[LINK] [Oz-teachers] Advice for very large screens

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi Tom and all,

Thanks for your considered response, Tom. 

You write in part.. "If you design your web pages without clutter, with
web standards and accessibility guidelines, they they will work on hand 
held devices, and interactive white boards, as well as ordinary desktop 
screens."

Yes, agreed. A web page is a webpage and will run on any browser. And it
should make no difference if it's a smart phone or a 3 metre white board.

However I'm wondering about more than simply 'works'. In our P-10 school
there is an IWB in every classroom, the staffroom and two in the library. 
And, all the kids have notebook computers. Yes, every kid, and quick net.

But, classroom IWB-use by teachers certainly hasn't been worth the spend.

Metinks it may be a lack of specific IWB resources. Which may be because
there are so many ways to use an IWB in our classroom. Personally one of
my favourites is to have small-group student IWB presentations. Stunning.

But teaching methods vary. And although many classrooms do have IWBs now
one has yet to see very much research into actually using them .. or not.

I know Chris Betcher has written an excellent book on IWBs in classrooms
but, otherwise this whole IWB-education-research field would appear very
sparse. And yet teacher IWB skills seems a vital development field to me. 

We have IWBs, they can be magic. So why isn't there heaps of research to
assist in producing our own, tailored, IWB pages, for our Aussie classes?
 
Cheers,
Stephen

> stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>
> > ... 'pages' to be read ... on large screen television sets ...
> 
> While teaching web design a few years ago it struck me that design for
> small screens on mobile phones and very large screens for group display
> were similar. This I suspect is a result of the limitations of human
> vision and the size of hands and arms, not to do with the screen 
> technology: <http://www.tomw.net.au/2009/wd/>.
> 
> You can try it for yourself: Stand in front of a large screen display 
at 
> normal viewing distance. Hold up an iPhone and notice the two screens 
> appear to be about the same size.
> 
> > It strikes me that presentations on *Interactive White Boards* call 
for
> > much the same considerations as 'pages' on a 10' interactive 
television?
> 
> Yes, advances in web standards, such as HTML 5 and new versions of CSS, 
> are making it much easier to build a web page which automatically
> adjust to small and large screens.
> 
> If you design your web pages without clutter, with web standards and 
> accessibility guidelines, they they will work on hand held devices and 
> interactive white boards, as well as ordinary desktop screens.
> 
> > Here's Google's advice below for writing for ten foot screens ...
> > 
> > * The sizes of all the fonts and buttons are increased ...
> 
> You should not need to increase the size of the font, as this should be 
> set to be large enough to be read at normal viewing distance for the 
> device by default. Buttons can them be sized relative to the font.
> 
> But, for small and large group screens you need to take into account 
> that they can hold less information. They way I think of it, the font 
> stays the same size, but the screen gets smaller.
> 
> > * The "selected" item or item with the mouse over it is clearlyor lo
> >   highlighted ...
> 
> Usually web appliance gadgets have a more visible indication of mouse
> over and section than a normal web browser. Typically these devices 
will 
> highlight text in links, rather than just underlining it.
> 
> > * The user can navigate intuitively around the page, using
> >   up/down/left/right motions
> 
> Using Icons as push buttons can help. If these are made about 4 ems 
> square (that is four times the size of the letter "m"), they are big 
> enough to be pressed with a finger on a smart phone touch screen. On a 
> screen with cursor control you can arrow between the buttons.
> 
> > * Additional padding has been added between all elements on the page
> 
> Padding can be proportional to the font, rather than a
> fixed pixel size. Also it can be increased using CSS when a small or 
> large screen is in use.
> 
> > Viewers sit relatively far from their screens. This distance makes a 
> > traditional web page harder to read, cluttered...
> 
> A useful by-product of designs for large screens and smart screens 
might 
> be less cluttered design generally.
> 
> ps: I discussed the issue of screen size to Mr Lyndon da Cruz, 
> Moorfields Eye Hospital, London 
> <http://www.thelondonproject.org/AboutUs/?id=370>.
> He said he tells his patients that an iPhone screen close up is the 
size 
> of a large screen TV across the room. He mentioned the issue of some 
> Apps on the iPad which do not resize correctly.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
> Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
> Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra
> 
> 
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