The Generational Curriculum Digital Library"How do we move around in an information world that is too big to see all? An in depth report by G7 member Quincy Tan"
Instructions for Reports G7, 409b, Fall 1997
Table of Contents
- Getting to Know the Generational Curriculum
- History of the Generational Curriculum
- The Virtual Book in Cyberspace
- My Proposal for Mining the Generational Curriculum
- Conclusion and Recommendations
Getting to Know the Generational Curriculum
"Understanding a frame of the Big Picture"Comments on Edward Sugimoto's Report 4 (G4b)
"Creating an index for this page might be a good idea to provide links to all sites (including those links from images) and perhaps, see them in some sort of order (e.g. alphabetical). Indexes are an excellent way to get organized in terms of the page creator. "
Apparently Dr. James has already taken this idea into consideration. Now in G7, the entire web site seems to have an index for every topic. The only problem now, seems to be the multitude of these indexes. There are so many, that it's confusing to remember which index is for what topic.
"What a CGI Map does, is it takes an image (created off line) and converts it so that each area on the image is a hot link that usually represents the image or image text that lies directly below it. How this does this is it designates specific coordinates to each little area on the image as a URL and when clicked, it takes that information, processes it, and does the appropriate page change."
Amazing how technology and the Internet has developed in such a short time, as the latest HTML (3.2 and 4.0) can now support web bots so that CGI scripting is no longer needed for image maps.
Comments on Travis Abe's Report 4 (G4b)
" I HATE TOUR GUIDES!!! Yeah, it's cute and stuff, but as a frequent web surfer, I would almost NEVER EVER use a tour guide. I don't know. I think it would make me feel dumb or remedial or something. I recently asked my friends who frequent the web and they too think it is a BAD idea. The only thing I would use a tour guide for is a graphic intensive site like an art gallery, a geographic tour, or a females of the world tour."
I agree with Travis' comments on the futility of using tour guides to help mine the generational curriculum. A tour guide is an idea that may appeal to the novice computer user. Others may view tour guides as a nuisance and insulting our intelligence. The concept of clicking on words to take me someplace else isn't hard to grasp. We don't need ANOTHER person telling us where to go and what to do.
I was unsuccessful in finding any generational curriculum files on the Home Pages of G6, 459 students. If I had found them, I'm sure they would have saved me some time. Reading their summaries instead of spending countless hours sifting through the entire web site would have saved me a lot of time.
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History of the Generational Curriculum
"How does the past affect the future?"A project that originally started in 1975, The Generational Curriculum Archives has gone from paper bound reports to an ever growing online database. Each generation is separated by directories and any person who visits this website can see how the archive has grown through the years.
I think this is a fantastic idea, and to see that this idea has been in Dr. James mind for so long is amazing. Recently, publishing information and assignments online have become popular. I'm sure Dr. James is having a good laugh and saying to himself "Ha! I thought of that long ago!" The generational curriculum is a great way to demonstrate not only information regarding cyber-psychology, but its design is a perfect example of how technology advances in such a short time.
The most notable element to me, is the curriculum's design. If you look through each generation, you can see how the quality and design of the web pages improve every semester. Earlier generations had little content and comments, very plain design and poor navigation. But from early as G4's Edward Sugimoto's home page, excellent design, and great content stands out. Hopefully the progress will continue to grow, with future generations after G7.
I'm honored to be part of the generational curriculum. It's great to take part in something that seems so advanced now, yet in just a few years, will become commonplace. I consider myself, my fellow G7 members, as well as previous generations and Dr. James, pioneers of this fantastic concept. This will without a doubt replace the idea of turning in assignments on sheets of paper.
I envision this curriculum to grow as the years go by. Eventually, a better way to navigate through the other generations will be necessary. The indexes that exist now are too confusing, the tour guide idea stinks, and the search engine is only good for visitors that already know what they are looking for. A graphical interface would perhaps be better. Maybe a image map that has a tree hierarchy that expands each time you delve deeper into the curriculum.
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The Virtual Book in Cyberspace
"Building your dream house on the World Wide Web"a) I can relate to Dr. James experiences, as documented in Social Psychological Principles of Home Page Architecture. After putting countless hours into the creation of my homepage on the CSS server, I wanted to show it off to my parents. Unfortunately they did not seem to appreciate how much time it took to make something that just had words and a few images on it.
"But mom! Try clicking here! Look, it takes you someplace else... if you click on ESPN here on my bookmarks.html, it will take me to their website. Isn't that cool?" You can imagine how excited she was.
It seems like Dr. James' students and other web designers are theo only people capable of appreciating all the time and effort we spend at the computer, working on our home away from home.
b) I believe a "virtual book" is similar to a book that you can find in a library or bookstore. You can choose what you want to read on the Internet, you can stop whenever you want to or take a break. If you want to skip to the next chapter or to the end, just scroll down to the end of the browser or click on the last link. Clicking on a link is just like flipping to the next page in a book.
Fortunately or unfortunately, not everybody will see the same thing when they read a "virtual book" Not everyone has the same monitor size or display. Not everyone uses the same system software, and we don't all use the same web browser. What I see on my computer won't necessarily be the same that Dr. James or any of my classmates will see.
Unlike the paper published books, anyone can publish a "virtual book." All they need to know is a little bit about computers, have access to a server and upload their files! Having your ideas and information available to everyone in the world has never been so easy. Instead of having to spend 35 dollars for a famous person's autobiography, I could type in their URL and learn about what they eat for breakfast at little or no charge.
c) There can be a few problems with hypertext navigation, but as the saying goes, "practice makes perfect." Many people know how to go to a library and search for a book that they are looking for. On the Internet, it's very similar. People will just have to learn how to use "search engines" and they can find anything and anyone that they are looking for. If a website is poorly designed or their is no navigation table like Dr. James has taught us to make, a visitor can easily get lost. Making sure you have some kind of navigation table or index will reduce the probability of your visitor getting lost. The more complex a webpage gets, the more important it is to have good navigation. The key to great web sites is good NAVIGATION.
d) Comments on G5 409b Spring 97 Reports
Comments on Scott Chang's Report 2 On Web Architecture
"Mr. Glover provides tips and information to people who are creating web pages. He has researched different web sites and gathered feedback from internet users. After he compiled all of the data, he has produced two areas which have information on improving your web site. One section is called the Top ten ways to tell if you have a Sucky Home Page. "
After reading this I immediately went to Mr. Glover's webpage. Scott's inclusion of the link was a good idea. I think that in an effort to learn more about web architecture, Dr. James should require as part of this report that we write our own "top ten" of what's good and what's bad in web design. Overall I liked what Scott wrote, we have the same ideas except for his comment about pets. There is such a thing as too much, and putting several images of your pet dog or whatever is a bit much, especially if they are all large files.
Comments on erintana's Report 2 on Web Architecture
My first problem with this person's report is the absence of her name in the title field or in the header. My guess is that her name is "Erin" but I could be wrong. The next problem I have is with her contrasting background color with her pink text. Although the lavender background is soothing to the eyes, the pink colored text is gaudy looking. Apart from the design though, "Erin's" content was fantastic. She had a lot to say and said it well.
"Lost, nervous, and clueless. These are a few words that describe my starting point in web design. During my lifetime, I've had only two major experiences with computers. The first would be at my working place where I would do some light data entry. My second experience would be typing out my papers on Microsoft Word. As a new web designer, I started at zero: absolutely zero knowledge about web pages."I think all of us were lost and nervous when we first learned how to make web pages. I know that a lot of our classmates from G7 dropped this class because the whole concept about learning how to publish a web page seemed so intimidating. I think that if we spend more time together as a class in the labs, we'd all understand HTML and it's actual ease of getting things uploaded and on to the Internet.
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My Proposal for Mining the Generational Curriculum
"How am I going to find that needle in the haystack?"a) As of October 20, 1997 the generational curriculum has three problems in my mind. 1) Security- how safe are our files on the CSS server? 2) Uniformity- each generation and each student that takes this course has his or her own style, but do you run the risk of a mad house when you give total freedom in web creativity? 3) Navigation- as the generations continue to grow, the curriculum will become a more difficult site to sift through. Is there a better way to organize it?
As the library continues to grow, how secure are the previous generations works? So many students have dropped this class. What if one day they decide to delete all of our files? Sure we have a back up our files as Dr. James has told us, but what happens if we aren't there to restore the files? Is it so easy lose an entire generation's work in less than five minutes? Anyone with the password to our generation could delete our work. I think it's more effective if each student has their own password. Then not all students are at risk if one password is cracked.
Uniformity. It's something that people in America look down on. Individualism, the freedom to express yourself, etc etc. But as the curriculum grows larger, how are all the generations linked? The content is similar but in design, it's a zoo. Different colored backgrounds, font colors, images and navigation tables. It would be better if there was one template and all generations were required to follow the style.
Finally, the biggest potential problem of all: navigation. As the curriculum continues to grow, the current method of navigation will become useless. The curriculum is already so big and confusing to navigate through. Despite the table of contents or index on each page, it's very difficult to know where I am and what I'm doing at the page I'm on. I know that Dr. James doesn't seem to like frames on a webpage, but perhaps this may be the only solution. The navigation of each generation of each user can remain on the left pane while the content changes in the right pane.
b) The main reason for the failure of WIB (World Idea Bank) is because of it's lack of exposure. Because it's a very little known site, only the friends and family of the people who designed it knew that it existed. Therefore, the responses and feedback were biased.
c) A solution to the WIB problem and the need for added exposure for the curriculum as a whole could be using a "submit spider" the website could be added to all of the most widely used search engine in just hours. Advertisements on newsgroups is also a great way to let people know about the website. Of course, word of mouth is also good. A great topic for conversation. =)
d) Implementing a java applet called TreeBrowse, I have designed a potential solution to navigating the ever growing archives. The applet loads fast but for the net surfers without Java capable browsers, the applet will not load. Although it has been tested on a Macintosh computer, the design is much nicer and easier to use under a Windows 95 envirionment. You can click here to test out my suggested solution.
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Conclusion and Recommendations
"My final minute of fame"a) Comments on other G7 Students' Report 1
Earl Cachola's Report on The Generational Curriculum
As usual, Earl's webpage has a nice style, good navigation and a great background. However, I think that he could have spent more time on a better solution to mining the curriculum. I'm sure he will work to improve on the content as the days continue.
Alfred Basioa's Report on The Generational Curriuculm
I was really impressed with Alfred's content. He seemed to read my mind about having a top ten list. I found myself agreeing on most of his advice. Procrastination is the root of all evil, it wouldn't be wise to speak in class while Dr. James is talking, and most important of all, have FUN! Alfred' report 1 is the best I've read so far. His suggestions for making the curriculum made more public are also good. I didn't think about the newspaper but I guess that would be a good source for advertisement. Maybe if you can get a news reporter, a feature story on one of the local news channels could report on this website.
b) Before I step off the podium, my advice to G8 students and future generations is this: don't get stressed over the idea of creating a web page. By the time you take this class, designing a web page will be as easy as creating a word processor document. Rather than spending all your time worrying about HOW to make the page, focus on WHAT you will write about. The content is what is more important.
Dr. James, I truly believe you are a genius for creating this curriculum. Unfortunately not everyone on this campus will learn about what you are generating here. I encourage you to advertise your courses, encourage talk amongst the other students, so that students know about your curriculum. Instead of focusing it solely toward "psychology" majors, opening it up to a broader range of students will get varied responses and most definitely varied opinions. This can only help the Generational Curriculum in its growth. Best of luck to you and your future generations.
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