In the Chapter 13 of the textbook I discovered some things about hypermedia. First off, hyper means better (just tell that to the parent or teacher of a particularly hyper child). Secondly, I learned about hypermedia's strong relations to certain learning theories. I never thought of those little links in this way, but now it's so obvious how strongly it relates to constructivism and associated learning. As the book says, hypermedia "provides a multiplicity of potential learning paths, rather than just one." This seemed to pose such exciting possibilities for learning with hyperlinks, until I read further. I then realized that hypermedia can have negative effects, especially with students with lower cognitive maturities (either by age or intellect or both) and students with attention problems, namely ADD or AD/HD. It also can be detrimental when the links are poor. They may link to poorly designed websites, websites of questionable accuracy or no longer existant sites.
This topic reminded me of a program that I learned to use in high school--HyperStudio. It was a new program at the time and only a few students were enrolled in a class in which we learned how to use it. I found it to be very fun, but years later felt that PowerPoint was a much better resource. Now I realized that while HyperStudio was not as visually appealing as PowerPoint at that time, it's ability to work in a nonlinear by limited space was not to be underestimated.
This chapter also reminded me of a learning tool that I have never used, but should consider implementing in the future - an advance organizer. The idea of having these materials ready at the beginning of every math unit is a wonderful and exciting idea. It is something that I will surely keep in mind in the future.
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