While reading works by authors in the area of social media, hypertext writing and academic literacies, I have come across words, and terms not used very often in mainstream English. I will present some of these terms here while reflecting on questions that academic institutions and education as a whole need to address while incorporating new collaborative digital technology.

Hypertext and social media

Inchoate: Landlow comments that well organised, and well formulated websites (Not inchoate), websites such as “The Victorian Web”, permit students to find what they need quickly. These websites for example provide students with a local site map that makes it easy for them to find the information they need. 

Impinge: Well-designed hypertext encourages students to make connections among learning material they encounter. This creates the habit of discovering how various causes have an impact on single phenomenon or event. Developing this habit is major component of critical thinking.

Inculcate: Hypertext, has the ability to teach and instil the novice student with the unique culture of a particular discipline. This is because hypertext “provides a means of experiencing the way a subject expert makes connections and formulates inquiries”. Also students have the opportunity to follow their curiosities as far as they wish.

Phonocentrism:  One of the factors that can negatively affect group discussion is the social influence of the more dominant group members on the rest of the group.  This social influence can inhibit the quantity of original and creative ideas generated by the group as a whole.  Hypertext can be a tool for additional forms of discussion that can address this problem. Thus using hypertext, team members are able to contribute ideas in writing if they find group discussions inhibiting. As Landlow states, Hypertext can shift the balance of creative debate from speaking to writing.

Autodidact: Hypertext provides the individualistic self-taught learner with the perfect tool for exploring a particular area of study. It enables the learner to move between some familiar and some not so familiar related areas of study, and in the process instilling the important habit of making connections, an essential habit for many professions.

Corollary: Texts in a hypertext environment exist in relation to other documents on the system in a way that printed document and books cannot. From this Landow deduces that any document electronically linked to any other document collaborates with it. This connective quality of hypertext environments creates a medium that encourages collaboration.

Docuverse:  Hypertext places each document in the virtual presence of all previously created document and their creators. This transforms individual documents in to a collective that could have been produced by several people working collaboratively and at the same time.

Incorporating technology into educational practice:

Sophomores: Students in their educational experiences will usually study different courses at the same time such as maths, biology, business studies, etc. And there is nothing usually that connects the various knowledge they gain from these different courses. This contributes to the sense of a fragmented education as students have a series of unrelated educational experiences when they read different works.

Dissonance:

“A central dilemma that schools must address in the consideration of e-safety and Web 2.0 activity is how they can support children to engage in productive and creative social learning while protecting them from undue harm”. (Sharples et al. 2009, p. 70)

Clark et al. (2009) introduce the term Digital Dissonance. The authors use the term to describe the tension related to whether learners can use popular Web 2.0 social technologies in formal school settings.

Epistemology: Ravenscroft reflects on the research needed for evaluating how Web 2.0 technology as social utilities, affect knowledge production.  He points to the need for conceptualization of learning that follows more social, participative, and collaborative understanding of knowledge, and how it is acquired. He goes on to ask, what are the new pedagogical frameworks for implementing social software for learning? What if we rethink learning to account for this new online social way of acquiring knowledge?

This view is mirrored in (Hemmi, Bayne, Land, 2009):

Anachronistic:

“Their tendency is to attempt to render the online learning space familiar through a conservative dependence on pre-digital metaphors, signs and practices which are increasingly anachronistic as digital modes gain in social and cultural significance.”

Instead of trying to force-fit these new exciting ways of acquiring knowledge, interactivity, and collaboration into old pedagogical frameworks, why not change and expand our pedagogical frameworks? And why not change the way we do academic learning to exploit these powerful emerging social software, and new online social habits? 

References:

Clark W., Logan K., Luckin R., Mee A. & Oliver M. (2009) Beyond Web 2.0: mapping the technology landscapes of young learners. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 56–69.

A. Hemmi, S. Bayne and R. Land (2009). The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education (pages 19–30)

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Sharples M., Graber R., Harrison C. & Logan K. (2009) E-safety and Web 2.0 for children aged 11–16. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 70–84.

A version of "Hypertext Into Practice" can be found on Ellis's Play Ground at the Holyroodpark wiki.