Issue Number 09 - August 1999

Web-based teaching materials
Would you like to transform your paper-based teaching materials into Web-based learning? You can make your course notes, handouts, and bibliographies available twenty-four hours a day by putting them onto your Intranet.

This works for business and commerce as well as schools, colleges, and universities. Are you stuck for the time or expertise required? Let us do it for you! We can now transform your materials into interactive teaching and training. Have a look at our services and our client list:

http://www.mantex.co.uk/services/serv-08.htm

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

DTP Journal - 'Design Tutor'
Design Tutor is a new publication which aims to help you improve your DTP productions. Unlike many other design journals, it assumes you are limited to simple tools such as a word-processing package and maybe a page layout program such as PageMaker.

The latest issue features articles on handling photographs, how to use display type, choosing and using colours, the finer details of text spacing and hyphenation, and an extended piece showing the makeover of a newsletter.

Subscriptions: £27 (UK) or £38 (abroad)
Email: info@designtutor.com
Tel: +44 (0)1693 251142

Writing Guides - 'Managing Research'
Many people feel overwhelmed by information when they are engaged on a research project. It's a common problem at all levels. Elizabeth Orna's advice is that we should concentrate on *managing* the process. She deals with the essential questions which should be asked by anybody undertaking a project. 'What am I looking for? Why am I looking for it? How shall I set about the task? Where shall I start looking?' And she answers these questions by showing practical examples and demonstrating how to both define and limit the task. Full details and review article at --

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

PalmPilots - Cheapest prices + Info Site
We did a search on prices for PalmPilots in the UK, and came up with an amazing offer which beats the high street competition by nearly fifty pounds. The Palm V is being offered at only UKP 244.99 + VAT

http://www.expansys.com

Writing Guides - 'Writing at University'
This book sets out to help students develop their academic writing skills at university level. It begins by exploring the problems associated with getting started. That is, how to remove writer's block by the techniques of practice writing, brainstorming, and generating your own questions. The authors explain why writing is difficult, then they discuss the early approaches to producing an assignment. This involves becoming aware of the requirements of the discipline, the subject, and the type of assignment. Full details and review article at --

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

Teaching European Literature and Culture
Teachers using IT in the humanities might be interested in a publication from the Centre for Textual Studies at Oxford University. Articles include a report on the deployment of IT in literature and language teaching, using HTML and the Web, or authoring software such as Toolbook and Macromedia.

A report from Sunderland describes in admirable clarity how a tutor can create Web-based teaching materials from paper-based teaching notes. The virtual seminars project at Oxford offers model Web-based tutorials of increasing levels of complexity, using the First World War poets as study materials.

A project to create publishable scholarly editions of the Spanish novelist Perez Galdos is under way at Sheffield. This will include printed copy text, variants from different versions, electronic text version, galley proofs, indexes, and concordances. By using SGML to mark up the basic text, this allows users to assemble their own versions - with or without the author's changes - and even multiple copy-texts.

Digital Variants at Edinburgh is an archive of contemporary authors' drafts. the article describes how this is being used in a study which combines Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the *process* of writing, as well as stylistic analysis and textual genetics.

There are also some reflections on the possibility of hypertext fiction - a notion which still excites widespread interest (despite the absence of any convincing evidence that it can exist). All these articles emphasise the need for increased levels of training and support within academic departments in order to maximise the effectiveness of IT.

'Teaching European Literature and Culture' Selected Papers from Conference in March 98 ISBN 0-9523301-4-8. UKP 7.50 incl p&p - FREE to UK HE academics who sign up as subscribers to 'Computers & Texts' (also free). Full details at the CTI Centre for Textual Studies

http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext

'Writing the Information Superhighway'
This writing guide concentrates on linking instruction on writing skills with the opportunities offered by digitisation and the Internet. The aim is to offer "a guidebook to help students and teachers working together to use new technologies." The first part offers step-by-step instructions on developing ideas and how to convert observations into arguments. The second part deals with instructions on how to assess your own writing, plus how to write critically and analytically, rather than just descriptively. This is a book which will appeal to students and tutors in those writing workshops which combine literacy and technology. Full details and review article at --

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

'Envisioning Information'
Edward Tufte has published three impressive volumes setting forth his ideas on information design. This second volume deals with 'pictures of nouns', which is his metaphorical way of describing the 'strategies for high-dimensional data, and how to increase information depth on paper and computer'. All his books are beautifully illustrated, and they are now being marketed in the UK at what seem to be cheaper prices than their US equivalents. Full details and review article at --

http://www.mantex.co.uk/reviews/tufte-03.htm