Meridian Article: Children's Literacy Perceptions as They Authored with Hypermedia

Hypermedia literacy

Literacy definitions by all the focal children included twice as many nonlinear elements in their descriptions as linear elements. Literacy in a nonlinear sense was described as being able to a navigate web pages and find the information you were reading for, writing with two hands, the ability to use the inspector (a tool bar) in Pagemill, knowing how to edit on the computer within each program, and grabbing graphics and animations from the Web to include in their writing. The children cited those who were extremely literate as those who knew how to include video and audio clips in their writing with ease.

Those who could function in the group as a technical consultant were also seen as highly literate individuals and their strengths were cited as part of how literacy was defined. Literacy definitions and descriptions of the "techie" did not imply that because one was a writing expert in a nonlinear sense, one was also an expert in a linear sense. In other words, according to the children, a writer could be proficient writing with nonlinear text and not be proficient with linear text. Six of the eight focal children expressed that one could be a poor writer in class with linear writing and be an expert at the computer and literate as a result of being able to manipulate writing with nonlinear conventions.

Literate people did not need to engage in prewriting or revise documents because this took place during the writing at the computer. The children expressed that since you had to see how it looked, prewriting was not a helpful step in writing. Revision of documents created shifts to include revision as a process that utilized trying out tools or experimenting with nonlinear conventions. The children cited nonlinear writing conventions most often as influencing how they defined what literacy was, and how these nonlinear conventions shaped literate people as writers. Nonlinear writing conventions differed from linear writing conventions in one distinct way, the nonlinear conventions contributed to meaning construction in contrast to linear writing conventions, which usually do not (Graves, 1983).

The children cited several of the same examples of knowledge a literate person had to possess to author with hypermedia. The use of navigation buttons, where to get them, how to link and place them was given as the most important thing to know when authoring in this medium. Next, general knowledge of the tool that emphasized an understanding of the Pagemill (Adobe, 1997) inspector or Hyperstudio (Wagner, 1993) toolkit was important to author. And finally, utilizing backgrounds that made writing interesting without making it hard for the reader to read was cited along with using graphics and placing text around graphics to increase the reader's meaning process. These were all seen as a knowledge base for literate people to understand if they were to author with hypermedia tools.

Ways to Write

Ways to write were defined by the children as the media you might use to write with. Ways to write included pencil, pen, and computers. Hyperauthoring expanded their definition of ways to write to encompass not just writing tools, such as buttons and graphics, but also different types of text. These different texts included some they authored, audio text, their own voices recorded, and links to others' writing that they acknowledged as written by someone else; however, they included it as part of their writing. William's response was typical of how the dyads described ways to write.

Planning Our Writing

The focal children engaged in prewriting and playing sessions as they learned the hypermedia tools. They worked in teams of two to collaboratively plan their writing on index cards and experimented with these ideas during their playing sessions in the computer lab. Planning their writing took place during the prewriting sessions in the classroom and it also extended into authoring sessions on the computer. Prewriting, as a writing stage, involved trying out tools and locating the ones that worked best for the project.

Other benefits from collaboration cited by the focal children included: sharing the writing experience, getting different views on a topic, and having an expert "techie" on the team to make the writing better.

Meaning Construction

Constructing meaning through writing with linear and nonlinear text was the teacher's goal for the two authoring projects. The children used the hypermedia tools to construct meaning from three different novels. They also used nonlinear conventions and tools that suggested multiple ways to write. They constructed meaning based on their perceptions of the process.

Meaning construction for the focal children was based on the three elements: talk, evaluation, and literacy relationships. The nonlinear conventions and tools provided through the hypermedia authoring helped to mediate the process as opposed to creating or shaping it.

Talk Is My Writing

"Talk is my writing" was always revealed as a way to construct meaning by the focal children. Sharing writing in groups or talking about writing ideas was viewed as the best way to start writing. Sean and James thought talking was the best way to begin writing; however, they expressed that talking to their teacher about their writing before meeting in groups was their preferred process. They elaborated on this by suggesting that they did not want to share their writing until it was completely finished. This was their common practice in the classroom; however, the computer lab screen was much more of a public space and they engaged in talk about their unfinished writing during authoring sessions, often acting as experts for other class members to collaborate with.

Web Writing and School Writing

The focal children expressed a dichotomy between authoring tasks in the computer lab and the writing within their classroom. School writing tasks were often completed for a grade and external criteria guided the writing. In contrast to the hypermedia authoring, school writing assignments contained those same evaluation elements for the students; however, the nonlinear writing conventions and tools afforded by Hyperstudio (Wagner, 1993) and Pagemill (Adobe, 1997) allowed the learner to set a broader purpose for writing. This autonomy to set a broader purpose tended to create a clear distinction for the children between how linear writing differed from nonlinear writing.

Doing School My Way with Nonlinear Writing

In stark contrast to this notion of "doing school," one learner described nonlinear writing as a pie with many pieces you could manipulate, combine, or get pieces from other pies to make yours better. This student also described linear writing, in a metaphorical way, as particularly getting to eat one piece of the pie and equated this to the use of linear text to express all that he wanted to say.

The nonlinear writing, according to the students, was more interesting because they could use the tools to shape their writing by adding buttons, backgrounds, graphics, text, sound, and the ease of editing to invest in changes. Focal children consistently stated across all three interviews that nonlinear writing was more interesting, because you could write in different ways. This allowed them to feel that they were accomplished with their writing as a result of being able to manage the software. Ways to write more and to a deeper level were suggested through the use of graphics or music and then the use of text to explain what it meant according to the author.

Web writing and school writing differed in two additional ways according to the dyads based on traditional linear writing notions: first, they suggested that with web writing in the lab they did not have to revise, they simply made changes as they wrote. And secondly, they felt that the software did the writing for them because the tools suggested ideas or allowed them to combine ideas by mixing graphics, sound and text. Juxtaposing of multiple texts helped them create their own purpose for writing while still satisfying the "doing school" requirement.

Ways I have Grown As a Reader and Writer

What were the children's perceptions of their literacy growth as they authored with hypermedia? This question was the salient point in understanding how hypermedia authoring constructed the children's perceptions of authoring and to what extent it moved them along the writing continuum. Answers to the question were found in the ways the children described their reading and writing growth. Ways to write grew throughout the study to include notions of readability for meaning construction. Readability was defined by the focal children as types of authoring design that could either help or inhibit meaning construction from the reader's viewpoint based on how nonlinear writing conventions and tools were utilized.

Nonlinear Ways

The children's perception of their literacy growth as they authored with hypermedia was tied to the use of nonlinear writing conventions, tools, and meaning construction. These three notions formed the basis for understanding why readability was seen as a sense making process for readers. Readability was couched in design for the purposes of making their documents accessible to all readers who might encounter them.

Nonlinear writing conventions were used as a way to make the writing easier to understand while not adding much to the content of the text. Examples cited by the dyads were the ability to write with both hands, spellcheck, grammarcheck, navigational buttons, boxed text to separate ideas, and being able to toggle between the World Wide Web and the authoring tool to see and try out new types of text. The ability to simultaneously manage a desktop, use the browser, and utilize authoring tools were also cited by four of the students as something they had gained within the realm of writing conventions.

All the focal children described tool use as a convention to enhance meaning construction as the single most important thing that they had learned. Examples of this included the description of characters in a story written with linear text and then the character was also described through the use of graphics to provide visual analogies for character traits. Additional uses of graphics included the use of flags to let the reader know and understand the mood of the novel explained. This use of flags conveyed sadness through the stated text and also the colors and symbols on the Nazi flag helped to explain how the dyad described the crimes of the German Nazis in Denmark. Lastly, audio was recorded to enhance the meaning of a theme in the Hyperstudio (Wagner, 1993) projects.

These descriptions of literacy growth represented how the tool mediated and extended their knowledge of writing processes to broaden and include multiple types of texts. Lastly, with regard to literacy growth, the focal children articulated that literate people were those who were also good "techies" and they all expressed that they had grown in becoming better writers through greater understanding of the hypermedia tools.

Discussion

The findings explore children's perceptions as they authored with hypermedia and their perceptions of their literacy growth as they authored with hypermedia. Themes that emerged from their perceptions dealt with changing definitions of literacy and literate people. Literate people were described as those who could read and write and also those who were exemplary "techies." Ways to write were described by the children through traditional medium, as well as, nonlinear medium. The children made a distinction between linear writing conventions, nonlinear writing conventions, and nonlinear tools. Tools were used as a convention, but also to help construct meaning. Examples of these meaning tools were sound, graphics, and animations. This data was consistent with ways that Tierney and Damarin (1998) describe shifting paradigms for how writing is constructed with digital tools.

Collaboration and talk were cited as the most important component needed to author with hypermedia. Collaboration, group feedback, and the authoring of the multilayered writing rubric supported meaning construction. Labbo (1996) also found this talk and learning phenomenon to be an essential component for making meaning as children author with hypermedia tools.

Authoring school writing assignments in traditional ways and web authoring differed based on the purposes the children were able to set for themselves. Web authoring put at their fingertips more choices in being able modify the writing purpose to satisfy their learning needs. The role of self was more apparent with Web authoring as the learners constructed their purposes based on their own voice and the voices of others melted within the documents (Bakhtin, 1981; Kamberelis & McGinley, 1992).

Literacy growth was noted in some linear ways through the writing conventions of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Nonlinear ways for literacy growth were described by the children through their use of flexible sign systems to extend traditional text and provide alternative meanings that were expressed in sound, graphics, icons, animations and text choices (Berghoff, 1994). As an example of growth, William, learned to mean in one way from what he understood regarding concepts of linear text, but later shifted his understanding as he gained proficiency in using Pagemill (Adobe, 1997). Learning to mean initially for this child was focused on a linear format of text that had a distinct beginning, middle and end with regard to story structure and may have included some pictures. The sign systems used to turn pages, icons, took on a different meaning as multiple icons and choices were added to his web page. He came to realize, as an author, he had little control over how readers would navigate the text (Eagleton, 1998). The learning that took place in this anecdote resulted from collaborative discussions and participation in the literacy event as the child presented his project and others evaluated it. This literacy growth event was formed in the ways he explained project one, with a warning label to navigate his text in only his prescribed way. Growth was seen in the way he stopped using this navigation warning in the second project and included multiple paths for readers with icons (Luria, 1983).

Semiotic sign systems were also used by all the dyads to construct meaning. The
children wove their written texts in the ways they selected sign systems to mean (Labbo, 1996). Halliday (1977) described this as the dialogic construction of meaning. Learners used the sign systems available through the digital tools to take something known and tell it in new ways. Semiotically, the learner constructed an experience and when others came in contact with the shared experience they shared in the constructing. The meaning was "created by the impact between a material phenomenon and the shared processes of consciousness of those who participated in it" (Halliday, 1985, p. 75). A good example of this is the use of audio tracks and how to place them in pages. As groups of learners mastered this it became a shared experience and others learned as they joined in to understand the use of audio as a tool for meaning.