Issue Number 03 - February 1999

Computer-based learning program

ENGLISH LANGUAGE 2.0: An Introduction to Basics

This is the latest version of a computer-based learning program which covers all the elements of English Language in its spoken and written form. There is a definition and illustration of each topic, examples are shown in context, and there are interactive exercises to check that you have understood the issue.

The program was developed at Manchester University, and has gone through a major interface revamp for its second issue. Technical spec is a light requirement of 3MB disk space and 4MB memory, and it comes with its own off-line HTML reader. Full details and demo version available at --

http://www.mantex.co.uk/software.htm

A Quick Quiz
How's your knowledge of English Language? Can you answer these three questions? [Check your results at the bottom of the page.]

1. Is there a verb in this question?

2. How many adjectives in the following?

"I suppose he's a remarkably clever man?"

3. How many mistakes in the following?

"Its not suprising that peoples' inability to spell 'sieze' are so widespread".

Free Web Design Tutorial
Last month we featured Joe Barta's popular web design tutorial package. For this issue, we want to introduce you to something different - but just as good. The Center for Advanced Instructional Media at Yale University had the problem of advising their students how to deal with HTML design. Because there wasn't much around at the time, they wrote their own tutorial.

They deal very sensibly with issues which many design manuals ignore - such as the fact that you can lay out spiffy-looking pages your own screen, but they might look like a dog's breakfast when viewed on an old 14-inch monitor and low resolution. The whole tutorial used to be downloadable in a single zipped file, but it was in Adobe's PDF format, the files were very big, and it was a loooooooong download. So now they're publishing it in book form. It's a step back into what Net-guru Nicholas Negroponte calls "ink squeezed onto dead trees", but if you've seen the pages, you'll know that it's likely to be an elegant production.

We'll feature a review when it appears - right here. For those who can't wait, the tutorial is at --

http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/

Web site design - Review article
David Siegel has revealed the secrets of his success as a web site designer in the new edition of his best-seller, Creating Killer Web Sites. His emphasis is on the principles of good layout and typography. The success of the first edition rested on the tips and tricks he demonstrated for getting round the limitations of browsers and HTML code. In this updated version he reveals a lot more secrets of the trade, as well as his predictions for the fifth and sixth generation browsers which are on their way soon. For a review-article and full details, go to

http://www.mantex.co.uk/reviews/siegel.htm

HTML design - update URL
We featured Joe Barta's excellent HTML tutorial in the last edition of the newsletter. It's available at many sites, but in case of any problems here's Joe's own URL:

http://junior.apk.net/~jbarta/tutor/makapage/index.html

Writing with a Computer
How do we use a computer - or to put it more accurately, a word-processor - for improving our writing skills? There's a new book available from Allyn & Bacon which covers everything from planning, drafting, and revising documents, via grammar-checkers and layout, through to using your Internet connection as a research tool. It's aimed at the education market, but would be useful for anybody who wants to harness digital technology to the enhancement of their writing skills. It also has a good section on locating on-line writing support, and there's a particularly useful set of URLs listing a group of publications which will help you to evaluate on-line documentation. Nice touch that! For a review-article and full details, go to --

http://www.mantex.co.uk/reviews/palm.htm

Free research newsletter
Tara Calishain is the author of several computer books which deal with using the Net as a research tool. She's also a lively contributor to the computer-books authors list at Studio B [see newsletter for December 98].

Each week Tara publishes a brief, punchy [and free] newsletter called ResearchBuzz which lists useful Web sites, gives the latest news on the major search engines, lists new research sources, and directories such as Yahoo. Subscription instructions are available at:

http://www.coppersky.com/ongir/news/

Open Learning Newsletter
OLS NEWS is a printed newsletter specialising in open learning in all its forms. That is, distance learning, continuing education via tutored courses, plus print-based and on-line materials.

It's a compilation of descriptive articles, practical reports, book and software reviews, conference soundings, and URL updates. I was particularly impressed with the geographic range of the contents. Although it is UK-based, Russia, France, Belgium, Australia, and Slovenia, as well as various parts of the US are represented.

There's also a healthy mix of commercial and academic representation. The reports from successful consortia might act as a spur and a confidence booster to those poor souls struggling to push initiatives in the educational world.

One item looked particularly interesting - new software for converting teaching materials into audiographic form for publication on the Web. We'll download this and report back in a future issue.

This one is not free. Subscriptions are UKP 27.00 for four issues a year [$AUS 80.00 and $US 63.00]. Details at --

Email: OLS-News@zoo.co.uk

OLS News, 11 Malford Grove, Gilwern,
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, NP7 0RN, UK

Editing - again!
Readers interested in the discussion about the differences between editing on screen and on paper might be interested in an article published by James Hartley in the British Journal of Educational Technology, entitled 'The role of printouts in editing text' (see Vol. 29,3,277-282,1998).

Professor Hartley asked the authors of reviews for the journal to send him their initial drafts (edited on screen) and their later revisions (edited on printouts). He then compared different versions using (i) readability formulae, and (ii) readers' judgements of which versions were written first or last.

The results suggested that there were few detectable differences between pairs of reviews using these measures - even though many respondents [including me] felt sure they could spot the differences. For copies of the article contact --

j.hartley@psy.keele.ac.uk

Year 2000 Crisis - a note

Message from: Rome
January 18, 1 B.C.

Dear Cassius,

Are you still working on the Y zero K problem? This change from BC to AD is giving us a lot of headaches and we haven't much time left. I don't know how people will cope with working the wrong way around. Having been working happily downwards forever, now we have to start thinking upwards. You would think that someone would have thought of it earlier and not left it to us to sort out at the last minute.

I spoke to Caesar the other evening. He was livid that Julius hadn't done something about it when he was sorting out the calendar. He said he could see why Brutus turned nasty. We called in the consulting astrologers, but they simply said that continuing downwards using minus BC won't work. As usual, the consultants charged a fortune for doing nothing useful. As for myself, I just can't see the sand in an hourglass flowing upwards.

We have heard that there are 3 wise guys in the east working on the problem, but unfortunately they won't arrive till it's all over. Some say the world will cease to exist at the moment of transition. Anyway we are continuing to work on this blasted Y zero K problem and I will send you a parchment if anything further develops.

Plutonius.

Best Internet provider of the month

Every month, Internet Monthly magazine runs tests on the services provided by every Internet Service provider in the UK. The results are listed in two categories:

best over the last month

best over the last six months