THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF HYPERMEDIA

I think a good example of hypermedia on the web is Facebook. It allows everyone to post simple texts, pictures, articles, videos, games, applications, and even music he or she listens to. Even though it may seem overwhelming to navigate, it shows the burbs of postings. For example, it only shows few pictures of the entire album on the wall. It shows a snapshot of the video and a short description of it. It gives you the title and few sentences about the article. It tells you games or apps your friends use with icons. In my opinion, it is instant and presents a lot of information in different formalities with a glance. Users and readers then click links they would like to read further on their own.

A bad example of hypermedia that I can think of is myTC. Even though there are tabs such as “Welcome,” “Courses,” “Community,” “Researches,” and “Search& Help,” there is a lot of information collapsed together on myTC, which makes it difficult to look for ones needed. There is so much going on throughout the home page and it is unappealing to the eye. 

Take this week’s assignment as an example, TC Bookmarks would not be my first instinct to look for Software and Tools to download FTP software. I probably will first go to “TC Services” tab and then “Technology Support.” Besides hard to navigate, many links are either duplicated or not working probably.   

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I read this article by Marc Prensky about 5 years ago. It is interesting to read it again now. Five year ago, I believed that I was a digital native, but I am not quite sure anymore now. I would say I am still a true digital native with an “accent” of Digital Immigrant.

Am I getting “old?” Hopefully not! Let me explain further.

I am 28 years old and grew up with downloaded music, phones in my pocket, and “googleing” all the time and so on. According to Prensky, I am a digital native. However, I like to ask students printing out documents written on computers in order to edit it. I still prefer printing out research papers to read, highlight phrases, and annotate in the margins with a real pen. I know I can easily do such things with Adobe Reader or Preview, and save our planet earth by cutting down the usage of paper. But still, there is something to it that I actually can learn better with tangible objects in hand. This could potentially make me a digital immigrant according Prensky. I wonder how could this happen? Perhaps, from my Digital Immigrant teachers in the past…

I recently had some 12^th graders work on a project. The project requires two pages of writing on Microsoft Word and a PowerPoint presentation including videos and pictures to introduce a notable Chinese American. All of them did a great job, and yet they all did it differently in their own ways. Here is how it went:

Student A on a computer: Wikipedia, YouTube, online dictionary, Word Document, PowerPoint all open at the same time while “Facebooking,” listening to music and texting on the phone

Student B: Started researching online on her phone because “it’s too much work to turn on a computer” according to her. Then she wrote down the information with a pencil on a piece of paper and started to write her first draft by hand.

Student C: Asked me all sorts of questions regarding to the person he wanted to research on for about 15 minutes. Then he Google everything on the phone and came back to me sharing what he found. He wrote down few things in his notebook AND on his phone because “I know I probably can’t find the notebook again later on.”

Student D: Started typing Chinese characters on a desktop, and decided to quit after 5 minutes. “This is so annoying, I cannot get this right. I will hand-write it on my phone, send it to myself and do editing in a Word document later.”

Student E: watched a lot of video clips related to the person he researched on for the first 25 minutes on Youtube

What’s the point here I am trying to convey from these observations?

I guess as a teacher and an instructional designer, it is important to keep the followings in mind:

1. provide a framework and a final goal for them to achieve
2. the step-by-step procedure won’t work because there isn’t a certain way anymore
3. Digital natives have their own ways of doing things      

                        - it’s OK as long as they get it done the “right” way

                        - it’s NOT OK when nothing gets done, or done in the “wrong” way (ex: plagiarism) 

                        

                               THEN we interfere.