The Magwitch View

Claro Read Pro I installed Claro Read Pro yesterday. I have a selfish interest in this programme as one of my family has dyslexia, and I have witnessed him struggle desperately to make sense particularly of written maths questions. He's a bright boy and yet words become jumbled and meanings lost. In contrast though, if he sees and hears something on YouTube he grasps the meaning immediately. His use of vocabulary is some years ahead of his school bracket. Still he struggles with the written down word. We have tried various apps on his ipad, but these seem to be either (a) short lived, or (b) cease to work following one of the many updates. We are also aware that schools tend to run on Microsoft based programmes and these are not always compatible with an ipad. Turning to Claro Pro Read, this is a simple enough programme and it looks a little basic to be honest. I think though that the simplicity is likely a help to any individual with dyslexia. The ...

Twitter I am by any definition a bit of a stick in the mud. Yet here I am propelled in to the world of blogs and most recently Twitter, in to forms of media that in private I would steer far away from. On a personal level I am not interested in the musings of other people, and from what I can see, a lot of what is published generally on Twitter, to me, is absolute nonsense. There are an increasing number of reports and analysis that comment on how social media is bad for us, that is, the whole human race as opposed to just sticks in the mud. A 2019 article in the Washington Post https://wapo.st/3219DnX headlined "Twitter is eroding your intelligence" explains it all. Is it then counterintuitive to ask students to sign up to Twitter as part of their course? That is perhaps for another day. In any case, the Washington Post article cites Italian research which reached the conclusion that "blogs and social networking sites actively impair performance, rather than sim...

Flammia 1993 So I finally got round to reading this properly and appreciate that the article itself is quite old and things may have moved on. The article provides a useful structure, and it emphasises the importance of good quality questions and good quality research. It is a little prescriptive but nonetheless very useful and informative. I was struck by a few points. When conducting a face to face (FtF) interview, the interviewee has little time to consider their response.  As such, the interviewer should be conscious that the initial response may not be as full or as accurate as the interviewee would ultimately like. If accuracy is desired then the interviewer should be prepared to clarify, or even seek later clarification. As such, an end of interview comment might be "If I need to clarify a point, do you mind if I call you, and if you want to add soemthing please contact me". A FtF interview allows the interviewer to observe social cues. How these are...

Neilsen Norman Group Some months ago I read an article by Jakob Neilsen concerning usability studies, which lead me to research him and to arrive at the website for the Neilsen Norman Group. The website and indeed the company deal with all things UX and more, and for any student of technical communications it is a must see. The website is a mass of thought provoking articles, even when they may not be directly related to your primary area of study. So today, for example, the website listed an article concerning dark mode vs light mode, and another on "how users decide where to go next". The articles are usually no more than a 10 minute read and are properly referenced and illustrated. There is also a newsletter, which includes the latest articles, that can be subscribed to and which arrives every week or two, without any associated sales pitch. That in itself is refreshing. Why is this such a good resource. Even a scan of the article titles generates a checklist of f...

In the beginning... My experience of blogging has so far been confined to the movie Julie & Julia, the movie is good and the books on which it is based are excellent. I am no expert at blogging therefore, but I'm not bad at beef bourguignon. In the movie of course, the creation of the blog site is accomplished in a flash, that isn't the case for those not used to this form of communication. This makes me think of Krug, who talks a great deal of sense - make it easy and accessible. It also makes me think of audience. Who is the blog targetted at, and what information is it trying to project? In Julie & Julia, the audience was wide open and benign, at least at the beginning. The blog became very popular and lead to a book and a movie. It is interesting though that Julia Child, the serious cook, is said not to have liked it.