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On being an academic, a farmer, a scientist, an educator, a mom, ...

My name is Katrin Becker. This is my blog.
It is about Computer Science, Educational Technology, Digital Games, Academia, and sometimes Rural Life and other notions.
Comments are welcome but will be edited as necessary to maintain relevance.

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”
by Ayn Rand

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Fail: How NOT to do user experience design (II)

February 8th, 2010 by Katrin Becker

Perhaps I should be more forgiving of people who really don’t know how to use “technology” yet. I try very hard to do that – when it is someone like my mother who’s never really had any need or use for it besides being able to surf the web and communicate with family.

BUT, we are rapidly getting to the point where NOT having access to the web and not having an email account is equivalent to living in North America in the 60’s and not having a telephone. Come ON.

I can also understand when someone who doesn’t really have any need to use the system in ways other than the ones described for my mom doesn’t know how to create and publish stuff online. Why should they? (Although I could also argue that this being the modern world and all, being able to do that is roughly equivalent to being able to write a traditional letter 40 years ago. So, get with it!)

These are mere annoyances. The ones that REALLY burn my toast are academics and administrative assistants who work in universities and colleges. I mean really. This isn’t rocket science. It’s been decades now since we started to be able to scan things, create and edit e-documents, and send emails (it’s been possible to do email at universities way longer than it’s been possible for the general public).

Here are a few items that top my list of bugs:

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Posted in Academia, Doing it Right on the Web, Fail, Higher Education | No Comments »

Fun with Google Docs (Part 1)

January 31st, 2010 by Katrin Becker

OK, this is just too much fun.

It also has the potential to shift how we work together in some interesting and fundamental ways.

This is the first of a multi-part post outlining my experiences with Google Docs in the classroom and in my own academic publishing.

In late November, a colleague (Thanks Rod!) said he used Google docs for providing feedback to his students who were using Mahara to create learning portfolios. Initially I just assumed it was something like “OpenOfficeOnline” and when I first tried it out, I found it to be fairly limited as a word processor. Oh well, I thought. I don’t really like the idea of leaving my stuff “out there” anyways. I had used it to upload my CV, which it did without error but the formatting got messed up and, since I already maintain both a word version AND an online version of my CV I didn’t really fancy maintaining yet another. I kind of lost interest. But luckily, the story doesn’t end here.

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Posted in Academia, Distance Education, Doing it Right on the Web, Education, Educational Technology, General, Higher Education, Teaching & Learning | No Comments »

Are You a FaceBook Tramp?

January 21st, 2010 by Katrin Becker

I’m sure there are people who study this and publish about it. To them: forgive me. I am not really interested enough to track down and read the literature. I mean no offense. It’s just that I’ve noticed a few things that I find amusing…

I’ve been on FaceBook for about 2 1/2 years and it’s fun*. I catch wind of lots of interesting articles and news items through FB. I’ve noticed though that most people seem to approach FaceBook “friendship” in one of a few ways:

They only friend actual RL friends and family.
1. These are often the people who reveal a little TOO much. Perhaps they think FB is a private space. That anyone can see.
They friend colleagues and professional contacts.
- These people are the ones who tend to share news of a global or SIG nature. I hear about lots of interesting things from these folks.
- They also tend not to say much about their personal lives.
They friend ANYONE.
- I call these FaceBook Tramps.

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Posted in Doing it Right on the Web, Entertainment, General | No Comments »

Fail: How NOT to do user experience design (I)

October 16th, 2009 by Katrin Becker

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really weary of dopey interface design decisions on the web. I’ve got 30 years in CS – I have a pretty good idea about what’s possible, what’s easy, and what’s hard. DO HCI people not pay attention? Here’s an example (from Scoop). Click on the “click to enlarge” link (or the picture itself). Does that look bigger to you? What’s wrong with these people?