Evaluation of Educational Technolgoy

To make readers want to read what you have to say, you have to make your prose exciting, interesting and meaningful. It has to be substantive, significant, jump off the page and come alive. If you merely repeat whatyou've read, in your own words of course, the writing will probably be dull, boring and stultifying. Poorly written prose will make readers want to click quickly through your site and shuffle off to snoozeville.
Don't make your prose shallow, superficial and meaningless. Don't lob glittering generalities, rendering us unconscious with the thud. Instead, allow us to feel the adventure, see the surprise, hear the cadence and touch the text. Allow the reader to read what is uniquely yours: your discovery; your exploration; and your meaning.

Of course, good mechanics (spelling, sentence sense, diction, grammatical construction, etc.) are of mental obstructions.

The goal is good quality prose not a mixture of a schlock, thrown-together, salad.

What does it mean to write on the web?

Mechanics are important.

Being able to write clearly and to get ideas across quickly are exceptionally important. And they are no less, if not downright more, important on the WWW. You definitely will want to use a writing handbook so that you can get instructions on mechanics (spelling, punctuation, grammar). Also you will want to use the various links to be found at Ted Nellen's collection on the Writing Process which includes everything you could ever imagine about writing. You can also visit the links I have on my homepage that will guide you to Writer's tools.

These writing elements are extremely important. No matter how much effort you put into the design of a webpage, no matter how many great-looking graphics you have, a poorly constructed sentence or phrase, or misspelled words or the ineffective use of punctuation will annoy and put off many visitors who surf to your website.

Writing for the screen is different than writing for print.

Writing for the web, in most cases requires a clipped (highly abbreviated) style. Moreover, "writing" for the web requiressome knowledge of design and graphics to make writing for the web more acceptable and easier to read. (What is easy to read in print is not necessarily easy to read on the screen.) Further, writing for the WWW requires not only knowledge of the English language but also requires a basic understanding and knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is the universal language or code of the web that determines the disposition of words, images, or links on a Web page.

Besides learning about the mechanics of constructing Web pages, you will also learn that writing on the Web necessitates revising a web page in terms of re-visioning (re-seeing) it.

Become comfortable in both worlds.

I want you to feel comfortable in both writing with ink for print and with pixels for the Web. I want to get you to become an amphibian. To grow webbed feet. These, indeed, are silly metaphors that I use, but they illustrate unforgettably the necessity for you to live in two radically different cultural environments - on paper and on the screen. To get you to take as many steps as you can, to walk out of the water onto the shore and stay as long as you can. And then, after returning to the water, to return as soon as you can to the shore and then beyond.

Lift yourself out of your everyday element and delve into the world of the web.

The goal here is to be able to live and function in both print and the WWW in the most successful way you can.

Web Page Guidelines

Consistent navigation on all pages
consistent graphic design across all pages
a distinctive logo or illustration
pages that stand on their own
good organization
contact information on all pages
update information frequently
small, fast graphics
design for a univrsal audience
room to expand
short, concise blocks of text
well written short links
judicious use of multimedia