Abstract
This study explored children's literacy perceptions as they authored
with hypermedia within the context of classroom literacy lessons. The
fifth grade children authored two hypermedia projects and linked these
projects to novels that they read in their classroom. The learners used
two different multimedia authoring tools. The children based the hypermedia
projects on critical literacy themes suggested during classroom discussion.
The data yielded six broad themes along with new definitions of literacy
that included technology. The children made a distinction between two
types of literacy with regard to writing. Their definitions of literacy
reflected both linear and non-linear types of reading. Writing conventions
utilized by the children included traditional conventions and non-linear
writing conventions that utilized symbols and signs. Notions of readability
were redefined to reflect new definitions of literacy and included hypermedia
design and sign systems as a way to add meaning for the anticipated
reader.
Technological
Changes In Education
Technological
changes since 1980 have moved fast and fiercely. This change has had
a large impact on the modes of reading and writing. The ways we read
and write now are augmented to include such means as E-mail and the
World Wide Web. Learners are able to send and get quick responses to
E-mail. On the World Wide Web, learners encounter conflicting interpretations
of text and must be able to generate good key terms when searching for
information so that they can sort through these interpretations. These
changes are beginning to impact literacy instruction as more schools
come into the on-line environment and seize it as a way to promote literacy
understanding throughout the curriculum.
The Uses of Hypermedia
One particular technological change is the use of hypertext for authoring.
According to Reinking (1997), the use of hypertext can be seen as an
extended metaphor to guide reading, writing, and thinking. It is only
in the hypertext environment that readers and writers can digress, jump
around, and link to others' writing. The literacy experience can become
collaborative and intertextual. The social element of learning, involving
intertextuality and collaboration, is also expanded with technology
as learners read and write in real-time with those halfway around the
world and have their learning scaffolded by many capable others. This
dialogic use of text functions as a vehicle to generate meaning with
each new reader and writer who comes into contact with it (Wertsch,
1991). Salomon, Globerson and Guterman (1989) refer to this type of
learning as computer mediated communication (CMC). According to these
researchers, this term suggests that a computer provides a zone of proximal
development for reading and writing that leaves the learner with socially
constructed knowledge that is carried off into other forms of reading
and writing away from the computer.
Technology's Impact on Schools and Literacy Learning
This notion of literacy learning is very different from the type of
literacy learning that traditionally has been supported in our schools.
The question of how this type of interaction with print fits with literacy
instruction in schools as a new tool becomes salient. With the use of
CMC and computer software packages to support literacy learning, traditional
models of literacy thought and instruction must be recast. Hypertext
allows learners to construct multiple interpretations of a text (Bereiter
& Scardamalia, 1989). Learners can reflect on their actions and
try on new perspectives. Thus, literacy practice becomes broader and
more authentic (Pea, 1993).
Purposes
and Research Questions
The purpose
of this research was to understand children's literacy perceptions as
they authored with hypermedia. It is important to investigate children's
perceptions since they reflect their understanding of new learning.
Two main questions from this purpose guided the study: What were children's
literacy perceptions as they authored with hypermedia? And what were
children's literacy perceptions of their writing growth as they authored
with hypermedia? When technology is introduced as a factor to be incorporated
into these perceptions, different ways of thinking may be introduced
(Leu, 1996). A pertinent example of this might be book reading and reading
on the Internet. Book reading is a linear process. One can read paragraphs
and pages forward or backward, but essentially reading can only move
in one way. Web reading, or reading on the Internet with hypertext-markup
language (HTML) based documents, is a nonlinear reading process. It
has also been described as a multi-linear reading process (Reinking,
1998). One can read backwards, forwards, jump to term definitions inside
the document, read excerpts that go with video or audio clips, and jump
to other documents embedded in the original document. This way of reading
and writing can be related to notions of intertexuality (Reinking, 1997).
Linear and
Nonlinear Text as a Meaning Making Process
Nonlinear reading allows the reader to acquire intertextual excerpts
all in the same document, thus representing the way we think. Given
this notion of nonlinear text, it is appropriate to think about how
this nonlinear form of reading and writing may shape children's perceptions
of their own writing development with regard to literacy and technology.
Questions about literacy growth and development hinge on how the learners'
perceptions are shaped by what counts as knowledge, whether they believe
knowledge is discovered or created, and where this knowledge is located
relative to themselves. These epistemological lenses can be used to
look at literacy development and how technology may or may not play
into this development. Semiotics fits into the equation of understanding
literacy development because it recognizes that all meaning making is
contextual and that many systems of meaning transact with one another
(Berghoff, 1994). Sign systems can be used in flexible ways to learn
and to communicate as one layer for gaining a deeper understanding of
how literacy development is defined by epistemological perceptions of
the learner.
Defining
Literacy
With the push to include a computer in every classroom and Web access
in those classrooms during the 21st century, those interested in literacy
education are at a crossroads to gain a greater understanding of how
hypertextual reading and writing has reinvented literacy and changed
the way one writes, reads and sees the world (Bork, 1981). Reinventing
literacy or new ways to think about literacy needs to begin by clearly
exploring what is meant by literacy in the linear sense and then by
exploring changes to that definition.
In thinking
about new definitions of what literacy means, one could say that the
processes of expressing oneself through reading, writing, and thinking
in multiple discourses are precursors to a more global definition of
literacy. This new definition of literacy encompasses more of the sociocultural
and cognitive aspects of learning and what Bolter (1998) refers to as
hypertextual literacy. Literacy can then be understood in terms of the
use of hypertext environments as opposed to strictly linear text. This
is driven by the idea that the nature of literacy and learning are being
redefined by the digital technologies that are quickly becoming a part
of the current information age.
