussions are separate from e-mail. Discussions are threaded by topic. Limited privacy Articles are read with a different application (maybe). Messages do not appear in your mailbox. Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages Web Pages Web use is ubiquitous -- students already know how to use it. Publication is cheap and easy. Gutenberg II. Rich presentations, multiple fonts, images, equations, sound, video. Hypertext offers a different paradigm for presentation. Students can be “published” internationally. Communication is one-way (usually!). Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages WFU Physics uses of Web pages See http://www.wfu.edu/physics. Class syllabus, indexed on student government pages. Homework assignments, solutions. Links to relevant sites. Last minute information, weather reports, satellite images for Astronomy labs. Official information for graduate and undergraduates. Online applications. Classroom demonstrations. Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages More uses Online threaded discussion, much like Usenet. Student pages Not just ego-booster (though that helps). Students can publish papers, other students can critique. Student Web searches Much is trash. Much printer matter is trash, too! Students need to learn how to judge the value of what they see. Communications Clayton College and State University

E-mail Listservs Network News Web pages Content! Ease of use! Find out the fastest, most efficient way of getting your information on the Web. Frontpage Word97 (get the latest plugin: w97au.exe) or Word95 with IA Netscape Composer Scanned text Communications Clayton College and State University

Style • HTML • Standard markup, “styles”: essential for good pages • Normal • H1, H2, etc. • PRE, handy for existing documents with tables • HTML is not WYSIWYG. • Viewer may not even have graphical browser. • If the same brand of browser, settings may be different. Mark content, not layout. Clayton College and State University

Web Authoring • HTML Style Elements • Numbered list, <OL> • Bulleted list, <UL> • Horizontal rule, <HR> • Note: bold and italics are supported, but HTML purists do not use them. Instead consider “Strong” or “Emphasis”. Clayton College and State University

Graphics • Goal: high quality, small size. • Size is important, very important. • Rule of thumb: Time = 1 second per Kbyte + 3 seconds per file • Lots of 1 K buttons add tremendously to download time; it’s not just file size. • This will get better with http1.1. • Don’t forget the value of caching! Reuse images. • Pick the right format: GIF or JPG. Clayton College and State University

Graphics: file type • GIF, JPG, TIF, BMP, WMF, PNG, PCX: why all these file types? • How do we represent color? • One number each for R, G, B. • TrueColor: 256 levels each for R, G, B • 3 x 8 bits = 24 bits per pixel = 3 bytes per pixel • 800 x 600 image x 3 bytes/pixel = 1.44 Megabytes! • TIF, BMP • Full TrueColor representation, no compression Clayton College and State University

Graphics: compression • GIF • Invented to reduce file size. • Reduces number of colors in image to a maximum of 256 (and a minimum of two), using a palette of 24 bit colors. • Repeated colors are replaced by a single entry and a repeat number: [17][17][17][17] becomes 4x[17]. • Works great on line drawings, computer art. • Full representation of image without loss. • Small file sizes. • Not so great on photographic images. Clayton College and State University

Graphics: compression • JPG • Invented to compress photographic images • Works best where GIF works poorly: continuous tone images. • Compresses by discarding spatial frequencies the eye does not notice. • Quality (and file size) is adjustable. • Supports TrueColor. • Terrible for line drawings, computer art. Clayton College and State University

JPG vs. GIF Original: 2000x1600 truecolor Clayton College and State University

JPG vs. GIF 1 Meg 2.4 Meg Clayton College and State University

JPG with extreme compression vs. GIF 134 K 2.4 Meg Clayton College and State University

JPG vs. GIF: Computer generated image 5k GIF 16k JPG Clayton College and State University

Graphics: choosing file types • Computer art and line drawings: • Always use GIF • Photographic images • Save the original as BMP, TIF, or PNG • Put JPG on the Web • The future: • PNG will replace GIF ( I hope!), but will not replace JPG. Clayton College and State University

Web pages: special concerns for math and science • HTML does not support mathematical expressions and equations. • Methods: • Scanned handwritten text • Easy, viewable by most, not very pretty. • IBM TechExplorer (http://www.ics.raleigh.ibm.com/ics/techexp.htm) • As easy as Tex. • Requires a plug-in only available on the most popular platform, but accessible to anyone with Tex. • Include equations as images • Viewable by most browsers • Easy with Microsoft Word97 Clayton College and State University

Including equations with Word • Initial setup of the equation editor on the toolbar: • Click on “Tools” and then “Customize”. • Select the “Commands” tab. • Select “Insert” from the left window. • Drag equation editor icon (“”) from the right window to the toolbar. Click on equation editor icon, create equation using equation toolbar. • Equations will be included as a GIF files. • Warning: equations cannot be edited later unless also saved as *.doc. Clayton College and State University

HTML <HEAD> information • Header information • Important! • Titles are what appear in bookmark list. • Subject, keywords, description are used by search engines to index your page. Clayton College and State University

Meta tags in HTML source • <HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Your title goes here</TITLE><META NAME="subject" CONTENT=”Your subject here"><META NAME="keywords" CONTENT= "Keyword1 keyword2" ></HEAD><BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><P>This is the body.</P></BODY></HTML> • Modern Web authoring tools offer an easier way! Clayton College and State University

Adding title and meta tags in Word97 • Click on File, Properties to bring up the window shown at right. • Click on “More”. Clayton College and State University

Adding title and meta tags in Word97 On the Summary tab, you will find slots for title, subject, description, etc. Clayton College and State University

Adding title and meta tags in Word97 • Select Custom tab. • Enter the word “Description” in the “Name” slot. • Enter a description of your document in the “Value” slot. Clayton College and State University

Adding Meta Tags in Netscape • Netscape Communicator offers a similar entry window. • Select “Format”, “Page Colors and Properties” to call up this window. Clayton College and State University

Editing HTML directly • HTML looks much like the old pre-WYSIWIG word processors. • Can use the “Edit source” option of Word, or edit directly with Notepad, emacs, vi, etc. Clayton College and State University

Final thoughts on Web design • Content, Content, Content. • Keep graphics file size down, unless graphics are the focus. Consider thumbnails linked to bigger pictures. • Use GIFS for computer generated pictures and line art. • Use JPGs for photographs. Adjustable compression. • Reuse graphics where possible, and refer consistently. • Use “Height” and “Width” tags. • My rule of thumb:Time in seconds = (3x #files) + (Total size in K)Keep time under 45 seconds. • Site should be navigable without graphics. Clayton College and State University

Pedagogy again • Bob Swofford: “We are in the ‘bolt-on’ technology phase.” • Where do you see us going? • What are the pitfalls? Clayton College and State University

Computer Enhanced Learning: Electronic Communication