Marian Faulkner

Hypermedia Documents

Hypermedia Documents

The study of cultures lends itself nicely to creative and multi-layered projects in which students are given guidance as to which basic information should be included, but are encouraged to follow their interests and explore all types of information.  Within the foreign language classroom, I see hypermedia documents as a way to integrate technology while continuing to foster understanding and knowledge of other countries and cultures.  Hypermedia documents are cards or screen displays that offer information in a multimedia format and have additional links to further related information.  Instead of students creating a posterboard presentation of information about a country, bringing a CD with music from that country and sharing other pictures or artifacts with their classmates, students can use hypermedia documents to present all this information and more on one display screen with links to music, pictures, and more. 

In the article, The Evolution of Critical Standards As Students Design Hypermedia Documents by Erickson and Lehrer, they discuss how middle school students used this approach in social studies classes and how critical standards developed with respect to hypermedia design as well as questioning skills and information gathering (1998).  They make the point that it is both creation of a final product and the learning process that are important.  Through their research study which lasted two years, they found after the first year improvements in designing research questions occured and after the second year students were able to reflect on and discuss the value of research questions.  Over the two years the design of the cards also changed from simple information presentation to an approach with more communication with the intended audience.  As this study was done with 6th and 7th graders, it is my hope that 11th and 12th graders may be more advanced in the area of developing research questions (not fact, hope) and through concentrated lessons on what is worthy of investigating may move to the reflection and discussion stage more quickly.  Erickson notes how difficult it is to create and continue this type of learning environment with student inquiry steering the class.  I believe I have a few things working in my favor with implementing an environment such as this with projects like hypermedia documents.  I often teach students for more than one year.  I teach Spanish 2, 3, and 4, so I often teach students twice and some even three times.  The opportunity to establish this type of environment as students take Spanish 2 would help to insure level 3 and 4 students are more prepared for student-based inquiry, discussion and reflection.  I also have more flexibility with integrating technology and making changes to my classroom environment because my students are not tested on an End-Of-Course State Test, although most go on to college and must take a placement test and further language courses.  Early in this course we discussed how strategy matters, not the hardware or software.  I could see a teacher saying hypermedia documents sound great and giving the students the assignment to make one on a country or culture (I could have seen myself doing that a few years ago), but the importance for student growth lies in the teacher making the process worthwhile and teaching students how to learn in a way they can translate to other disciplines and to life learning.  The Erickson article speaks to that idea, so I found it important not just to discuss the tool, but the learning environment that should accompany it. 

In the courses I teach I hope to work more towards the type of environment where cultures are taught with student-inquiry at the forefront.  In my Spanish 4 classes I have always had students choose a country and do weekly projects in Spanish on different aspects of that country (history, people, plants, animals, travel, music, food, etc.) culmunating in a final paper which brings it all together.  I would love to start using hypermedia documents for this semester long project.  A card could been done for each week's project and the final week students would show how it all comes together through links, ordering of cards, and overall design.  Then their final paper would be one of reflection on the project and what they have learned instead of rewriting projects into a paper. 

Posted at 11:36AM Jun 18, 2006 by mrfaulkn in General  |  Comments[0]