Computers and Writing Conference Classroom

Distant Spaces and Education
The Web
(Discuss the Web)

We teach and learn in complex environments. This section addresses some of the issues that arise when we move the already complex classroom environment to the World Wide web.

Daniel Anderson would like to focus on the web environment with two narratives.
The first narrative discusses the development of a web message forum	The second narrative treats the modification of an addlink script for a web server.

*Joi Chevalier would like to focus on the intersections of web environment and MU environment with two narratives.**
Using WWW message forums to generate MU* projects and assignments.	Using the WWW to further analysis of rhetoric and contexts.

We're also interested in what people think of the web as a hypertext.
We're prompted to ask this question after reading Stuart Moulthrop's Hypertext '96 Trip Report. Moulthrop's report is informative throughout, but his reflection on his own panel, especially the perspective of Michael Joyce, issues an important agenda item for our discussion of the web environment. Moulthrop reports on Joyce's critique: [The Web is] about advertisement and self-promotion. It's isolating and onanistic. Its links are pure deferral, pointing nowhere but elsewhere and always back to what was there before, not along a reciprocal track to what has come after. The Web is a hierarchy, not a true network -- not a maze of treasures but a trivial cascade. We do need to view the Web critically. We might use Joyce's definitions of exploratory and constructive hypertexts. Put crudely, constructive hypertexts allow readers to modify them. They are capable of evolving with the interactions of the reader. In this context, I'm interested in the depiction of web links as deferral, as pointing backward instead of reciprocally forward and backward. Perhaps we can whittle the complaint into a question and share it here: is the Web a constructive hypertext?

We're also interested in what people think of the web as a hypertext.

We're prompted to ask this question after reading Stuart Moulthrop's Hypertext '96 Trip Report. Moulthrop's report is informative throughout, but his reflection on his own panel, especially the perspective of Michael Joyce, issues an important agenda item for our discussion of the web environment. Moulthrop reports on Joyce's critique:

[The Web is] about advertisement and self-promotion. It's isolating and onanistic. Its links are pure deferral, pointing nowhere but elsewhere and always back to what was there before, not along a reciprocal track to what has come after. The Web is a hierarchy, not a true network -- not a maze of treasures but a trivial cascade.

We do need to view the Web critically. We might use Joyce's definitions of exploratory and constructive hypertexts. Put crudely, constructive hypertexts allow readers to modify them. They are capable of evolving with the interactions of the reader. In this context, I'm interested in the depiction of web links as deferral, as pointing backward instead of reciprocally forward and backward. Perhaps we can whittle the complaint into a question and share it here: is the Web a constructive hypertext?

Teaching __

Theory __

Interact __

MU* __

Web__

Opening Screen

This classroom is brought to you by
Daniel Anderson

Joi Lynne Chevalier
The Computer Writing and Research Laboratory
The University of Texas at Austin

We teach and learn in complex environments. This section addresses some of the issues that arise when we move the already complex classroom environment to the World Wide web.

This classroom is brought to you by Daniel Anderson Joi Lynne Chevalier The Computer Writing and Research Laboratory The University of Texas at Austin

This classroom is brought to you by
Daniel Anderson

Joi Lynne Chevalier
The Computer Writing and Research Laboratory
The University of Texas at Austin