Building your own frame of reference.
In a relatively few short years the internet and the World Wide Web have successfully penetrated into the educational system. Nobody seems to think twice about the fact that instead of browsing the shelves of a library pupils run searches for information via various internet-based search tools. Using materials encountered on the web as sources has become almost as acceptable as reading textbooks. Yet very few questions are asked about the basic learning experience that an encounter with hypertext presents the pupil.

Does the fact that hypertext usually presents the pupil with relatively concise and distinct packets of information rather than extended chapters of text affect the way pupils learn? Is something gained, or perhaps lost, by not having a readily available three-dimensional picture of where a source starts and where it stops? Does the associative use of hypertext, the embedding of a variety of possibilities for further investigation within a basic text, encourage the pupil to construct his or her own frame of reference, or does it only cause conceptual confusion? Does a hypertextual format encourage greater pupil involvement in one of the central learning processes - that of making connections between different ideas? There was a great deal that could have been examined via that experimental web site, and the basic questions are still waiting for some interesting and provocative answers. I think that one of the reasons I ultimately chose not to conduct a study along these lines was the fact that sites of this sort were becoming very commonplace, and there seemed to be little interest in these big questions. Instead, the use of sites of this sort in educational settings was seen as a simple given, and nobody seemed to care about the fact that hypertext perhaps generated a learning experience different from that of the mainstream.

 

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