Introduction

In this chapter I will discuss Aaron, who, at the time of the study was an eighth grader at Riverton Middle School and in my language arts class.  This chapter will investigate how Aaron learned to compose hypertext, and will follow his composing processes through his study project on the Twentieth Century. It is important to understand how Aaron learned to compose hypertext documents in order to gain some insight into the processes he used when he composed the hypertext web that this chapter focuses on.

I will follow Aaron’s accumulative learning process as he negotiates and gains control of hypertext and his own hypertext composing processes.  This accumulative process involved play, exploration, attempts at controlling his processes and failures to do so, although the word “failure” is misleading.  In order to gain more and more control over his hypertext composing processes, Aaron had to have less successful experiences in order to build not only his procedural knowledge of hypertext, but his conceptual knowledge.  Such experiences should not be perceived as less valuable, or even as failures.  Indeed, they became not so much failures but places upon which Aaron decided to grow as a writer. Each time Aaron composed a hypertext web he was able to increase the complexity of the new web based on his experience with the previous one.
I will will investigate whether Aaron used a heightened sense of textuality in order to compose his documents.  I will also investigate whether Aaron experienced high levels of engagement and agency during the composing processes, and whether these three elements, textuality, engagement, and agency were enabled by the hypertext composing space.

As mentioned earlier, Aaron, at the time of the study, was a high spirited, popular eighth grade boy at Riverton Middle School.  I chose Aaron for the study because he seemed so enthusiastic about designing web pages, and his enthusiasm never flagged, even when he had difficulties understanding the nature of linked text. He also showed a great deal of growth between his first two web experiences and his study project, and because some of his struggles continued to show up in his study project, his means of controlling his emerging text was interesting to observe and valuable, I thought, because of those struggles.
Aaron was enthusiastic about many things, actually.  He played football and ran track and was considered a “spark plug” by his coaches.  Aaron was inquisitive and seldom seemed afraid to ask questions. He often seemed to have difficulty sitting in one position for very long, which is not unusual for middle school students.  Aaron’s mother grew up in Riverton and went through the public school system.  Aaron himself went to kindergarten in Riverton.  Then his family moved to a neighboring district but returned when he was in fifth grade.

Aaron had used computers before and had searched for information several times on the internet, either at friends’ houses or for a class project, but he did not have a computer at home.  He had also done some word processing in his previous language arts classes.  But it seemed to me that Aaron had had little experience reflecting on multi-linear text structure before he entered my classroom in the fall.  That does not mean that he had never experienced multi-linear text.  He had played computer games as well as system games like Nintendo and Playstation, (Appendix B) examples of electronic multi-linear text, as well as many films and television programs. Murray points out that these can all be examples of multi-linear texts, as are magazines and encyclopedia (113-125).

When I taught students in Aaron’s class about hypertext, I initially showed them a program that created map views of hypertext webs.  This program, Story Space, published by Eastgate Systems, allows the writer to first create a map of the documents in a hypertext web.  I thought students might grasp the concept of linking better if they could create maps first.  Throughout the school year some students used Story Space as to create their webs, and others used it as a way to create a graphic organizer of their lexias.  This idea of a graphic organizer or hypertext map would be important in Aaron’s study project web composing processes.

Previous Hypertext Composing Experiences

This section will provide a brief description of Aaron’s first two hypertext projects and provide some insight into the ways in which Aaron seemed to initially negotiate hypertext composing.  It will also show the growing sophistication that Aaron acquired during these two composing experiences.  These early experiences can provide some insight into the processes Aaron used later during the study project.

Poetry Web

Figure 3.1. A screen shot of one of the lexias in Aaron’s poetry web.

Aaron’s first project was a poetry annotation project, and was the vehicle through which he learned the web editing software that was used during class—Netscape Composer.  Composer is a free, simple web-editing program that is free that can be downloaded with Netscape Communicator. Aaron chose to annotate a Nancy Wood poem entitled “Skeleton in Winter.”  He followed my suggestion that he use the poem as the opening screen in the hypertext web and make links from the poem to the lexias in the web. But Aaron seemed to have difficulties understanding the concept of linking.  He did not seem to struggle with the technology, the procedure of making a link.  Rather, he seemed to struggle when it came to deciding which words and phrases in his poem should become links, and using those words and phrases as prompts for future lexias.

In fact, this would become a major issue in Aaron's composing processes. This is hardly surprising, however, given the fact that hypertext, according to Landow and Delany is a new rhetorical form (3). And while it is true that Aaron had played electronic games and interacted with multi-linear texts in the form of some television and print materials, he had not been called upon to create those kinds of texts and reflect on them.  It is possible, of course, that Aaron wrote multi-linear texts prior to his experiences composing hypertext.  But he was not necessarily aware that he was doing so, and it did not appear that he believed he had any prior experiences with multi-linear texts.  Certainly he had never created any electronic multi-linear texts prior to his eighth grade year.

The forms of writing that Aaron used more often were school forms—narratives upon command, short answers to questions, practice letters to a fictional employer.  These often inauthentic writing contexts may have distanced Aaron from actively or deliberately engaging in the kind of thinking that can happen during hypertext composing.  Bolter believes that hypertext “reflects the mind as a web of verbal and visual elements in a conceptual space”(25).  But most school writing tasks seem more ritualized than the form of writing Bolter discusses.

Ong talks about autonomous discourse as being fixed by ritual (83).  The Delphic Oracle, for example, was not speaking for himself or herself, but for the god.  The order of utterances, and the utterances themselves were not the act of the speaker, but of something else.  Ong reminds us that Socrates, through Plato, warns that writing is outside the mind.  Ong goes on to say that computers, too, create a writing that is outside the mind. I would suggest that many school writing tasks also enable a writing that is perhaps further outside the mind, outside the real of the authentic and the contextualized.  They enable a writing that is not often so much valued by the person who creates it as much as the person who receives it—the teacher.  Ong again reminds us that speech requires a give and take between participants, but he also reminds us that though writing relies on a tool, and is thus “artificial,” it does not degrade thought.  It enhances it (83).  That, of course, is why teachers assign writing, in hopes of enhancing student thought.  The problem with most school writing tasks is that students are disengaged.  The context of school makes the act of writing inauthentic or, as Ong uses the term, autonomous.  The student is not in control of the writing.  The teacher is.  Or the institution is.

And Vygotsky, though writing about pre-school aged children, echoes something similar in his call for writing tasks that engage students.  He writes:

... teaching should be organized in such a way that reading and writing are necessary for something.  If they are used only to write official greetings to the staff or whatever the teacher thinks up (and clearly suggests to them), then the exercise will be purely mechanical and may soon bore the child; his activity will not be manifest in his writing and his budding personality will not grow.  Reading and writing must be something the child needs ... writing must be "relevant to life" - in the same way that we require a "relevant" arithmetic. A second conclusion, then, is that writing should be meaningful for children, that an intrinsic need should be aroused in them, and that writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant for life.  (117-8)

My assumptions that Aaron was wasting time were incorrect.  And my assumptions may have transferred to Aaron. For example, Aaron commented in class that he did not like his poetry project because he did not feel he had created a very good web.  I believe he “learned” that from me because I chided him for not having enough of his lexias done, for spending too much time finding graphics, and for limited his annotations to the definition of terms in the poem he chose. Those were inaccurate assumptions on my part, and it is important to briefly point those out here.  The time that Aaron spent opening an e-mail account and searching for graphics provided important lessons for him in his quest to learn more about electronic text.  These early experiences were nothing more than textual play, important textual play that provided an excellent and fertile space for Aaron to grow his knowledge about text in general, and hypertext specifically.

And my teacher-ish behavior perhaps prompted Aaron to delete his first project from the school server.  If his teacher did not value it, then he may have believed it was value-less to him as well.  Though Aaron did not believe his web was very good, it is important to point out that he learned much of the procedural knowledge necessary to make web pages in the course of composing his poetry web.  He learned to find images and insert them into his lexias.  He learned to use color. And he gained his first experience in deliberately and physically making associations between chunks of text.  Below is a screen shot of a lexia Aaron included in his first web.  It is a good example of the lexias Aaron composed because it provides a definition of one of the words in the Nancy Wood poem he selected to annotate.  Most of Aaron’s lexias contained definitions of words used in the poem.

Figure 3.2.  Here Aaron has defined the word “petroglyph” (sic) in his poetry annotation.

Notice that the image and the text on the page seem to go together, as does the title “Petroglyphs 1.”  But also notice that the background, a snowflake pattern, is in keeping with the title of the poem Aaron chose—“Skeleton in Winter.”  We can see in this early attempt that Aaron is thinking about the relationships between images and text and that he is extending those relationships beyond the boundaries of his opening text or lexia.

Recall that Aaron spent much of his class time looking for images, checking his e-mail, and exploring the internet for topics that were not seemingly related to his project. As mentioned earlier, Aaron seemed to learn a great deal about the computer through “off task play.” Initially I did not realize how valuable this play was.  But play, according to Gretchen Owocki (1999) creates what Vygotsky refers to as a “zone of proximal development” where children experience a challenge that in some way allows them to restructure their schemas (12).  The play that Aaron engaged in, setting up an e-mail account for himself, corresponding through that e-mail account, and skimming, diving into, and leaving internet sites that did not initially seem related to his project, ultimately seemed to help Aaron become more comfortable with electronic text.

I see this play as necessary textual play.  And though it was not officially related to what we were doing in class, it provided a fertile space in which Aaron increased his experience and expertise with electronic text.

Biography Web

Figure 3.3. The opening screen of Aaron’s biography web on Andrew Jackson.

Aaron's second project involved selecting a famous American and creating a web site about that person.
The biography project was a joint history and language arts project where students selected a biography to read.  They were given class time to read in both their history and language arts classes.  The history teachers also gave students a packet that guided them in taking notes and that helped them organize their notes.  The language arts teachers all used various supports.  In my classes, students responded to their reading a response journal where they reflected on what they were reading.  From a set of generic questions, students chose one that was appropriate for that day's response, and wrote roughly one hand-written page.  My students also responded in their journals about the processes they saw themselves using as they composed their hypertext webs.

Aaron chose to read a biography about Andrew Jackson and then create a hypertext web about him. Unlike the poetry web project where a poem provided a “jumping off place” for the reader and writer, the biography web required that students think of broad topic headings and create lexias that linked off those headings.  When Aaron and I conferred about his web, I saw that he had created links to various lexias from his opening screen, and from those individual screens back to his opener.  But he was having difficulties trying to determine where else he could create links.  Again, Aaron understood the procedure for linking text, but, as with his earlier web, he did not seem to understand that hypertext allowed him greater organizational freedom.
I had told the class that their lexias needed, on average, to have three links. One of those links could return the reader to the opening screen, but the other two links should give the reader a way to move into the web.  I stressed that students should look for relationships between pieces of text, and anticipate that their texts would link and to plan accordingly.

Aaron seemed to have difficulty writing pieces of text that would have to later link to either something he had already written, or something that he had yet to write.  And it seemed that he had difficulties finding common threads or themes in the information he had on Jackson.

Remember that the hypertext link is a crucial element in a hypertext web.  It moves the reader from one space in the web to another.  It can make windows appear, disappear, or rearrange themselves so that the destination text comes to the front of the screen and captures the reader's attention" (Bolter 70).  It is the link that creates what Landow refers to as "open bordered text” (Convergence 61).  Indeed it is the link that creates and supports the network of lexias.
But it was this concept of linked text that Aaron continued to have difficulty with.  The writing conference with Aaron seemed to be helpful and within the next few days he created a number of links in his individual lexias, and he was able to write more lexias that anticipated some of the links he wanted to make.  But Aaron's links were organized on his opening lexia in chronological order.

It is important to point out that there is nothing wrong in organizing information in a web in chronological order.  In fact, some cognitivists believe that hierarchically overviewed hypertexts allow for easier navigation (Dee-Lucas 86).  But it did not seem at the time that Aaron was organizing his opening page and his web with an audience other than himself in mind.  He was organizing text in a way that seemed logical to him, based on his previous experience with text, and based on his previous experience with text about the historical figure he was writing about--Andrew Jackson.

I again conferred with Aaron to discuss his progress on his biography web and realized that he was still having difficulty with the multi-linear aspect of hypertext. He had revised his lexia or overview and added broad categories for the reader to click on: Family, Friendship, Achievements, and Politics.  The screen shot below is one version of the opening lexia.  Aaron continued to revise his web until all his lexias used the same background image and the same color scheme.  This shows a growing sophistication on Aaron’s part regarding web composing, as well as the ability to turn a single image into a background image.

Figure 3.4.  A screen shot of Aaron’s opening of his Andrew Jackson web. Notice that Aaron has organized his links in chronological order, and that he has explained what can be found in his lexias in a chronological list below the links.

Aaron’s journal entry reflects that growing sophistication.  He wrote:

First of all I am making a big web of information about Andrew Jackson. I have lexias that link off of other lexias. For example, I have an opening page that has 4 categories.  Family, hardships, achievements, and poletics (sic).  I have a number of dates after the events of his life that link off to other lexias and tell more information on it. I plan to make more lexias & make all of them have pictures and backgrounds (Appendix C).

Notice that Aaron, though he had included labels for broad categories of information, followed those labels with dates in chronological order.  Aaron probably included the labels out of a desire to please me, his teacher, and out of a desire to get a good grade.  Aaron ultimately took the dates off his opening lexia when I told him he did not have to provide a link to every lexia on his opening screen.  This surprised him and told me that Aaron was still with the tension between what he instinctively knew about multi-linear text and how to represent it. Though Aaron now had an opening screen that gave an overview of particular aspects of Andrew Jackson’s life, his lexias all bore the title of the year in which many of the events happened.
Though Aaron had difficulty envisioning alternative ways of organizing the texts within his hypertext web, he had learned several key elements of web design during this second web authoring experience.  All his lexias had the same background and he used the same colors in his text through the web.  This showed a growing sophistication in the way he composed his text and the design elements he was considering as part of his composing process.
In his final journal entry regarding his Andrew Jackson web, Aaron wrote:
Last week I did a lot of changes.  I basically kept the same information but switched it all all (sic) around.  I changed a lot of my links as well.
What I would do differently is I would plan all my stuff out on paper before I type any of it. And the only things I’d do different is let you [the teacher] look over it before I start typing (appendix C).

The Study Project
 

Invention and Drafting Strategies
Topic Selection	Selected topic that would provide enough lexias to create what he had been taught was a good web.
Pre-writing	Read a book about key momens in the 20th Century
Control	Composed first in a spiral notebook noting linking words and destinations at the bottom of the page
Links
Placement	At the bottom of his written text on each lexia
Destination	To chronologically "next" key moment in the 20th Century, to the "previous" even, and "home" to his opening screen.
Layout and Design
Text Placement	Written text placed between two ornamental horizontal boars--one "flag-like" and the other "leafy."
Image Placement	No images used
Background	Background image used that included flag and Statue of Liberty
Engagement Levels	Worked during lunch and at home. Found Web composing "fun."
Home Computer Access	None

Figure 3.5. An overview of Aaron’s web composing processes.

I will divide this section of this chapter into the various stages of the writing process, but I do not want to convey the idea that the writing process is a series of lock steps.  Rather it is an ever-changing recursive process that spirals back and forth upon itself according to the needs and wishes of the writer as she or he interacts with the emerging text. I will provide descriptions of the way in which Aaron used such a process to compose his Twentieth Century Web, and that his process included invention and drafting, revision, editing, and publication.  And I will provide descriptions of the way in which graphics, color, and links became a vital part of Aaron’s text.

Invention and drafting

As seen in Aaron’s journal entry earlier, he had already begun planning his next web. It was within a few days after Aaron wrote journal entry that he finished his Andrew Jackson biography web and began a new, unassigned web that he planned to show at a student technology showcase in Grand Rapids. I had received an invitation from the Michigan Association of Computer Users and Learners (MACUL) to be part of their first Student Technology Showcase.  Aaron was very excited about this invitation.  I could only take eight students to the showcase, and Aaron wanted to be one of those students.  With that in mind, he decided to compose a new web.

It is important to understand that any act of composing is situated within a larger cultural and social framework.  Aaron’s initial hypertext composing itself was situated in a larger context that brought together all of Aaron’s language learning as well as his experiences with text and his experiences using text to mediate meaning.  Aaron’s experiences within the culture of his eighth grade language arts classroom also provided a context for his textual negotiations with hypertext.  The atmosphere in the classroom allowed students to share ideas, teach each other, celebrate successes, and share frustrations.  All of this plus the on-going dialogue Aaron engaged in with his emerging texts, with himself as author and reader, provided a Vygotskian history from which Aaron could inform this new composing activity.

Aaron was very eager to participate in this student showcase, and decided to use his previous experiences with web composing to inform a new web.  He was aware that linking was a problem for him in his previous webs and so he decided to choose a topic that would make it easier for him to create links.  To do this, Aaron decided he needed to pick a topic that had “events and stuff” (Appendix B).  Aaron, in his post project interview, said that he thought his Andrew Jackson web was “kind of boring.”  He explained that for his new web he “wanted something that had more subjects and stuff” (Appendix B). And so he chose the Twentieth Century as the topic for his new web.

We could say, then, that Aaron chose a topic based on the discursive form he would be using and on his beliefs about his anticipated audience. These are important elements in any writing process, especially if we consider Aaron’s previous hypertext composing experiences as rehearsals for this particular project.  Donald Graves talks about “rehearsal” as preparation for composing.  We could consider that Aaron’s previous hypertext compositions informed him that he needed to choose a topic that he believed would allow him to link blocks of text.  Graves points out that “conscious rehearsal accompanies the decision to write” (Fresh Look 75), and though Aaron did not rehearse in any of the ways that Graves illustrates (drawing, list making, outlining, etc), he nevertheless sifted through a number of possibilities before he chose his topic and, the fact that he would be creating a hypertext web affected his decision regarding his topic.

In a brief pre-writing conversation regarding topic, I asked Aaron if he had any special interests.  He first thought about a sports related topic, but quickly dismissed it.  Our conversation ended without Aaron selecting a topic, but he arrived at school the next day and announced that he had found a topic he believed he could work with—the twentieth century.  In his post-project interview Aaron said he had read a book about the twentieth century and made his decision based on that reading experience (Appendix B). It is also important to note that Aaron chose his topic at the beginning of the year 2000 when there was a great deal of media attention on the millennium and retrospectives on the twentieth century.

And so, Aaron chose his topic.  He began giving up his lunch period to work on his new web about the twentieth century.  It was Aaron’s general custom to eat his lunch quickly so he could spend the rest of his lunch period playing basketball or talking with friends.  But he decided that he wanted to work on his Twentieth Century Web instead, so as soon as he finished eating his lunch he would come up to the computer lab and work. Aaron of course had the extrinsic reward of Grand Rapids working on his motivation.  But he also seemed to have become more comfortable with hypertext technology.  It is interesting that though Aaron seemed to have initial difficulties with the technology and the concept of hypertext, he was so engaged in the act of composing hypertext documents that he was willing to give up socializing with his friends in order to work on his web.  This speaks a great deal to the powerful engagement that hypertext seemed to generate in all three of the study subjects.  Recall that Dene Grigar found that her college students experienced a high degree of engagement when creating a hypertext web related to Gertrude Stein’s “Tender Buttons.”

Aaron had eight weeks to work on his Twentieth Web, yet he worked on his web at home, and during his lunch period at school.  It is telling that this particular web project was not assigned.  Aaron, rather than using his Andrew Jackson web as part of the showcase in Grand Rapids, wanted to create a new web that he thought would be better than his previous webs.  Somehow, the composing of a hypertext web took on a value of its own in Aaron's eyes.  In his post-project interview, Aaron said that hypertext composing was “fun” (Appendix B).  The crucial element of play had once again become part of Aaron’s composing processes.
As he had indicated in the journal entry he wrote just prior to concluding his Andrew Jackson web, Aaron said he would plan future webs on paper before he began composing.

“…I would plan all my stuff out on paper before I type any of it” (Appendix B).  For Aaron this meant that he would hand write all of his lexias before he keyed them into a computer.  But it also meant that he would create a map of his web before he began keying it in.  Remember that I had taught Aaron’s class to create a map in Story Space.  Aaron did not use Story Space for his Twentieth Century web. He hand drew a map instead.  Aaron used his hand drawn map to help him keep track of his individual lexias, the links on those lexias, and their destinations.  The composing of this map is further evidence that Aaron spent considerable time planning his web.

Aaron composed his entire web first in a spiral notebook, devoting each page in the notebook to a lexia. It is important to remember that Aaron did not have a computer at home, so all of his computer time had to be spent at school.  Aaron, in his post project interview, said that part of the reason why he wrote his lexias out by hand was so that he could use his school time for keying in his lexias (Appendix B).  To him, it was more efficient to do part of his inventing and drafting at home.  He did not do this with his earlier webs, however, which speaks again to Aaron’s level of engagement in this web project and to his growing sophistication in hypertext composing.  His previous projects were composed entirely at the keyboard.  But what is significant is that as Aaron invented and drafted “by hand,” he also thought about how he was going to link the lexia he was working on with future lexias.  I will discuss the possible significance of composing lexias “by hand,” in chapter 6.

Aaron saw the keying-in process of his lexias as a space in which he could revise.  But Aaron’s revision processes also involved drafting, especially when we think of images and color as elements of the hypertext composition.  Aaron’s hand-written lexias were all done very lightly in pencil.  There was no color except for
the blue horizontal lines, the red vertical line, and the white paper. Though Aaron invented and composed his lexias “by hand,” I observed that Aaron had become more comfortable with computer technology. It was beginning to disappear.
 

Figure 3.6. One of the pages in Aaron’s spiral notebook where he hand-wrote his lexias before keying them into a web editor.

By this I mean that Aaron seemed to use the computer as a smart tool that could give him access to huge amounts of information and it could help him coalesce that information into something that he made his own.  But he no longer had to think deliberately about the procedure of linking and procedure of harvesting pictures and inserting them into his web.  These had become second nature to him.  They were merely (and not so merely) part of his natural composing processes.  When I observed Aaron using the keyboard during his Twentieth Century web composing, he was confident and very focused.  He knew what he needed to do, and he somewhat joyfully went about the task of doing it.  He no longer played with e-mail or surfed the World Wide Web.  That is, he did not surf the web randomly looking for interesting sites.  He surfed looking for information and graphics that could serve his purposes as a writer.  The work had become meaningful play.  Some of that may be because he was merging an older technology into his composing processes, but some of it can be attributed to the fact that he had simply gained in experience with electronic text.

The fact that Aaron composed his lexias by hand at first should not be interpreted as a sign that he was moving away from the technology of electronic text and hypertext in particular.  In fact, Aaron considered this aspect of his writing process necessary, but not particularly enjoyable (Appendix B).  What he truly enjoyed was sitting at the computer and putting all the elements of his lexias together.

When Aaron said that web composing was fun, I asked him why.  He said “Like when I think all this stuff up and actually put it together and it makes sense and stuff.  I can click on something and it goes to it, a subject that relates to it” (Appendix B).

It is important to point out, again, that Aaron composed these hand-written lexias with the idea of linking in mind.  At the bottom of each hand written lexia he indicated which future lexias he intended the present one to link to.  So, even though Aaron was not initially composing through electronic text, he was anticipating the future hypertextuality of his work.

And one of the key elements in Aaron’s processes was the way in which he linked his text.  It is interesting to note how Aaron placed his links.  Remember, Aaron seemed to have difficulty envisioning a multi-linear web when he worked on his Andrew Jackson biography web project.  He placed all his links in chronological order.  And though he did not do that in his Twentieth Century web, he came close.  For example in his opening screen to his web, Aaron provides the reader with two link choices.  The reader can go to “The First World Series,” or the reader can go to a lexia that provides a “jumping off place” for a number of student web sites.  Aaron labels that as Ms. Patterson’s website.”

Figure 3.7.  Aaron explains how to read his web. Note that he has created “next page” instructions and “previous page” instructions.

 In providing only these choices, Aaron leads the reader to only one lexia within is site, a lexia that deals with what Aaron considered the first important event in the Twentieth Century—the first world series.  His second screen, as shown below, gives the reader three choices.  But the reader can only move ahead chronologically to the next important event—the first music, or back to the world series.

Figure 3.8.  Aaron gives the reader the choice of moving to the “next” lexia, moving to the “previous” one, or going “home.”

Each lexia in Aaron’s Twentieth Century Web gives the reader a choice of moving up one spot chronologically, moving back one spot, or going back to the opening screen of his website.  But notice that the opening screen does not provide the reader with many choices. Going home, so to speak, in Aaron’s website, does not provide the reader with much comfort or a new starting place for the reader.

So, Aaron’s Twentieth Century web does not indicate that Aaron has been able to resolve the tension between what he knows about multi-linear text and what he can represent.   But there are signs that he is moving in that direction.

In his Andrew Jackson biography web, Aaron treated his individual lexias as if they were sequential pages in a book.  In his Twentieth Century Web, he has begun to see that a reader can go forward and backward, if such terminology can be used when discussing hypertext, and home.  It is almost as if Aaron has to take small steps in his own learning processes in order to become accustomed to the multi-linear aspect of hypertext.

Remember that Aaron chose his topic with linking in mind.  He wanted to make sure he had a topic that would enable him to create lexias that could be linked.  But to get an idea of how Aaron went about that, we need to look again at his opening lexia. Notice the directions that Aaron gives his readers.  He writes:

In every page included in this series there are a variety of links to other pages of the web in the text of the page.  In most of the pages there will be three main links.  The pages are linked together by words that are colored in red.  The three main links located towards the middle at the bottom of the page, above the reference information are...

Title of next page; Which will be the title of the next web page of a different subject.
Title of previous page; Which will be the title of the previous page and it will lead you to the page you were just at.
Home; Which will lead you to the home page of this web.  This page is the home page (http://www.npatterson.net/adam/opener.html).

…then the reader wouldn’t have to follow a certain way to go to.  They could go to something else.  So they could pick on what they’re interested in instead, like…what they have to go to (Appendix B).

Figure 3.9.  A diagram of Aaron’s links in his 20th Century web that shows how he links to the next lexia, to the previous one, and to his “home” or opening screen.

In hypertext the role of the reader is enhanced.  Jay Bolter believes that the volatile and dynamic nature of hypertext causes the reader to lose track of where the author has left off and the reader has begun.  Remember that Murray believes hypertext readers feel a greater sense of control over their reading act because they can insert themselves into the text through a cursor, and through their abilities to click on a link that will take them to a new block of text.  Aaron, as a
writer, a writer bounded by the confines of an institution and the restrictions of his earlier school related literacy experiences with sequential, seemingly author/teacher controlled text, had difficulty conceiving of the possibility that the reader would gain as much control of his text as he did as the author.

What is truly interesting here, though perhaps not relevant for this study, is the fact that when Aaron composed his last web of the school year, on the Middle Passage that brought Africans as slaves to the Western Hemisphere, he placed links within the body of his text.  But he also placed images in each of the four corners of his lexia and made the images links to other lexias in the web.  Plus he gave his reader the option of going “home” to the opening lexia, or “back” to the previous lexia.  So, while Aaron still struggled with the multi-linear aspect of hypertext in the study project, he continued to think about that dynamic, and showed his developing awareness of it through his next web project.

It is important to discuss the role of images in Aaron’s hypertext composing. Snyder points out that hypertext merges the often separate worlds of words and pictures and, she says, “exposes our western cultural bias toward information which can be measured by pages and paragraphs comprised of words” (18).  Images, while generally considered to be valuable non-verbal conveyors of information in such media as film and video, are generally not privileged enough to accompany most scholarly text (Snyder 1996, 18).  And certainly middle school students are generally not asked to draw pictures to accompany their stories or essays.  Yet images are a very important part of a hypertext web.  And, indeed, hypertext is considered a “more” visual form.  Part of this has to do with the presence of a cursor in electronic text. But Snyder goes much further.  She states that “learning how to read, produce and exploit graphics constitutes one of a number of new demands imposed on users of technology” (18).  Aaron, it seems, was very willing to use graphics, to “exploit” graphics.

During the Andrew Jackson biography project, Aaron found images and backgrounds as he was composing the text that would go on each page.  As mentioned earlier, he had learned from me that a single background color or pattern would make his web more visually appealing, and he took that advice and not only applied it to his Andrew Jackson biography web, but included it in his plans for his Twentieth Century web.
In his journal he wrote:

First of all at home I’ve written down everything that I plan to put on my web.  I have my opener and acouple (sic) other pages to go with it.Today I typed my opener & my first page that links to it.  I put a background on both of them as well. I changed a few things, as I was typing. Like stuff that didn’t sound right. But I also changed the linking words I used (Appendix C).

  …to separate the page is why I did that, so people knew that was the title and that underneath that was the text and that underneath that icon is where the links would be, and extra information (Appendix B).

It is important to point out again that Aaron was using a recursive process to compose his Twentieth Century web.    He planned what he wanted in his lexias, and decided what his links were going to be.  He searched for and inserted graphics that he believed would enhance his lexias.  And he considered the format of his text and his audience as he composed.  He also continued to revise, invent, and compose throughout the process.

Janet Emig notes that a traditional approach to writing sees the process as linear, beginning with a planning stage and ending with either a final draft stage or a publishing stage.  Had Aaron used a linear writing process, he simply would have keyed his information into his lexias as he had written them at home with paper and pencil—without changes.  The fact that he changed his text, including his links, means that he felt comfortable as a writer, and willing to make changes as he, the writer, saw fit, and he did so within an electronic environment.

I see this as one way in which Aaron used a recursive writing process where the “stages” blur into each other.  I view this as an indication that Aaron had a sense of agency regarding his web.  He was no longer writing a document for a grade or because a teacher told him to.  He was writing a document for a real audience—one he anticipated would stop in the Riverton Middle School display booth at the technology showcase, and one that would view his text on the World Wide Web.  In fact, Aaron envisioned that audience.  He noted in his post-project interview that he saw his audience as “probably someone who likes history and who is, like younger.  Not an old person” (Appendix B).

Publishing

Remember that Aaron initially composed his Twentieth Century web for a technology showcase in Grand Rapids.  This showcase also featured a competition and Aaron and the other students who displayed their work hoped to receive an award for their display.  With that in mind they dressed up in period costumes that reflected their webs.  One boy dressed in full Native American dress, complete with head-dress.  One girl dressed as a World War I nurse to reflect her project on Clara Barton.  And Aaron dressed as an early twentieth century newsboy in knickers, short boots, and cap.

Upon return from Grand Rapids, after Aaron and the other students learned that they had not won an award, Aaron continued to work on his Twentieth Century Web in anticipation of it being published on the internet.  He was concerned about the size of the text he selected and concerned that all of the text be contained on the screen of the computer without the reader having to scroll down.  In other words, Aaron’s motivation and engagement with his web did not wane after the showcase event had ended.

In his dissertation Writer Motivation, Rhetorical Purpose and Classroom Web Publication Projects (1998), Bradford Barry found web based projects to nurture a high degree of intrinsic motivation among student writers.  Aaron seemed to certainly experience some of that instrinsic motivation that Barry discovered.

Conclusions

It was that motivation that surprised me most about Aaron.  I had not expected him to be so captivated by the act of composing hypertext webs.  I was surprised by his attention to detail, his desire to “get it right,” and by the amount of free time he was willing to give up in order to finish his web.  Hypertext seemed to provide a space in which Aaron could play with text.  And though Aaron had difficulties in making his 20th Century web more “hypertextual,” I could see that he was on his way to being able to add that kind of control in his next hypertext web.  And, indeed, he was able to accomplish this in his next web project on American Slavery.  The screen shot in Figure 3.9 is a lexia from Aaron’s last web project of the year.  Note the images in the corners.  Aaron made these links to other lexias in his web.  Notice also that he has included what I refer to as “intertextual links” in the written text of lexia.  And, note, too, that he has included links below his written text.

Figure 3.10. A lexia from Aaron’s last web project where he use “intertextual links.”
 

 But what also surprised me about Aaron’s composing processes was the fact that he wrote everything in a spiral notebook before he entered it in a web editor.  This indicates to me Aaron’s willingness to “get it right.”  He knew he had a better chance of controlling his processes if he used a more familiar technology and tracked his links and lexias “by hand.”  This suggests to me that Aaron was still most comfortable using paper and pencil technology, but that he was so engaged by web technology that he was willing to take the extra time he needed to take in order to control his processes.
 

Abstract

List of Figs

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Appendices

Wrks Cited