The best worst reactions to the news that the next Doctor Who will be a woman

– would it be better for a narrow topic of study, or a broad one?

Narrower (or less in-depth), I should think. The more total information you need to convey, and the more important it is that the reader cover all of it, the harder a nonlinear format becomes (because it’s possible to miss stuff).

– would it be better for a short book or a large one?

It has to be fairly short because the information is not very dense compared to a traditional textbook.

– Paper, PDF, app?

App!

– would you buy it as a book in a store, or would you prefer to see it as a school textbook? If in the store, what would you pay for it? If an app or website, would you subscribe to it?

I’d expect to see it distributed by schools or by specific groups (eg, the Audubon Society putting out a “learn all about birds” app). They can also be available for parents to buy directly, but I don’t usually expect that to be the main market (as with most educational stuff).

– what age group do you think would best benefit from it?

K-8. High schoolers might not have the patience for the format.

dreemr – I’m going to re-read The Dark Tower 1 just as soon as I’m done with the book I’m reading now (Giant of the Senate by Al Franken) because I need a refresher. It’s been at least 20 years since I read that series.

Schnookums said

Also, is it bad that I’m excited about Idris Elba as the Gunslinger simply because I’m excited to watch him in just about anything? I’d watch him read the phone book. (Especially if he took his clothing off while doing so.)

Nope. I’m right there with you, but with extra Stephen King fangirling added.

Idris Elba. *Swoons*

That is all.

@Scildfreja – maybe I’m too literal, but when imagining your CYOA-style study aid (that’s how I translated it), I was specifically thinking of the index cards I made last year for my son when he was studying basic chemistry.

Full disclosure: I did very well in school, but I also managed to flunk basic college chemistry not once, not twice, but THREE times, due almost entirely to laziness. Plus, Fine Art major lol.

Anyway, in my mind I imagined an app that’s like a chapter study guide, with multiple-choice questions. Say the question is “what part of an atom has a negative charge?”, then you have the choices A) Proton B) Neutron C) Nucleus or D) Electron.

Choose “A” and you’re linked to a graphic showing the atom with the protons labeled and emphasized, glowing or enlarging, with the charge labeled. Choose “B” and you go to a similar graphic emphasizing the neutrons, and so on.

Maybe I’m too literal and this is too simplistic, but something like that with interactive visuals, would have helped my son so much in being able to engage with the material and really learn it.

Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Maths, all lend themselves very easily to this kind of setup.

I should maybe mention that my son is very mildly ADHD-Inattentive type (daydreamy) so visuals really help him connect. He has some difficulty processing multiple steps as well, like identifying main points, etc., and so gets anxious when confronted with a wall o’ text.

There just aren’t a lot of aids to help him with these things.

– would it be better for a narrow topic of study, or a broad one?
Depends on your audience. The site I mentioned before is narrow and deep, but has one very specific audience in mind.
– would it be better for a short book or a large one?
Short.
– Paper, PDF, app?
App.
– would you buy it as a book in a store, or would you prefer to see it as a school textbook? If in the store, what would you pay for it? If an app or website, would you subscribe to it?
I do subscribe to the website I mentioned. I can find hundreds of paper/pdf books, often for free, on the same topic, but I subscribe to a website because it takes a similar approach to the one you mention and that works better for me than reading dry text about the topic.
– what age group do you think would best benefit from it?
I think middle school to high school would benefit most. College students don’t have time to learn, just for rote memorization before the test, but adults looking to learn more about a topic outside a classroom setting might also benefit from it, depending on the topic and how much information is out there. If you have a specific topic you know there’s an adult market for, do it. Otherwise, aim for middle and high school students.

And well, of course. I have no idea how I’d publish such a thing. Or if there’s a market!

If it’s an app that depends on the format, but websites are easy to publish, phone apps are a little more difficult but you can use tools like phone gap to build an Android and iPhone app simultaneously (not sure how well that works since no one seems to use it), and I have no idea what it takes to publish a windows app.

If you want help with any Web development, depending on how things go with my job search (which takes a lot of time), I might be able to assist.

As far as a market for it, I just had an interview with a learning software company and it sounds like there’s always a market for more tools to help students learn. This specifically? I couldn’t tell you.

It’s just fucking baffling to me how these people never seem to think that the actors/actresses are actually fucking talented and skilled at the art of acting, just that they’re “taking” the job away from someone who “deserves” it more, like a(nother) cishet white dude who’s more “talented” than the minority actor.

Even less odious people often work from the unexamined assumption that everything belongs to white guys by default, so they expect anyone else to prove why they deserve it while never expecting white guys to do the same.

For instance, if only white guys have ever won an award, people will go “but they were really good!” The assumption being that if a white guy is really good, he automatically gets the award. Meanwhile, if a woman or minority is also really good, they have to sit down and wait their turn until some year when there isn’t a really good white male who gets first dibs.

Or when the same white-guy directors get all the big movie projects. And the women and minority directors? They have to wait until there’s a project that no white guy wants, apparently.

@Petal
Tl;dr version: Nick was doing that thing again.

@Singerdog
CYOA = Choose Your Own Adventure

https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster/status/886997710376775681

I went to the Daily Mail (UK) to see if their coverage of Jodie being cast as the Doctor was as terrible as it was rumored. It was (topless photos and video?? WTF…), but they spotted an MRA we haven’t roasted yet.

Sick of tolerance @Do228BN2T tweets ‘I trust her companion will be a disabled, transgender, asexual, Muslim Afro Caribbean gay all rolled into one to keep the PC BBC happy’

What an idiot.

@Falconer,

Sorry, I had to go home and go to sleep, I was feeling poorly. Thanks for the info about the terrible Indy RPG, I’m weirdly tempted to see if I can find it.

This whole thread is making me muse on the technological aspects of fandom – that is, the fact it so much easier to consume a story when and where you want to now, than it was when I was growing up; and therefore ‘ownership’ of a story seems to be a more strongly held idea than it was.

I haven’t had a properly coherent thought that wasn’t about work in the last couple of days, however, so I feel I am incapable of developing this further.

Instead:

A friend of mine who’s an RE teacher has just shown me the leaving present some of her students have got her – a cuddly pope Francis. To her credit, she was unphased when I suggested that the next time the pope regenerates, I’d like the replacement to be a woman.

Come for the feminism, stay for the incredible geeky nostalgia! I’ve already got “When The Tripods Came” on order due to a previous thread reminding me how much I enjoyed the original trilogy. Now fondly remembering my time with the Fighting Fantasy books and browsing Google Play looking for the Android phone versions 🙂

– would it be better for a narrow topic of study, or a broad one?
Broad. This sort of thing would work best if it’s broad and shallow, because there’s only so far you can drill down into any topic before it gets very difficult indeed to explain it to a lay audience.

– would it be better for a short book or a large one?
Large book (An app with a lot of backend data, as below.)

– Paper, PDF, app?
App!

– would you buy it as a book in a store, or would you prefer to see it as a school textbook? If in the store, what would you pay for it? If an app or website, would you subscribe to it?
I’d engage with it best as a single app which acted as a frontend for numerous topics. I don’t want a dozen apps on my phone if I want to learn a dozen different topics.

This would also make it easier to do cross-disciplinary things. For example, if I’m learning about how trees grow then I may read about soil and weather, which could lead to a segue into geology and/or meteorology.

(It should be possible to download more topics into a single app, right? All you’re really doing is sending more backend data to the phone and then letting the UI know how to engage with it.)

– what age group do you think would best benefit from it?
Two groups:
– Older children, because it’s about broad-but-shallow learning rather than deep understanding.
– Adults who haven’t learned the stuff that most children know about this topic.

As we’ve seen from things like the Khan Academy, there’s an enormous market of adults who want to learn things but are worried that they’ll be laughed at for not knowing them already.