John Olinda
Got asked to do a technology presentation for a teachers' conference. Not sure if I should just spend the entire time ranting about terrible passwords or debunking the notion that kids are good with computers.
🏒 Lucian Marin
Maybe present Sublevel as a solution for collaborative problem solving: sublevel.net/re/10887
The_markness
I definitely think there is a place for sublevel in education. I write about educational technology and mentioned sublevel amongst others here: markawilliams.with.... I'd be interested in what you end up presenting @jackivan88
John Olinda
Ended up doing a presentation on Slack. It wasn't as successful as I had hoped though, a combination of poor promotion on the conference's side and poor execution on mine.
🏒 Lucian Marin
That's the difference between Sublevel and other services: it allows only one reply. People who are confronted with one choice, they usually tend up to make the best of it. Slack/IRC/chat services will push students to waste time, instead of finding innovative ways to make the best of the only answer available to them.
John Olinda
Well, I should clarify that although the presentation didn't go well, Slack has been tremendously successful with students and teachers.
Martijn
How about telling them to stop asking students to use Times New Roman at 12pt?
John Olinda
Sans serif all the things!
Martijn
Unless it is meant to be printed. I can't imagine reading through a long text set in a sans-serif there. Recently started using Helvetica Neue in my feed reader instead of a slab-serif and haven't made up my mind about that yet either. Teachers & students could switch to e.g. Constantia, a serif font designed for both screen and print and available from Microsoft.
Martijn
Yeah, that's what comicneue.com is for, right? Teachers.
Eric
Neat link! I should say I don't mind Comic Sans, I just got tired of it being used for my History work. I still got stacks of Comic Sans typed docs on the very serious nature of Puritanism in 16th Century England.
John Olinda
Well, unfortunately it is just a natural extension of the "silly" design so prevalent in educational software and settings. It's possibly entertaining to younger kids, but it never seems to stop. It's so hard to find educational resources that are well-designed and also educationally sound.