What Will You Read? Texts & Resources The Web browser on your desk has an open Internet connection. It is the door to the biggest library, by far the biggest library. Most of that library didn't exist two years ago and it's growing so fast you'll never figure out how big it is. Not only that, it has lots of stuff that would never be stored in a traditional library. Indeed, the Web takes us so far beyond information glut that the trick is knowing when to turn the computer off and get some sleep. Course Web I have a textbook amount of reading on the toLearn web. Throughout, as below, you'll find links to news, search, style, and design sites that are not on the toLearn server. I don't expect any of you to read -- or to need -- all of it. However, if you're going to progress towards the course objectives, I do expect all of you to read -- and to need -- much of it. It's up to you to balance your learning style against these resources. The tests and final exams will presume you know your way around the sites and documents below as well as the rest of the toLearn web.
Shapes and Colors Of all the things you need to know to prosper in the digital world, the biggest hole in your formal education is the visual arts. Let me make two groups; one or the other of them will describe most of you.
They couldn't be more wrong. While there's a lot of room for millions of good choices, there is as much room for as many bad choices. The way to tell the difference becomes very clear as you become more visually literate. The "texts" below -- as well as your expectations when you saw the title of this page -- are mostly words. While you can succeed in most courses by making only the most rudimentary decisions about how your term paper or test looks, in this course, you will have to make many aesthetic judgments. The other text is all around you. Start looking differently, especially on the Web.
News The best print resources for keeping up with new media are newspapers and magazines such as: Internet World (Web
Week until Feb 98) Even better are their Web sites, which have all the text without the ads. You'll find up-to-the-hour coverage of the digital world at Hot Wired. It offers news briefs and in-depth reporting on politics, business, culture, and technology. Check out the Dream Jobs section. I used the knowledge and skills parts to shape this course. Hot Wired also has a bleeding-edge style that continually amazes me. Similar but tamer publications include c|net and InfoWorld.
Search To learn everything you need to know about search engines, you should read all the material at Search Engine Watch.
Style Wouldn't it be great to have a style manual at hand when you sit down to design your web for this course? Well, search no more. As best I can tell, here's the most influential:
Wouldn't it be great to have similar manuals for desktop publishing, graphics, etc.? Well, they're out there, lots of them. One of the challenges of this course will be to find the one that's right for you. To get started, try John Goodwin's Elements of E-Text Style. It's long, but it covers everything and it practices what it preaches. For some historical perspective, try John Seely Brown's The Social Life of Documents. Highly recommended
Design There are as many ways to design webs as there are designers. One that makes sense to me is Ben Schneiderman's way in Designing information-abundant web sites: issues and recommendations. It has an interesting interactive demonstration if your browser supports frames. I highly recommend anything by Jakob Nielsen. His UseIt site is a great place to start.
A Note about Paper We will not use a common dead-tree version of a textbook for this course. Why? It typically takes two years for a traditional paper publisher to turn a finished manuscript into a textbook ready for the first day of class. To be ready for class today, the manuscript would have frozen in April 1996. That's okay if the subject is Shakespeare. Not much has happened in Shakespeare studies in the past two years. But in April 1996 ...
Any textbook from back then has inadequate and false information through no fault of its own. If you really want paper, I recommend Dynamics in Document Design by Karen Schriver (Wiley, 1997).
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last update: April 27, 1998 |
