EduTainment Titles

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Mon Jun 22 12:45:11 EDT 2009


Sivakatirswami wrote:
> Au contraire... , I already have a number of titles, for free, on the 
> internet. If you look at access logs, I see a lot of traffic to these 
> pages, but not a lot of downloads.
> 
> http://himalayanacademy.com/resources/children/dws_youth/
> http://himalayanacademy.com/resources/children/yamas_niyamas/
> 
> (I think if you try these you will have to agree I'm not into super 
> technology... the one complaint being they lack sound...)
> 
> Meanwhile:
> 
> PDF's here:
> 
> http://himalayanacademy.com/resources/children/SaivaHR_course/
> 
> on the other hand are downloaded at the rate of 2000-3000 a month 
> consistently year after year.

There may be other factors at play with these download rates than just 
the formats.

For example, on the download page for the apps you have a form, but 
there is no form on the page with the PDF links.  If you read the app 
page carefully you'll understand that the download doesn't actually 
require the user to fill in the form, but for someone in a hurry (read, 
"Most folks in the 'net" <g>) that may not be clear.  In contrast, the 
links to the PDFs occur on a page with no form at all, just a simple 
inviting link.  So just moving the form to a separate page and making 
the free download more readily understood as a one-click operation may 
boost downloads there significantly.

But also, the nature of the apps is more about reading than doing.  The 
"doing" in those apps is limited pretty much to navigation, with the 
core content being primarily textual (though there are some very nice 
supporting graphics and animations).  The text is the real value to 
those apps (very good reminders for all of us about "right 
mindfullness"; I really enjoyed reading them), but being textual they 
lend themselves equally well to being in a PDF or even in HTML.

On the other extreme we have apps like Dynamic Digital Maps and Reactor Lab:
<http://ddm.geo.umass.edu/>
<http://reactorlab.net/>

These apps are richly dependent on "doing", with any textual elements 
merely supporting the intensely interactive nature of these apps.

Both of these were made with Rev, and both have an educational focus but 
each would be very difficult to build as web pages.  And IIRC they also 
provide offline modes, which are generally not supported with purely 
browser-based apps (no control over local file I/O).

So when comparing adoption rates of apps to documents like PDF, I 
believe there's a lot more going on than just the format.

Like McLuhan told us, "The medium is the message":

In deliver educational materials, it adds value to deliver it in an 
application to the degree that the material is dependent on interaction.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com




More information about the use-livecode mailing list