Month: June 2013

Be Nice to Mobile

I’ve been a web developer for many years. Web design has gone through many phases, but by now it seems quite obvious that sites need to be optimized for mobile. Like many people — students included! — I use my phone for intense web browsing and reading.

My current pet peeve is websites that make you click from page to page to read an article. It’s fine for a browser, but NOT for mobile. I don’t understand why these sites don’t have a mobile optimized version.

Screenshot of lifescript.com on an iPhone browser. How to design a site to be unfriendly to mobile!

Screenshot of lifescript.com on an iPhone browser. How to design a site to be unfriendly to mobile!

In one, there are so many ads and extraneous information, besides having to tab from page to page — at least NINE pages — it’s nearly impossible to read the article.

While this doesn’t directly relate to education and technology, it is definitely is something content providers — whether they focus on education or not — need to consider. Any site with content needs to be mobile friendly. It’s just better customer service!

Sugata Mitra Strikes Again

Another fabulous article about Sugata Mitra from The Guardian and his thoughts on education. It is going to be the basis for a much longer blog post — when I have a few minutes to write, which just might be on the plane to ISTE!

To entice you, here’s the first paragraph:

Would a person with good handwriting, spelling and grammar and instant recall of multiplication tables be considered a better candidate for a job than, say, one who knows how to configure a peer-to-peer network of devices, set up an organisation-wide Google calendar and find out where the most reliable sources of venture capital are, I wonder? The former set of skills are taught in schools, the latter are not.

 

Read the Rest. It’s worth it.