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You're being downvoted, which I think is because you've clearly decided nothing I can say will make any difference to you and your replies seem a bit cranky, bu

You're being downvoted, which I think is because you've clearly decided nothing I can say will make any difference to you and your replies seem a bit cranky, but I'm not downvoting you. Here's another example for you, that just happened today: On a shared iPad, the iPad was returned with a note saying 'no safari'. I worked out that one student had changed the default Safari search engine to DuckDuckGo. For reasons, the school's ISP blocks DuckDuckGo and visiting it on an iPad just results in a 'connection was lost' message. The next student needed to visit a website called Kahoot and the URL for this site is kahoot.com. Looking at the history I could see the student had just been typing 'kahoot' in to the URL/search bar over and over again. They also tried typing 'google'. At no point did they try entering the URL nor does it seem they even know how to do anything beyond type search keywords.

shadowgovt 7y ago
It doesn't seem to me the failure modes you're describing are ameliorated at all by making it easier to edit the URL, since the students in question have a fundamental lack of understanding of what URLs are. In that case, making understanding URLs a prerequesite to using the web simply bars access to users. Better to have typing "Kahoot" into the topbar bring up a Google search that navigates to Kahoot.com than the user experience I had at that age, which was a DNS resolution failure because no TLD was specified. That was an era where none but the most technical users could go where they wanted.
- kennyadam 7y ago
  I didn't make a case for easier editing of URLs. I agree, I don't see how that would help at all. All I've ever said is that I have observed many students lacking knowledge of what a URL is and that's a shame and gave some examples of when it would have helped them to know. Regarding your second paragraph, sure it would be better for search results to be displayed if there's no TLD specified. However, when it's the ONLY way you know how to access a website and when that fails, as it did today, knowing how to manually enter a URL would be useful. I agree that things are much more user friendly today, but because things are so easy people get really stuck when those ways fail and they have no way of troubleshooting anything. I won't get in to how many students (and teachers) I see stumped because the ethernet cable has come out of their laptop or they can't open a file because they've copied the shortcut to a folder to a USB rather than the folder itself.

shadowgovt 7y ago

It doesn't seem to me the failure modes you're describing are ameliorated at all by making it easier to edit the URL, since the students in question have a fundamental lack of understanding of what URLs are. In that case, making understanding URLs a prerequesite to using the web simply bars access to users. Better to have typing "Kahoot" into the topbar bring up a Google search that navigates to Kahoot.com than the user experience I had at that age, which was a DNS resolution failure because no TLD was specified. That was an era where none but the most technical users could go where they wanted.

kennyadam 7y ago
I didn't make a case for easier editing of URLs. I agree, I don't see how that would help at all. All I've ever said is that I have observed many students lacking knowledge of what a URL is and that's a shame and gave some examples of when it would have helped them to know. Regarding your second paragraph, sure it would be better for search results to be displayed if there's no TLD specified. However, when it's the ONLY way you know how to access a website and when that fails, as it did today, knowing how to manually enter a URL would be useful. I agree that things are much more user friendly today, but because things are so easy people get really stuck when those ways fail and they have no way of troubleshooting anything. I won't get in to how many students (and teachers) I see stumped because the ethernet cable has come out of their laptop or they can't open a file because they've copied the shortcut to a folder to a USB rather than the folder itself.