Academic

We've been discussing switching from woff fonts to SVG for site icons. Some of the problems we have with web fonts (woff etc.) are:

• Line height and rounding issues look slightly 'off' (spinner icon seems a bit wonky, vertical alignment is off by a pixel or two, etc.)
• Editing web fonts relies on external service and rebuilding each time we add an icon
• Using unicode addresses for all glyphs is impossible (*).

* To maximize design flexibility we have included multiple versions of, say, a map icon. We cannot give both of them the same unicode address. To overcome this we'd need multiple fonts.
Also, sometimes it's impossible to find a unicode address for the glyph you want to use - so you use a private use area address, or you abuse an orthography glyph because it looks similar to your icon/glyph - see hamburger menu.

So, to explore the implications of making this switch I built a test file that uses 4 methods of doing this, along with my recommendations.

Prevalent themes: attempts to implement Web 2.0 (network based social software) software meet with resistance from sys-admins and from management admins because the new technologies challenge the existing ways of administering computing resources and academic research and teaching.

Skepticism about SecondLife, but a lot of interest in integrating other forms of social software into technology base that students will have anyway (rather than forcing them into an institutionally-mandated user experience).

Skepticism about digital natives' depth of understanding of technology, specifically how to use it in the service of critical thinking and communication or the production of formally reviewable academic work.

Higher-profile papers provided empirical research results on implementation and results. Theory had to be tested.

Considerable emphasis on ubiquitous technologies (specifically hand-held devices with access to internet and other devices at all times) and whether or not and how to make use of them.

Presented FrancoToile project as a poster session at the EdMedia conference. Particular interest shown by:
London School of Economics for use in sensitizing their students to French (and other) cultural norms
Researchers from North West Territories for use in aboriginal language and culture
Instructors from Japan for use in non-verbal communication
Researchers from USA in XML encoding for this kind of document, particularly multiple threads

Reviewed technical docs and prepared outline of points specific to this audience's interest in interface design issues and in using graphical metaphors as front-ends to query a database of texts.
Then did presentation with Janelle for an hour, moving from the large photocopy through the static html through the xml database with plain images and with mapserver interface.