George H. Williams › Comments

"The University of Wisconsin at Madison and Syracuse University, which have both made Kindles available to their students in pilot programs recently, say they won't buy more devices until they're improved. Though most Kindles read text aloud, it's impossible for a blind person to navigate their basic menus because they aren't 'voiced.'" - George H. Williams

"The Stanford Online Accessibility Program has been established to provide guidance to the Stanford Community as they use various online means to share information to their respective constituents. The program has the mandate to assist web designers and online content creators in producing material that is accessible to the greatest audience possible. The program achieves this through the promotion of Universal Accessibility and web standards compliance." - George H. Williams

Intel announces a $1500 device to read printed materials aloud to individuals with visual impairment or learning disabilities - George H. Williams

Electronic textbooks might be the next big thing. But until a few kinks get worked out, schools run the risk of getting sued by using them. Arizona State University (ASU) participated in a trial pilot program that provided textbooks to students via the Kindle DX, which renders electronic books into visual text. The Kindle DX has a text-to-speech function, but there is no audio option for its menus and controls. As a result, it’s inaccessible to people who are blind. ASU student Darrell Shandrow, who is blind, claimed the pilot program violated federal laws against disability discrimination. Even though he wasn’t in the Honors College, he said he had the right to sue because the school’s use of inaccessible technology made him feel unwelcome and offended him. He also claimed he had suffered an economic injury, since the school used his tuition payments to support inaccessible technology. - George H. Williams

"This series of posts is in preparation for a talk I am giving Thursday at the Nebraska Library Association on Accessibility and Usability. Accessibility and usability are hot keywords right now, and usability testing is a hot new money making venture. What one doesn’t often hear is that much of what makes a website usable and accessible is pretty simple, and easy enough to implement if you know how." - George H. Williams

"Book sellers are making the case that people are reading more because of e-books." - George H. Williams

"The publishing community had generally positive views of the device and was relieved that the popular Kindle would have a competitor." - George H. Williams

"Citation Machine helps students and professional researchers to properly credit the information that they use. Its primary goal is to make it easy for student researchers to cite their information sources." - George H. Williams

These reports present findings from current research on how young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. The reports result from research projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its $50 million initiative in digital media and learning. They are published openly online (as well as in print) in order to support broad dissemination and to stimulate further research in the field. - George H. Williams

"Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely existed. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. This white paper summarizes the results of a 3-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, examining young people’s participation in the new media ecology. It represents a condensed version of a longer treatment of the project findings.i The study was motivated by two primary research questions: How are new media be- ing integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?" - George H. Williams

"Since the early 80s digital media have promised more engaged, child-centered learning opportunities. The advent of Internet-enabled digital devices has added a new layer of communication & social networking. While this evolving palette of technologies has demonstrated the ability to capture the attention of young people, the innovative learning outcomes that educators had hoped for are more elusive. There is a growing recognition that kids' passion for digital media has been ignited more by peer group sociability & play than academic learning. This gap between in-school & out-of-school experience represents a gap in children's engagement in learning, a gap in our research & understandings, & a missed opportunity to reenergize public education. This project works to address this gap with a targeted set of ethnographic investigations into three emergent modes of informal learning that young people are practicing using new media technologies: communication, learning, & play." - George H. Williams

"Good web developers go to pains to ensure their sites are standards compliant, work across all browsers and provide solid accessibility for devices like screen readers. Unfortunately, while those are all steps in the right direction, none of them address a quite large subset of problematic users — the color blind." - George H. Williams

"Any Web site that wants to spread its influence far and wide does so more effectively if readers send on their content to other friends. That is, hitting the “share” button." - George H. Williams

"Research based on advances in technology and biology is raising hopes for progress on one of science’s holy grails." - George H. Williams

"A group of students at MIT have just unveiled a new prototype of a braille labelmaker / printer, the 6dot. Though not the first, the MIT group's model is apparently more advanced, easier to use, and cheaper than currently available models." - George H. Williams

"Evidently, in order to get people to be the change, you have to get to them early, when they’re in grade school." - George H. Williams

"Students won't learn anything from another bromide about hard work. Why not teach them how to be more engaged citizens, starting with the war in Afghanistan? " - George H. Williams

"Los Angeles public schools won't be in session next Tuesday when President Obama delivers his speech to the nation's children. Neither will those in the Boston schools. Or the New York City public schools. Or those in Seattle, Buffalo or Eugene (Oregon). It's the Obamatuerism of the day on this one, but it may be indicative of a new theme concerning the Obama administration's managerial and strategic political competence. All presidential teams tend to get high marks during their honeymoons. But the Obama honeymoon has clearly been over since early summer." - George H. Williams

"A draft copy of President Barack Obama's planned September 8 address to America's public school children, tells students that 'If you want to grow up to be like me, you should beg your parents to put you in private school, right now.' Although Obama attended public school in Indonesia early in life, he soon switched to a private Catholic school, and from fifth grade through graduation went to a private college-prep school in Hawaii. His own daughters now attend a private school in Washington D.C.." - George H. Williams

"Is the president's speech part of a sinister plan to create a socialist Obama Youth movement? Hardly. The transcript, released yesterday, reveals a pretty standard homily to educational excellence, and there's no evidence it was ever supposed to be anything else. Even so, there's something grotesquely collectivist about the idea of the president addressing a captive audience of 50 million schoolchildren, hectoring them to turn off the X-Box and hit the books." - George H. Williams

"TeamObama must have loved this one. Once the manic inanity started all they had to do is sit back, prepare an innocuous speech for The One, and let the people scratch their heads wondering what in the hell the Republicans were so upset about! Now the next time the right comes up with an objection to some Obama concept, people who last week might have been on board will stand back and look at the Republicans with a jaundiced eye." - George H. Williams

"O's bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents, but they can't remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors." - George H. Williams

"The furor surrounding President Barack Obama's upcoming address to the nation's schoolchildren is ''just silly,'' his education chief said Sunday, and a conservative senator who led the Education Department in the first Bush administration suggested teachers make it a civics lesson." - George H. Williams

"In a speech that drew fire even before he delivered it, President Barack Obama is telling the nation's schoolchildren he ''expects great things from each of you.'" - George H. Williams

"In the good old days, a president would make a speech and then the opposition would set to feasting on its shortcomings. But that familiar call-and-response has been replaced by the pre-emptive strike. When the Obama administration announced that the president would be giving a speech this week, his opponents quickly jumped in. A Florida Republican party official said the speech would spread his “socialist ideology,” and a teacher in Utah described it as propaganda. The speech? A 20-minute webcast encouraging students to work hard and stay in school." - George H. Williams

"According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, criticism of President Obama’s plans to address the nation’s students, which has bubbled up on conservative radio talk shows and in calls from parents to hundreds of school districts in recent days, has been 'just silly.'" - George H. Williams

President Obama spoke to school students across the nation from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. - George H. Williams

"The president’s back-to-school address was arguably more remarkable for the controversy it occasioned in advance rather than for its content. Some conservatives had worried aloud last week that the president might try to send a left-wing, even socialist, message to impressionable young people. Instead, Mr. Obama’s message contains the kind of advice that presidents of both parties have offered students over the years." - George H. Williams

"President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening." - George H. Williams

"It is ridiculous that the American right on talk radio and the Web are trying to stop children from hearing the president’s education speech because, they say, that it is socialist propaganda." - George H. Williams