T.H.E. Journal: An Overview

T.H.E. Journal online seems to be a good source of information in the area of utilizing technology in schools. For this reflection I will focus on the layout and aesthetics of the website. In checking out the site I can say that it is fairly easy to navigate with a menu bar at the top with the numerous features the online journal has to offer. The color scheme makes the text easy to read. The site is laid out well and does not seem cluttered or confusing. The main purpose of the website appears to be a holding place for articles either pulled from the print journal or written specifically for the online journal. There are other features as well, but I will discuss these in future reflections.

There are a few choices as far as the different articles are concerned. In the top menu bar there are options including K-12 News, Feature pieces, and Viewpoint articles. I perused the list of articles in each of these three sections and had difficulty understanding what made an article a K-12 News, Feature, or Viewpoint item. I would guess that Viewpoint articles are written and submitted by people not employed by T.H.E. Journal, but I have yet to see any evidence that this is true.
Directly beneath the menu bar are more featured articles, the most popular articles, and the most emailed articles. I found it interesting that the most popular articles were very similar to the most emailed articles, but none of them were the featured articles. Perhaps this is because the featured articles have not been available long enough to have the views of older articles.

Aside from the top menu and features, the majority of the homepage has articles separated into other categories such as Focus on IT, Focus on Classroom Technology, Our Space, News and Briefs, and Features. This is nice as it shows the newest or more popular writings. What I found odd was that a few articles were listed in more than one category. It seemed to me like a waste of space having an article Sony’s new video conferencing system in the Focus on Classroom Technology, Our Space, and News and Briefs sections at the same time. I think the site would be better served to remove two of those links and add one that is not already mentioned on the page. Being a technology focused site there are links to a dozen social network and blog sites on which to share the article links. There is also a biweekly poll at the bottom of the page. Readers can vote and see what their fellow educational technology buffs think of a particular question. It is an easy way to get an idea of other people in the field’s view on an issue.

One great feature that, in my brief exploration of the site, seems often underutilized is the comments section available at the end of each article. Of the twenty or so articles that I opened and looked through, only a hand full had any comments. The few that did have comments only had two or three. I do not know what the cause of this is. I can think of two reasons, either they do not get a large number of readers or the readers do not want to take the time to discuss the articles. I did find it interesting that the copyright at the bottom of the page has not been updated to 2010, but there are articles from this year.

On a final note, there seems to be a good amount of advertisement on the site. Every time I go to the home page a giant Dell ad pops up on the screen blocking the text. While it is easy enough to close the ad, it is still annoying to have to deal with it every time I go back to the home page from an article.