The Book Project
written 28 Oct 2001 being revised May 2006
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1 The Book Project
This project is the familiar term student project of producing a book in classic book format.
Book format remains and will remain one of the most important formats for accessing information. There are several reasons for this.
- Readability - books have evolved over 400 years since the invention of the printing press to be highly accessible.
- Stability - books are printed in volume as a stable edition - and constitute a canon of information that is stable and consistent. Information on the web cannot be relied upon to have these qualities.
- Accessibility - Once you have a book in your possession - it is a more accessible document than an equivalent computer-based document.
- Presentation - some things can not be presented easily on the net, for example mathematical equations. Even the printed version of equations is fraught with difficulties. The computer screen is not good at presenting lots of detail, for instance maps and detailed artwork are better in printed form.
Detailed images such as technical designs and architectural drawings do not convey well on the computer screen unless you have access to advanced graphics processors and monitors.
It is these qualities that the student is working with in completing a book format student term project. But the Web is one of many possible information sources and for one particular term project it may be possible to require that all information be sourced over the web. Topics chosen for such a ''limited sourcing'' project should be carefully selected to ensure that the possible quality of the result is not impaired by such a restriction but it could be a specifically web oriented project such as
- What are the most web literate schools in New Zealand?
- How do New Zealand School Webpages compare with those of other countries?
- What kind of content do Schools publish in their webpages?
Marking - higher grades should be reserved for the following qualities:
- Original content - photography, artwork and textual content, layout and design content.
- Handwriting - of good quality or design
- Contents Page
- Index
- Page Layout - good quality, use of layout techniques where appropriate such as diagrams, bullet lists, tables.
These are all qualities that are important in all forms of information presentation, including computer-based documents. (Preparing a quality book on a computer requires a large learning curve and is appropriate only for Y12-13 students with special interests in this process, such as producing the School Annual.)
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