Jakob Nielsen’s post on banner blindness includes an interesting study on how people read Web pages. Researchers tracked people’s eye movements as they visited sites online and determined that we look at Websites in an “F” pattern. Writing for business owners and Web designers, Nielsen concludes,

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
• Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.

Web users have taught themselves to read this way with remarkable consistency. If teachers want students to read long blocks of text online (for example, an online short story or an essay), we may have to remind them to adjust their reading strategies as they begin.

These studies have implications for the teaching of writing, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.

Elizabeth Eckford, 1957	LBJ takes the oath, 1963	Tiananmen Square, 1989
All photos copyright Life magazine, “100 Photographs that Changed the World”

What do these pictures have in common? Each tells a story. Someone who didn’t know the history surrounding them could still “read” a narrative in the hateful faces in Little Rock, in the exhausted look on Jackie Kennedy’s face, in the tanks lined up in front of one courageous, doomed man in Tiananmen Square.

That is, they could read them if they knew how.

Debbie Abilock, editor of Knowledge Quest magazine, explains how to teach children to analyze documentary photographs in her article, “Visual Information Literacy: Reading a Documentary Photograph.” She guides students through a deliberate process using 5 questions:

1. What do I see?
2. What does it mean to me?
3. What in the photograph leads me to say this?
4. Why was this photograph created?
5. What does it mean?

She also asks students to examine different perspectives they bring to their analysis.

This article is rich with sample photographs, resources, and citations. It is a great starting point for anyone who wants to include this kind of learning in a curriculum. As our information sources become increasingly visual, our students need this element of education more than ever.

On this date in 1937, the German zeppelin Hindenberg caught fire while attempting to moor in New Jersey. The mooring was experiencing some difficulty, and newsreel cameramen had focused on the efforts of the ground crew. As a result, they missed the beginning of the fire, recording only the end. The tragic event is also recorded in still photographs and in the famous account by radio journalist Herbert Morrison, whose words were later added to newsreel footage.

Morrison, recognizing almost immediately the full implications of the fire, uttered the famous phrase, “Oh, the humanity!” as the burning craft crashed to the ground, killing everyone aboard.

The phrase became famous partly as the voice of a journalist who is helpless to stop the tragedy unfolding before him. It is echoed, though, by the radio audience and later movie audiences, recognizing the enormity of what they’re seeing.

That authentic voice is the same quality we ask our students to bring to their writing.

Reading a transcript of Morrison’s words as they watch the clip can help students understand what Morrison is reporting. It might be a good exercise in information literacy to ask students how hearing Morrison say the words affects their understanding of the events, as opposed to just reading them.

It might also be a good activity to ask them how they might edit his words. What is gained and lost by the changes?

They can then apply those insights to modern media: what are the strengths of text alone? When a journalist has strong video footage, what value is added by narration? What does this tell us about the importance of old-fashioned writing in a digital media age?

Update 6-29-08: I stand corrected. As Alpha comments, not all passengers aboard The Hindenberg died in the fire and crash.

Sunday morning’s e-mail included a teaser, “Curtain falls for Charlton Heston,” but no article. I decided to go to his Wikipedia page, reasoning that they would list a death date (if that were the case) near the very top of the article, and I wouldn’t have to navigate through my usual information sources.

I was surprised to find a warning label at the top of page, along with the sad confirmation of his death.

The label appears to be standard and suggests that news of a death attracts comment, some of it perhaps unkind:

Clicking on the “History” tab at the top revealed so many edits since midnight that only today’s edits could be listed. Clicking on the “Discussion” tab yielded a “behind the scenes” view of how the Wikipedia editors go about determining how best to present the most accurate information. Discourse was lively at times but always civil. One interesting discussion involved the authority of resources to determine his age — since actors of that generation routinely lied about their age, is Heston’s autobiography a reliable source for the year of his birth? Other topics ranged from Heston’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement to the use of alright vs. all right.

The discussion reassured me, though, that whatever was published would be reliable enough that I could use it in the classroom. The people who work on this page care about the subject and have some skill at research and collaboration. The writing on the “Discussion” page might gently have been called “sloppy copy,” but an editor was waiting to review whatever was published as the Article itself. Wikipedia has established a means for resolving disagreements, and even a way to deal with the “dark side” that sometimes manifests itself here, as it does everywhere.

Watching Wikipedia at work helped me better understand the process that produces this resource. Understanding its strengths and limitations reinforces my initial position: it’s a good starting point for student research.

Don’t Buy It! helps upper elementary students become better acquainted with advertising techniques. Secrets of a Cover Model is especially telling. The site shows the actual picture and then the retouched version that made the magazine cover. It goes a long way to helping kids understand why they don’t look like models.

The same is true for Girlpower: Retouch. This interactive site details the changes made before a model’s photo becomes a magazine cover. Every teen girl should visit this site.

I’ve been thinking about the power of the media this weekend. I watched a film clip of Prince Harry arriving home from Afghanistan and listened to his disappointment that someone had violated the voluntary blackout that the British press had been observing. I also noted that Senator Obama had refuted some false charges made in an e-mail that has circulated widely. In a third news item, someone commented on the effectiveness of the Internet for all candidates’ fundraising.

In the absence of “gatekeepers,” the publishers and librarians who sorted the wheat from the chaff prior to Web 2.0, information literacy skills are more important than ever. The body images of adolescent girls are just one of many casualties of this barrage of media. We need to give our kids the means to defend themselves.

Recently this e-mail classic hit my inbox again:

Message from John Cleese - British comedian:

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

2. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

3. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise’. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up ‘vocabulary’).

4. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be
adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize.

5. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

The statement goes on, but you get the gist of it.

The text was too uneven to have been written by John Cleese, but parts of it were witty enough that I could hear his voice as I read it, especially the bit about Kansas. So I turned to one of my favorite resources in researching e-mail, Snopes.com.

Fortunately for me, a search using “John Cleese” came up with the right page as the first choice. What I found was great research on the origin and history of the piece:

It evidently originated on with one Alan Baxter of Rochester, U.K., who wrote and posted a much shorter, four-item version to an internal newsgroup hosted by his employer in November 2000, as a wry commentary on the recently concluded (but far from decided) U.S. presidential election:

London, 8th November 2000.
To the citizens of the United States of America,

Following your failure to elect either a half decent candidate or man-monkey as President of the USA to govern yourselves and, by extension, the free world, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume a monarch’s duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, please comply with1 the following acts:

1. Look up “revoke” in a dictionary
2. Learn at least the first 4 lines of “God save the Queen”
3. Start referring to “soccer” as football
4. Declare war on Quebec

Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation and…have a nice day!

From this first post, the piece grew to include 10 items, then 13, then more.

This would explain the unevenness I sensed as I read the version in my inbox. But it also gave me an idea — wouldn’t our students enjoy researching the history of Urban Legends and legendary e-mails like this one? And wouldn’t that kind of research go a long way toward establishing the information literacy skills they need so that they stop believing everything they find published online?

I’m sure this kind of information doesn’t turn up in a simple Google search. I have written to the Snopes people to find out what tools they use in their research. When I hear from them, I’ll let you know.

In what part of a traditional school would you NEVER expect to hear laughter?

I heard you! You said “the principal’s office,” didn’t you?

OK, so what is the SECOND place you’d never hear laughter? Right! The library!

Once the domain of stereotypically stern men and women who only knew two words (”Shush!” and “Overdue!”), the library of old has been transformed to the modern media center, with banks of computers supplementing the traditional stacks; and with somewhat less concern about noise levels and more concern about information literacy.

Carnegie Mellon University is beta-testing a couple of online games they’re calling Library Arcade. The first one helps students choose the best resource: book, magazine, or database. The second one offers practice with the Library of Congress Classification System. They are engaging even if the graphics aren’t quite up to Halo standards (they’re more like Pac-Man, to tell the truth).

Try the games out! Let CMU know what you think! Have fun and contribute to an online learning community at the same time!

Special thanks to Nancy for this one!

In 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon was looking for the answer to an important question: Is there a Santa Claus? Her father advised her to check with an authoritative source of information, such as New York’s newspaper, The Sun. His guidance, her letter, and the Sun’s editorial response produced a staple of holiday reading:

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

David Pogue’s column last week, “The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality,” provided some eye-popping insight into the way young adults approach Web resources.

Pogue describes an activity he has used with audiences, providing scenarios like, “I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from the library and rip it to my computer” and asking whether they think that is wrong. The scenarios progress into increasingly complex situations, all involving copying DVDs and music.

“The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there are, and how many different opinions,” he writes. “Almost always, there’s a lot of murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.”

Pogue says that he recently spoke to about 500 college students and used the same activity, but the students didn’t think the scenarios described anything wrong. “No matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids’ morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.”

Some peer pressure may have affected the results, he acknowledges, adding, “Nobody wants to look like a goody-goody.” But even with his most blatant example of obtaining media without paying for it, only 2 students indicated they saw anything wrong.

Pogue’s focus was on file sharing, but I couldn’t help thinking that students probably feel the same way about text they find online as they write research papers. “Copy and paste” doesn’t seem at all wrong to them. They changed the font — isn’t that value added?

I gave up trying to explain plagiarism as “stealing” a long time ago. After all, the original writer of the copyrighted material still has it. I have had better luck with the line “give credit where credit is due,” appealing to their sense of justice. Still, with every batch of papers I grade, I have one or two students who seem to think it’s not wrong unless they get caught.

As teachers we may need to spend more time helping kids understand understand the concept of intellectual property. In fact, it might make a good focus for a research paper.

This request came in today’s mail. As I clicked through the survey, I found myself thinking about different aspects of online security that I hadn’t really put together as pieces of the same puzzle before. Readers might wish to participate not just to help out a colleague but also to learn a few things themselves.

Dear Educator,

We know that in the course of the year you receive many requests that take time from your busy schedule, but we hope that you will take a few minutes to consider this invitation to participate in this Cyberethics, Cybersecurity, and Cybersafety (C3) Baseline Study. Questions in this survey are designed to understand the level of Cyberethics, safety and security educational awareness policies, initiatives, curriculum and practices currently taking place in the U.S. public and private K-12 educational settings. The survey can be found at
http://www.edtechpolicy.org/BaselineSurvey/ and should take no more than 15-20 minutes of your time.

In order to best understand the state of C3 knowledge, professional development and instruction across the country, it is imperative that a large cross-section of the educational community participate. Feel free to forward this email to other educators you work with, or know around the school, district, state, or nation. Please complete this survey EVEN IF YOU DO NOT THINK YOU UNDERSTAND C3 issues. This survey is directed to novices as well as experts. We thank you in advance for your help; we truly value your feedback, and your responses will have a significant impact on future policy initiatives at all levels,­ school, county/district, state, and federal.

Every effort has been taken to make this an efficient, user-friendly process taking a minimum of your time. Data collection will be done via the above link. Upon completion of the study, you will be given the opportunity to receive a copy of the final report, and register to win one of several iPod Shuffles. Registration can be limited to your email address, so that we can either email you the report, and/or contact you if you win.

To participate, please go to http://www.edtechpolicy.org/BaselineSurvey/ as
soon as possible (no later than December 31) and complete the questionnaire. … We wish to try to have as broad a representation around the nation as possible. …

Davina Pruitt-Mentle
Educational Technology Policy, Research, and Outreach