Attention Economy – September 19, 2011

The story of Rose, a deaf girl in Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck, is told primarily in pictures. “We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life,” Selznick explains.[Source: NPR]

• ‘Wonderstruck’: A Novel Approach To Picture Books : NPR 091311
  “Wonderstruck” is the story of Rose and Ben, a young boy and girl who live years and worlds apart. By the end of the book, the reader learns they have a special connection. But from early on, they have one thing in common: She is deaf and he loses his hearing when he is struck by lightening. [Author/illustrator Brian] Selznick says the idea for the book began forming when he saw a documentary about deafness and deaf culture. One of the deaf educators emphasized how hyper-attuned deaf people are to the visual world. So Selznick set out to tell the story of a deaf character in pictures. “We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life,” he explains.
• How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages? (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) 091211
  If the Web page survives this first — extremely harsh — 10-second judgment, users will look around a bit. However, they’re still highly likely to leave during the subsequent 20 seconds of their visit. Only after people have stayed on a page for about 30 seconds does the curve become relatively flat. People continue to leave every second, but at a much slower rate than during the first 30 seconds. So, if you can convince users to stay on your page for half a minute, there’s a fair chance that they’ll say much longer — often 2 minutes or more, which is an eternity on the Web. [What's a Weibull distribution? Weibull is a reliability-engineering concept that's used to analyze the time-to-failure for components. The model's hazard function indicates the probability that a component will fail at time t, given that it has worked fine up until time t... when analyzing Web visits, we simply replace "component failure" with "user leaving the page." ]
• Roger Ebert Talks Friendship, Food (And Missing It), And Living ‘Life Itself’ : NPR 091311
  Melissa Block interview with Roger Ebert, whose new memoir is “Life Itself”: “Ebert still churns out half a dozen reviews every week, and typing has become his means of speech. “This is ‘Alex,’” he explains, “a voice that came built into my computer.” Alex is part of a text-to-speech program; Ebert types, Alex speaks the words. The words flow at a remarkable rate, given that he laboriously hunts and pecks with just two fingers across the keyboard. | I came to talk with Roger Ebert about his life as a film critic and his life with illness. Because typing is a long and exhausting process for him, we agreed that I’d send some questions in advance.”
• Khan Academy | Learn almost anything for free
  With a library of over 2,400 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 150 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.
• Learn to code | Codecademy
  Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It’s interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.
• ERIAL Project | Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries
  The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project is a two-year study of the student research process. The project is funded by an LSTA grant awarded to Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) by the Illinois State Library. The goal of the project is to understand how students do research, and how relationships between students, teaching faculty and librarians shape that process. ERIAL is also an applied study—that is, research pursued with the purpose of uncovering, understanding and addressing social problems. As such, its goal is to use the results to develop more user-centered library services.
• Full Interview: Cathy N. Davidson on Evolving Education | Spark 090211
  [re attention blindness; William James on attention] Duke University professor Cathy N. Davidson is author of the new book “Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn.” She believes that how we learn is a relic of 19th century values, and if it has any chance at relevancy, must embrace aspects of our digital lives that are normally shunned by scholars – technology, collaboration, and yes, even distraction.
• Spark 154 – September 11 & 14, 2011 | Spark
  On this episode of Spark: The Future of Education, The Myth of the Digital Native, and Designing Memorials for 9/11. | The Myth of the Digital Native: It’s easy to assume that anyone under the age of 25 is “tech savvy”, but it turns out that’s not entirely true. A new study of undergrads suggests that these so-called “digital natives” are not so digitally minded after all. Nora speaks with Andrew Asher, the lead anthropologist on the project, as well as Eszter Hargittai who has researched differentials in how much young people know about tech. (Runs: 12:28)

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