Chapter 7 | Norman Question 2 | Hypertext

[Jake Montgomery]

Norman says, "The advent of hypertext is apt to make writing much more difficult, not easier." What are your thoughts on hypertext 10 years after Norman's statement?

[Vanessa Schott]

I personally find hypertext to be fine as long as it works and I don't have to write in HTML format.  :)  The WWW has become part of life as most know it and I find the fact I can save text documents and use them later when I need them to be efficient and easy.  Not all people find the use of hypertext as I do but I think the implementation of hyperlinks have aided in finding additional information when needed to be convenient as well.

[Melania Piedra Barrera]

I think writing is difficult with or without the hypertext if you don´t have a clear idea of how to organize the information in a way that you are able to transmit what you want to say.  

That being said, the hypertext it´s just another way to organize that information and additionally gives the chance to provide other resources to the reader: access to websites related to the topic, definitions of the words, videos, etc.

I am surprised that he hasn´t release a new edition of this book, it would be interesting to see the differences of opinion 10 years later, not only related with the hypertext but with other devices such as smartphones. 

[abartleKU]

I think hypertext is an accepted norm today that learners and readers have become accustomed to. I use hypertext in lessons that have activities and additional information that may be helpful to the learner. One example is an activity that requires the learner to solve a problem based on a scenario. The student clicks on the link to view the scenario. Another example is to provide resource information.Work and learning is blurred for many learners in the workplace, so on line performance support systems that incorporate hypertext is an example of a useful function of hypertext, by providing links to content that the worker does not frequently use or need to have memorized.  There are so many different ways that hypertext is used. They can be overused for sure and when that occurs, they can hinder learning.  

[sandra vega carrero]

Well, 10 years ago, Norman predicted something that is happening today: “In hypertext, actual numbered footnotes will not be needed, but some sort of signal is still required. With hypertext, the signal that more information is available can be given through color, motion, or typeface” p.213. Nowadays, on the web, we find thousand of text with hypertexts and they have that signal he was talking about: underlined words, highlighted, hotspots, and reactive areas, that help the reader to identify the hypertext.

I wanted to recall what I just said because I don’t think he was totally negative to the use of hypertext. At least that is the idea I got out of the whole text, maybe I can be wrong. J Having that said, my thoughts about hypertext are that of course requires more work from the writer, but it provides more independence to the reader. It allows him to choose what things does he/she want to go deeper or not.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 5:43:43 PM UTC-6, Jake Montgomery wrote:

[Jake Montgomery]

I think you really nailed it with "if you don't have a clear idea of how to organize the information" part. Planning is key with good writing whether or not it is hypertext.

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 10:31:50 PM UTC-6, Melania Piedra Barrera wrote:

[Jake Montgomery]

That's one thing that's great about a lot of technology, you can commonly skip over extraneous information.