The use of hyperlinks

Jenny Luca had an interesting post about the teaching of hyperlinks in k-12. I actually wrote about this in 2007 and 2008. This is an area I'm very interested in once I get my dissertation completed.

My comment on her blog was

I wrote about this is 2008. Part of the problem in the English language is that we teach writing as a linear process and hyperlink writing requires spatial writing. For me, using hyperlinks opened up a world for my writing. However, as I write my dissertation, I realize that many English and writing teachers are linear thinkers.

When I write pen on paper, I have notes in the margins, arrows between ideas, drawings all over the paper. As a child I was reprimanded for this because I was considered “scattered.” Outlines helped me to put my thoughts into a linear format. However, I am very good at hyperlinks. I discovered a few years ago in a course I taught on computer based writing across the curriculum that “good writers” had a very difficult time adding hyperlinks.

This, in fact, relates to some of my findings on partaged knowledge. I feel the ability to link ideas is inherent in some people, just as the ability to think linearly is inherent in others. While we work with those (such as myself) in "organizing thoughts" in a linear manner, we haven't yet recognized that we need to work with those who think linear for a "partaged knowledge" society. We should be teaching hyperlinks. But that would mean having to recruit students with non-linear thinking and changing our conceptions about "scattered" thinkers.

Work Processes

There have been a couple of good discussions on the Work Literacy Blog. One has to do with Visual thinking/literacy.



I would like to see more research (or at least find more research) on how visual rhetoric has changed over the last generation due to the internet. I also think there is little research on the process for spatial thinking/hypertext writing (although the use of hypertext has some very good research written about it).

Finally, I have a question as I read about visual literacy: is visual thinking the same as spatial thinking? If they are two different things are they connected? If they are connected, is it because both require right side thinking? Or is spatial and visual thinking the same?

Note: I took the picture above at Chicago's Millennium Park. Can you tell what it is? (Hint: my daughter and I are in the picture).

A new way of thinking

I had a discussion with a colleague yesterday about the new way of thinking that new technologies require. I have always been very good at making connections (some might say they really weren't connections except in my own mind) between ideas. Using the tree/forest metaphor, I have always been a person to look at the forest, try to see the patterns, go to the trees, identify the features, and then go back to the forest to put the trees in context. In the past, as this metaphor implies, you are either a holistic or a detail person. However, there are many of us who connect the dots to look at details within the whole, going back and forth between detail and whole.

I have written previously about spatial thinking. I think the forest for the trees is a linear thinking concept. Visualization and looking at ideas in connection with other ideas is more spatial. I find, for example, that George Sieman's posts in elearnspace are very spatial, which might be why he is such an advocate for connectivism. On the other hand, I find Tony Karrer's blog, eLearning Technology, as very linear. What is important is that both are excellent blogs, just two different thought processes. Isn't it important that we begin to accept both ways of thinking? And what is the implication for our language and culture? Are we becoming a more polycronic culture because of the technology we use? Shouldn't cultures be allowed to evolve? This might not happen if we don't allow for new communication patterns, recognition of new ways to think, and acceptance of old methods within their own context.