Tag Archives: bibliography

Final, Final Projects, Reflections

3RD Annotated Bibliography

Leave a comment

Page, Stanley R. “User Customization of a Word Processor.” Common Ground (n.d.): 340-46. Web. 3 Dec. 2014. <http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/papers/Page/srp_txt.htm>.

The primary author of this paper, Stanley R. Page, worked for Novell Incorporated at the time of writing.  Not much was to be found concerning Mr. Page’s current status, however the Novell website is up to date and provides some insight into the author’s background.  From their homepage: “Novell supports thousands of organizations around the globe, delivering software that makes the workplace more productive, secure and manageable.”  The paper falls in line with this mission statement in that its objective was to find out what and how users change in their word processors.  Based on a study of 101 volunteers, the research team tracked on discs what changes users made to the software (WordPerfect 6.0a), responses to a questionnaire, and macro usage files.  Put simply, their findings were that, “92% of the participants in this study did some form of customization of the software. The maximum number of changes made by a participant was 54. The mean was 9.1. Eighty-six percent made changes to their general preferences settings.  Sixty-three percent made use of custom functionality in macros. Seventy-seven percent customized the software interface to add or change access to their functionality.” Though the piece may be somewhat out of date, in the past eighteen years, not much has changed in word processing outside of cloud storage and a few nifty tricks and features.  These numbers are most likely different today, however they are more than likely still representative of general trends in word processor usage.

The researchers’ audience for this study were originally those in attendance at the 1996 Conference of Human Factors in Computing, a conference that is still held today.  As the name implies, the conference focuses on how humans and our ever-present computers interact with one another, with an attendance base from across the computing spectrum.  The bias or slant present in the paper is minimal.  Though the authors are all involved in computing technology themselves, the paper remains easy to comprehend for those less versed in such vernacular.  The team set out to find out something they did not know, and were not out to prove anything, they write several times that the fact that 92% of users customize their processors to be surprising.

One of the main reasons this remains such an interesting and relevant study is that within it is contained a sampling of the word processor user demographics.  The researchers state that of those sampled, “57.4% having ten or more years of computer experience . . . 50.5% falling between the ages of 40 and 54 . . . 55.4% female and 44.6% male.” In addition the study provides a comprehensive analysis of what users changed and theorizes on why the changes were made.  Two of the key reasons cited for the desire to customize the word processor were that the user realized certain patterns or habits they had and wanted to facilitate these changes more, or that the user wanted to retrofit some new piece of software into an older version of the program.  These two user desires are key in developing White Space further in that once the user’s wants are more deeply understood, the product may react accordingly.  That said, it is important that White Space should do more than just provide users with what they know they want, to stay ahead of competition it is important to try new things, test ideas that have no assured demand, and create inventions that give the user something they didn’t even know they wanted.  Apple is a perfect example of this practice.  When the iPhone was launched in 2007, there were few if any metrics to depict how a smartphone would sell, but Apple took a chance, and now its product is one of the most widely used devices on the market.

Final, Uncategorized

Third Annotated Bibliography Entry, White Space

Leave a comment

Morello, Robert. “Five Tips for Marketing to College Students.” Small Business. Houston Chronicle, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2014.

Robert Morello is a Columbia graduate, a writer, and professor of travel and tourism. He has also worked in marketing and consulting. This article stems more from his marketing experience. “Five Tips for Marketing to College Students” is a condensed set of ideas for companies of all fields to use in their marketing toward people of college age. The intended audience is small companies looking to market their brand toward young adults and especially college students. The five ideas stated in the article are: “Follow the Money,” focusing on parents that fund college students, “Get Them Involved,” acknowledging the importance of interactivity between the product and the consumer through social media and advertising, “Harness Enthusiasm,” which is essentially playing off of young people’s avoidance of mainstream anything, “Giveaways,” using free swag to get the company’s name out there, and “Responsibility,” associating the company with causes that college students believe in in order to win their moral approval as an establishment. Morello claims that these five advertising techniques are key to marketing toward college students.

This article provides some interesting ideas for marketing techniques, but only gives a general overview of ways to execute the ideas presented. It would benefit the reader more to have included some input from actual college students rather than just present an idea of how they think. The article does have the bias of an author who is thinking primarily of how to generate revenue, which works for making money but can create a superficial tone for the company in my view. The article suggests harnessing student ambassadors to spread the word about the company, but I have seen this happen before and it makes for a weird, kind of forced social exchange between student ambassadors and their peers that makes for a weird image of the company. Overall I think the most useful part of the article is the piece about giveaways. We had considered this before, but in a more restricted way than suggested in the article. Morello provides the idea of giving out living essentials to college students, for example hairbands, toothbrushes, or phone wallets, to keep the company’s name in mind when students are using these items. I think White Space would benefit most from this kind of advertising, making this article relevant to our paper, even if just by this blurb.

Final Projects

Snowman bibliography

Leave a comment

Ridling, Zaine. “TABLE OF CONTENTS.” Word Processor Review — DonationCoder.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2014.

 

Zaine Ridling, a well-versed and educated author of documents on word processors, has written for the Word Processor Roundup and runs the Great Software list. Ridling’s article is more informative than anything and seeks to outline and review the new 2007 Microsoft Word interface. The intended audience of the article is students, educators, researchers, and writers and Ridling gives specific tips to each demographic. Throughout the article Ridling inserts his own view into an overview of Microsoft Word’s features and thus presents a slant towards not using Microsoft Word if you are a student, researcher, scholar, or writer.

The biggest strength of this article was its ability to go over so many of the key features of Word. As someone who is working on creating a new word processor, this is helpful to me because it outlines what features currently exists and where they fall short. I also think that since the article is written in a way that the everyday person can understand, the audience becomes wider and broader. I though the weakness of the article was how it attempted to cover so many different word processors in the same article. Ridling tried to go in depth about many word processors, but in the end the reader was left confused or muddled with a wide array of information. The information in this article is very relevant and helps my research because it presents us with many different features of word processors and goes through the pros and cons.nowman

Final

Annotated Bibliograpy

1 Comment

Hale, Joanna, Jacqueline M. Thompson, Helen M. Morgan, Marinella Cappelletti, and Roi C. Kadosh. “Better Together? The Cognitive Advantages of Synaesthesia for Time, Numbers, and Space.” Cognitive Neuropsychology 31.7-8 (2014): 545-64. Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2452/doi/full/10.1080/02643294.2014.967759#.VHj7SDHF83Q>.

 

All of the contributors to the article come from psychology departments at American universities. The authors argue that there is a difference between the magnitude and sequence accounts of TNS (time, numbers, and space) synaesthesia, and that the difference is clarified somewhat in there experiment. It seems that their intended audience regards mostly other psychologists and psychology scholars who cannot clearly decide upon which account is more veritable in the broader scheme of synaesthetes. It seems as if the experiment was conducted with direct intentions for results, yet bias is not apparent in the paper, nor in the trials themselves. The experimenters set up multiple control groups to compare with the TNS synaesthetes which made for some interesting results and a more accurate conclusion to be drawn, yet it could have gone more in-depth with its analysis of those other test subjects (grapheme-color synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes). The information in the article provides a wealth of background information for our technical specs. section and does not refute any claims we intend to make, while instead clarifying a specific type of synaesthesia for our group.

 

 

Kay, Collette L., Duncan A. Carmichael, Henry E. Ruffell, and Julia Simner. “Colour Fluctuations in Grapheme-colour Synaesthesia: The Effect of Clinical and Non-clinical Mood Changes.” British Journal of Psychology(2014): n. pag. Wiley Online Library. Web. 28 Nov. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2153/doi/10.1111/bjop.12102/full>.

 

The article’s contributors all work in Psychology departments of two Universities in the UK (University of Edinburgh and University of Sussex). The authors conducted a series of experiments testing grapheme-color synaesthetes and attempting to find a correlation between mood and the colors they experience. As it turns out, the evidence supports the claim that mood does in fact alter the colors they perceive (noted by a change in luminance). The article is intended for other scholars of psychology along with those interested in this field of research. Considering that the article is actually a publication of a science paper, the only room for bias is in the fact that it’s possible the authors drew more on correlation rather than causation, yet they do not make any claims that surpass what their evidence supports. The article offers a great deal of experimental details about grapheme-color synaesthetes, but lacks personal anecdotes or experience as it is essentially a lab report. I believe it does not deny anything our research paper intends to do, and actually extends the believability of our invention and the feasibility in many ways too. It seems relevant to our investigation considering it could provide useful information when looking at how our device could alter the moods of its users, along with their general brain functions.

Rouw, Romke, and K. Richard Ridderinkhof. “The Most Intriguing Question in Synesthesia Research.” Cognitive Neuroscience 5.2 (2014): 128-30.Taylor & Francis Online. Web. 7 Dec. 2014. <http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:2452/doi/full/10.1080/17588928.2014.906400#tabModule>.

Both of the authors of this journal source work together at the University of Amsterdam’s center for the study of adaptive control in brain and behavior. Rouw and Ridderinkhof gathered information on the current analysis of synesthesia and put forth a broad, yet still unanswered question: “Why do most synesthetes *not* get confused by their additional sensations?” In the piece, they intend to clarify the boundaries of this question, in addition to attempting to answer it. The findings of the article extend past those in psychology departments around the world as it also begins to put together an even bigger question of personal realities and the lack of objectivity within them.  Dealing with a heavily subjective topic, one would think there would be room for bias, yet the authors handle the research with scientific treatment and was tormented with quite a large amount of peer review before  being released to the database. One of the major values of this source is that it answers questions that could worry our target audience and settles some fears of unwanted imaginative realities for children. It provides a great deal of detail about multiple types of synesthesia too, and mostly seems to focus on Grapheme-color synesthesia (like we will be doing in our presentation).

Final

Cesco’s Annotated Bibliography

Leave a comment

McDonnell, Andrea P., Leanne S. Hawken, Susan S. Johnston, JaimeeE. Kidder, Marjorie J. Lynes, and John J. McDonnell. “Emergent Literacy Practices and Support for Children with Disabilities: A National Survey.” EDUCATION AND TREATMENT OF CHILDREN 37 (2014): 495-530. Print.

All the contributors to the article are professors, associate professors, graduate assistants and deans of the Special Education Department of the University of Utah. The authors’ thesis is that emergent literacy is a key element in reading comprehension that needs to be addressed immediately. The main focus of the paper is the impact of various pedagogical strategies on children with many different disabilities ranging from reading comprehension issues to deafness and blindness. The authors’ intended audience is clear to be both students researching this topic as well as educators in the field who could pick different teaching strategies based on the findings of this study. The bias in the article appears to be that the authors believe something needs to be done for students with any type of disability, in contrast with some educators who believe that some of these disabilities are inexistent. One of the potential weaknesses of the article is the relatively low response rate from the sample size (about half). Another weakness is that the survey showed which strategies the teachers were willing to implement, rather than the results of the implementation. This material is especially relevant to our product research because it shows that our product would be used especially in classrooms where children had disabilities. The study supports our thesis because the instructor’s willingness to use new methodologies shows there is a need in the market for instructional tools.

Narang, Susheela, and Raj K. Gupta. “THE EFFECT OF MULTIMODAL REMEDIAL TECHNIQUES ON THE SPELLING ABILITY OF LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN.”INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION 29.2 (2014): 84-91. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION. Web. 23 Nov. 2014. <http://www.internationaljournalofspecialeducation.com/>.

The authors are both professors at the University of Panjab in Chandigarh, India. Their thesis is that spelling is closely tied to reading ability and, as mentioned in the previous article, is something that needs to be addressed at an early age. The study uses three methods of instruction, one tactual and visual, another solely visual and the last auditory, visual and vocal. All three activities used flashcards with words and drawings to help the disabled students get a better grasp on the structure of certain vocabulary. Same as in the last study, the audience appears to be both students in the field as well as “special educators, teachers and parents, as in this
study an effort has been made to see the effectiveness of training in very important area, which has a direct bearing upon the education of children.” (Narang & Gupta) The only slant I was able to incur when reading the study was a belief in the legitimacy of these disabilities (which I personally believe in but many discredit). The authors themselves stated the weakness of their study: the small sample size (39 students broken up into groups of threes). The findings of this study support our thesis that visual aids can have a positive impact on children with learning disabilities and their learning. The students gained “increased confidence” and “willingness to perform;”— exactly what we’d like to see from our product. This material was equally relevant as the last in our research for the project because it shows that importance of visual aids in children’s pedagogy.

Burrell, A, Sodan A. C. “Web Interface Navigation Design: Which Style of Navigation-Link Menus Do Users Prefer?” Data Engineering Workshops. 2006, Atlanta, GA. Atlanta, GA: IEEE, 2006. Print.

The authors of this research paper are two computer science professors from the University of Windsor in Canada. Their authority derives from their background as instructors in the computer field. The goal of the research paper was to implement a series of different website navigation designs and test which were the most preferred by a series of participants. Their hypothesis was that “certain navigational styles are better for usability than others” (Burrell, Sodan). They claimed that existing literature at the time made them believe that left-hand side navigation was best, but their findings contradicted this initial statement. It’s also important to note that they didn’t adopt this as their own hypothesis, only acknowledged that this was a previous finding. The intended audience for the paper appears to be students in computer science departments, other instructors, and all website developers. I couldn’t find any bias or slant in the paper other than the hypothesis, which was that certain navigation layouts were better than others. I can postulate that as computer science professors (and possibly developers outside of school) they had some vested interest in proving that certain navigation layouts were preferable, although I couldn’t imagine how. I didn’t find any websites attributed to their name online to confirm or disprove this. The strength of the article is that they had 6 different fully-functioning test sites for the users to try, so they weren’t limited in options. Another strength was a varied age demographic in their sample—they didn’t limit it to younger students or older individuals. The weakness, as in the other research papers, lies in the small sample size (30), as well a requirement for the tested individuals to have a basic knowledge of computers and the Internet. It is possible that the results would have been different had they sampled individuals that didn’t know their way around a website. The research presented in this paper confirms our research regarding design because we, also, decided to place the navigation on the top and left of the screen—the top three results of the study for effectiveness. This paper is very relevant to our project when looking at how we decided to present the information on our website. It’s especially relevant because our product doesn’t just have a website as an auxiliary source, it itself resides on a website. It’s important to note that this study is from 2006, before this type of information became common knowledge to most, if not all, Internet users. It is still relevant, however, because it is good to know that users prefer this based on scientific research, not just habit.

Final

SynesthEasy Annotated Bibliography

Leave a comment

Radvansky, Gabriel A., Bradley S. Gibson, and M. Windy McNerney. “Synesthesia and Memory: Color Congruency, Von Restorff, and False Memory Effects.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 37.1 (2010): 219-29. PsycARTICLES. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.

The authors of this article are Gabriel A. Radvansky, Bradley S. Gibson and M. Windy McNerney. Radvansky is a professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Notre Dame. Gibson is an associate professor in the same department at University of Notre Dame. McNerny was a doctoral student under the direction of Dr. Radvansky at time of publication, but has since earned her PhD in Cognitive Psychology. In this article, the authors aim to show how synesthesia influences memory performance with regards to word lists that produce the experience of synesthesia. The authors claim that synesthetes place more emphasis on item-specific than relational processing. Memory performance is enhanced because this method allows to specifically target a particular memory during recall. In other words, memory retrieval is more organized around distinct features of each item rather than their similarities. The author’s intended audiences are psychologists and other academic professionals.

As the article was in the form of a study conducted by the authors, there was no bias. The authors were objective, providing both arguments and counter-arguments in the article. The article accurately concluded that people with synesthesia recall more words from lists than others, but have difficulty processing words with incongruent colors. The authors also clarify that synesthetes do not have an overall superior memory than others but just for items that elicit photisms. The weaknesses of this article were that it only focused on word lists and not on more complex forms such as sentences and narratives. Thus, it only shows one aspect of memory in synethetes. Moreover, the article only focuses on those 18 years and older. It does not show the effects of such studies on children and senior citizens with synesthesia, who have problems with memory recall. However, the article supports the thesis of our project which is that people with synesthesia have better memory and inducing synesthesia can have positive effects on the performance of an individual. The information presented in this article is very significant because not only does it show the positive effects of synesthesia but also points out some of its problems such as difficulty of synesthetes in recalling words with incongruent colors, that we seek to avoid or improve.

Colizoli, Olympia, Jaap M. J. Murre, and Romke Rouw. “Pseudo-Synesthesia through Reading Books with Colored Letters.” PLoS ONE 7.6 (2012): 1-10. PLoS ONE. PLOS, 27 June 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2014.

The authors of this article are Olympia Colizoli, Jaap M.J. Murre and Romke Rouw. Colizoli is a professor of Brain and Cognition in the Department of Psychology at University of Amsterdam. Murre is also a professor of Brain and Cognition in the faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at University of Amsterdam. Rouw is also a professor of Brain and Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the same university. In this article, the authors aim to examine if it is possible to produce synesthetic-like experience of synesthetes to enhance learning. They also intend to examine the effects of learning synesthetic associations in non-synesthetes. The authors claim that synesthesia is not necessarily an innate, genetically inherited trait. Features of synesthesia are present in early toddlers and synesthesia is also influenced by environmental factors. The intended audiences of the authors are other professors of psychology and academic professionals.

The authors are more inclined towards the benefits that synesthesia provides. There is hardly any discussion on the problems that synesthesia causes such as the difficulty in identifying words with incongruent colors and the challenge to interpret the magnitude of certain numbers. The article is effective in explaining the potential benefits of learning and adapting synesthesia. However, the studies are pretty inconclusive because they don’t observe the long-term effects of induced synesthesia and if it activates the same neural connections as it does in synesthetes. The article supports our thesis as it demonstrates that it is possible to teach people to experience and learn like synesthetes. It is very relevant to our paper because it is shows possible ways of teaching synesthesia that are congruent with our product.

Yaro, Caroline, and Jamie Ward. “Searching for Shereshevskii: What Is Superior about the Memory of Synaesthetes?” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 60.5 (2007): 681-95. Web. 4 Dec. 2014. <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470210600785208>.

Caroline Yaro is a research assistant in the Institute of Child Health at University College London. Jamie Ward is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the same university, whose main research interest includes synaesthesia. In this article, the authors aim to study to what extent a powerful memory is a characteristic of synesthetes and to explain this difference with respect to the cognitive workings of the memory system in the brain. The authors claim that people with synesthesia have better memory for stimuli that induce synesthesia in comparison to stimuli that do not. They also claims that synesthesia usually possess a far superior memory is because of their better memory and perception of color. The intended audiences of the authors are other professors of psychology and academia in the sciences.

The article is objective and displayed no bias as the authors evaluated both the advantages and disadvantages of synesthesia. The strengths of the article are its explanation of how synesthesia operates in the brain and how it heightens memory of synesthetes. They clearly show the potentiality of synesthetic elements being simulated in non-synesthetes for enhanced memory and perception. However, the authors only tested the elements of synesthesia in the synesthetes for better memory but did not test non-synesthetes that were trained with synesthetic elements. This would have allowed a better understanding whether the superior memory in synesthetes in innate or acquired. The information in the article supports our thesis as it verifies that synesthesia results in a superior memory and perception. The article is very relevant for our paper because it provides us with a cognitive understanding of synesthesia to explain the phenomenon.

 

Final

More annotated bibliographies

Leave a comment

Max, Velmans. “PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND VIRTUAL REALITIES.” University of London 45–60. Web.

 

Max Velmans is a professor at the University of London working in the Department of Psychology. Being an expert in psychology, he is well qualified in discussing the neurological effects of virtual reality. Velmans believes that the effects of virtual reality and its experiences far differ from that of physical and even psychological reality. The author’s main audience seems to lean towards students majoring in psychology or any others working in that field. With its above-average terminology and usage of diagrams to explain its arguments, this article is most likely not geared for the average reader.

Being a psychologist, the author may over analyze the differences between the different realities. Although I understand that there may be slight neurological and cognitive differences in the varying experiences, I also think that if a theoretical perfect virtual reality were to exist, the differences would be more negligible than what the author is proposing. Other than that, it tends to be more wrapped up in definitions making the whole article surprisingly neutral as a whole. Perhaps the greatest strength of this article is that it touches upon all five senses. He explains the projections of virtual reality on people through the different senses that are triggered. The article is extremely thorough and does a great job defining the different realities as well as explaining what it truly means to be in a virtual reality. However, it is also very concerned with definitions. While it helps better our understanding of virtual reality, or group will get no opinions, case studies or examples to further illustrate our cause. For the most part, it supports our thesis that virtual reality will give its users a unique experience, but because the author spends so much time defining terminology, the article tends to be quite neutral. Still, this article is very appropriate for our paper because it explores all the different ways something can be a virtual reality. By focusing on the projections working on our senses, the article becomes even more relevant as we are talking about synesthesia.

 

J.D., Sartain. “Virtual Reality Gets Real.” N.p., 24 Sept. 2012. Web.

 

The author, J.D. Sartain, is a simple freelance journalist and therefore is not affiliated with any organization. The author does not have real thesis or stance but simply presents the various forms of virtual reality that already exist. The author’s intended audience is the average user and anyone who wants to find out more about virtual reality technology. The article is supplemented by an easy-to-use slideshow that has images and small paragraphs of text to supplement each picture. The presentation is simple meaning that the author wants his article to be easily accessible.

As I mentioned before, the article takes no real stance on virtual reality. It simply presents facts about the virtual reality technologies that are either in development or have already been released. Being a simple journalist without a psychological or scientific background, I cannot see him swaying the information in any way. The strengths of this article is that is has no bias and that it also presents an easy-to-read list of virtual reality technologies. It gives eleven different examples of devices and programs that utilize virtual reality giving readers a broad understanding of the way science is pursuing this field of study. On the other hand, the author has no scientific background and the article does little to go in depth with this topic. Aside from just referring to the article for examples of technology, it does not add much for our paper. The article does not really support nor negate our thesis. It does, however, still hold relevance as we would obviously want to compare our project with technologies that already exist. With this information we can fine tune our product by looking at what is already available and how our technology can offer something different.

Final, Reflections, Uncategorized

Panache Annotated Bibliography Scarlett 2

Leave a comment

Kidney, Gary, Cummings, Leslie, Boehm, Azalea. “Toward a Quality Assurance Approach  to E-Learning Courses.” International Journal on ELearning 6.1 (2007): 17-30. Print.

http://er.dut.ac.za/bitstream/handle/123456789/60/Kidney_2007_Toward_a_Quality_Assurance_Approach_to_E-Learning_Courses.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Gary Kidney is a professor in academic computing with a well respected career in a number of university. He is currently the Deputy CIO for Academic IT Solutions at Yale University.  All the authors of the article are professors in the field of computing or education and have great authority on the subject of the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to examine previous attempts made by the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) to establish what it meant to produce a ‘quality online e-learning course’ and to create a model to ensure the production of quality online learning resources. The article looks at what makes a quality course and specifically looks into the production process that UHCL employed when designing their courses. In the end the article agrees that UHCL’s methods for designing  quality e-learning courses were, to a certain degree, extremely successful and thought the authors warn that “quality is one of those things that can only be pursued and never attained”, they do conclude that the methods taken by UHCL to create a quality course may serve as a model that could be followed in the future of designing online learning facilities.

This is a scholarly paper and the intended audience are professors or professionals in this field. It is an extremely strong paper in that it goes into great detail about the methods used by UHCL to create a quality course however it is by no means a definitive study of quality e-learning courses. It only describes one institutions attempts at creating an e-learning course and can really only be read as a specific case study and not an overall analysis of the field.

The information provided in the article definitely supports our research paper to a certain extent. The e-learning product we are attempting to create is different from the e-learning course described in this paper however we agree with many of the fundamental principles at the centre of the research in this paper; that e-learning resources should be easy to use and navigate and informative yet interesting for the student.

I think this material is extremely relevant in terms of our paper. Although it is talking about a different kind of e-learning resource it touches on many of the issues we will need to address in our paper and will be a really great tool in guiding our research. The paper includes several tables and models about the process of designing an e-learning course which I think will be vital in the next stages of our products development.

Uncategorized

Annotated Bibliography

Leave a comment

 

Jucks, Regina. And Elisabeth Paus. “What Makes a Word Difficult? Insights into the Mental Representation of Technical Terms.” Metacognition and Learning 7, Jan. 2012: 91–111.

This article is by Regina Jucks and Elisabeth Paus who both contribute to higher academic institutions. While Jucks has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology in Teaching and Education, Paus is senior researcher in clinical medicine at the University of Oslo. Their combined knowledge and specializations make this study not only reliable but also comprehensive and helpful towards uncovering why some words are more difficult than others to understand. Their main thesis states that to understand and grasp a wider vocabulary a broader context of knowledge is required.

Jucks and Paus’ study is intended for academic researchers who could use their findings for their own research or for academic enthusiasts who are interesting in literacy. This study conducted to analyze what makes certain words more difficult to understand gives an in-depth analysis of words origins. The study presents theories about reading comprehension and the monitoring of personal knowledge and how it impacts ones learning process. This article is valuable for its detailed exposition on the origins of people’s difficulty with language and for demonstrating the theories in a detailed recapture of the study conducted to prove the feeling to knowing approach mentioned. Rather than focusing on the positive outcomes of the study, this text is indispensable because of its fair perspective on the results and holistic approach. This study will be especially useful for understanding how people understand words. This text could be easily incorporated into the decision of what types of words to include in the index.

 

Pardieck, Sherrie. C. “Using Visual Literacy to Teach Science Academic Language: Experiences from Three Preservice Teachers.” Action in Teacher Education 36, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 192–210.

This article is by Sherrie Pardieck, a professor at Bradley University specializing in the teaching of reading. Pardieck’s education provides a legitimate source of knowledge that will provide insightful points about how visuals enhance learning. The thesis of this article is that visuals undoubtedly enhance learning and word comprehension significantly.

This article argues that visual literacy is a corner stone of the learning process and significantly improves word comprehension. Pardieck details how visual tools are used to solve problems and help connect cognitive functions for an overall understanding of objects and words in relation to each other. This article projects the helpfulness of using visuals for learning and presents no downsides. There seems to be no bias or slant as the author is a knowledgeable professor with no reason to cover the detriments to visual literacy. There is also considerable supporting evidence for her claims. This article will be especially useful in demonstrating a need for the visual dictionary. The nature of this article suggests it is for academic purposes but the language used makes it accessible for college students. Pardieck’s article legitimizes the purpose of our product while supplying us with background information on the benefits our product will create.

“Millennial Marketing Must Haves.” Forbes. Accessed December 5, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2014/11/20/millennial-marketing-must-haves/.

Josh Rampton, the author of this article, is an entrepreneur who helps start-ups as the president of Adogy marketing agency. Rampton is extremely well recognized as an influential marketing strategist and has spoken at many business conferences; he is also a contributor on Forbes’ website. These credentials make Rampton a very reliable source when writing and gaining information about marketing. Rampton’s thesis is that marketing strategies have drastically changed after the millennial generation in attempt to target Generation Y, which is proving to be challenging.

The intended audiences for this article are those interested in marketing trends, and those who want a fuller understanding of todays marketing climate. This article is valuable for its current analysis of the marketing climate, accessible language and examples, which make the information applicable. While I cannot see a large bias in the article, there could be a more in depth explanation of the specific steps the companies profiled in the article took to redefine their marketing strategies for Generation Y. This article will be especially helpful for writing the marketing strategy for our product. With the examples of marketing strategies from companies dominating their respective markets, we are able to adopt similar practices to ensure an effective strategy.

Final, Reflections, Uncategorized

Panache Annotated Bibliography Scarlett

Leave a comment

Chapman, Cameron. “Website Archives Design: Good Practices and Examples.” Smashing Magazine. Smashing Magazine GmbH. 24 May 2010. Web. 23 November 2014. <http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/24/website-archives-best-practices-and-showcase/>

This is an article written for Smashing Magazine, an extremely popular online magazine offering professional resources and advice to Web developers and Web designers. It was launched in 2006 by Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman. It has a very large audience and over 800,000 Twitter followers. The author of this article, Cameron Chapman, is a professional Web and graphic designer and journalist. She writes for a number of blogs such as Mashable and Smashing and she is the author of The Smashing Idea Book: From Inspiration to Application, a collection of inspirational designs, photos and web site looks.

While often website’s or blogs can be unreliable sources, Smashing magazine is a well established site aimed at professional web designers and people with some experience in the web design field. This article in particular seems aimed at individuals who already run a website and are looking at ways to improve their design and layout.

The article is broken up into three sections, the first examines common layouts for website archives, the second questions whether specific sites actually need archives and the third showcases some website’s with archives that the author thinks are particularly well designed or successful in their goals. The author puts particular emphasis on the fact that the archives should be spacious, concise and easy to use while still informative and encompassing all the information available on the site.

There is definitely a major bias in the article as it is all written from one individuals point of view regarding what she thinks are the most successful web designs. However I still think it is very interesting to read in regards to our project. Our project will include archiving a huge amount of data in a well designed, easy to use way and this article presents a lot of different, well researched examples regarding the different options available for doing this.

Another thing to take into consideration is that this article was written four years ago, as the internet moves so fast it means that much of the information could be outdated. However after reading the article I think some of it is still definitely relevant.

Although this article is biased to the authors personal taste I still think it’s something we should look at during our research. Her experience as a web designer gives her more authority on the issue’s she’s talking about and she draws from so many different websites that you really get a good overview of the different options available for web archiving.