Tables are an excellent knowledge mediation tool. They let you show statistics in a clear way to help you and your readers to synthesise results of surveys. In this activity and the self-assessed activity I want to work with some figures which refer to the uptake of new technology in a European country, France. The activities will help you see how you can use tables to mediate and re-present information in different forms for your readers.
Cyberfrance - this page gives you some statistics on the use of computers and the Internet in France. The web page uses tables to layout the figures in columns that let the readers draw their own conclusions. The key conclusion from all the tables is growth or an increase in the use of the Personal Computer and the Internet.
Let's try to mediate the data still further using tables to give a more graphic representation of what is happening. I'll take that first row of figures, 'Number of households with Internet access' and try to show them with more emphasis:
| Growth of Home Internet in France | |
| 1996 | 
|
| 1997 |
|
| 1998 |
|
I have used a tiny jpeg file, red19.jpg which is only 1 pixel wide and 19 pixels high. I then stretch that jpeg using the figures from the statistics as the width amounts in pixels. Here are the two important lines of code:
<td>1998
<td><img src="red19.jpg" width=100 height=19>
Notice I have had to specify the height again as 19 pixels otherwise the browser will stretch the height to its own default.
Here's that image source on its own
as you can see it's very narrow.
Activity Please take the figures from the Cyberfrance tables called 'Total number of Home PCs' and mediate the information in the same way into a table with coloured bars showing the growth.
Suggested Response Click here to see my design for this information.
Please keep your new HTML file with the new table in, we will re-use it in the final activity.