Web Site Readability

Juicy Studio offers an interesting service that allows the user to “calculate” the readability of a web site. Readability is an estimate of the difficulty of text and various indexes use word or sentence length and similar quantitative variables to estimate difficulty. I have done reading research during my career and I do know that there are “issues” with simple quantitative approaches. However, the concept is interesting and the variables provide a useful starting point for analysis.

I applied this tool to one of our online book chapter summaries (Chapter 2) and learned that the document was written at the level of “academic paper.” Of course, this would have been our intent.

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ENC Unfunded

The Dept. of Ed has dropped support for the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC) online site (eSchool News). ENC provides an online database of thousands of web site reviews for math and science. The Dept claims this is part of the strategy to move money toward broad categories that can be allocated at the local level. I would bet few administrators at the local level spend money on access to the subscription version of EN C.

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