One feature that could be borrowed from traditional text reading and implemented in hypertext or hypermedia would be the ability to isolate the line being read. Often times readers, especially those who struggle, will use their finger, a piece of paper, or a bookmark to help them stay on the line they are reading and not look at upcoming text. I know from personal experiences that when a site is very text heavy it is difficult to focus on keeping your place when reading a computer screen. While I do not know that it is available for general consumption, the Promethean Board in my classroom has had me thinking about this for a while. It has a tool called “shade” that is meant to keep information confidential until the teacher is ready to reveal it. I think that by creating some sort of an application that will act as a “shade” there could be a black layer over the text that is removed when the reader clicks to activate the next line of text. This would help to take away distractions that may be further down on the page.
Another idea would be to highlight the reader’s current line of text. Often my students will use “windows” to help them read. These windows are made out of a translucent yellow film that makes the text underneath it appear highlighted. If an implementation of this concept was created, it could look like the line of text is bolded or highlighted, causing the eye to focus on that line, rather than the links, graphics, etc. below.
Finally, a feature that could be borrowed would be a link to the glossary or index on the bottom of each page. By putting this on each page, the reader would have the opportunity to click the link and be instantly taken to the index or glossary of the book. Just as one can do with a paper text, the internet version would allow the reader to flip to the page, click the back button, and be back to where they started without much work. This could help to make the process a little more “normal”.
I also love the idea of a shade--but one of the reasons it worked in my classroom was that I was controlling it. I'm not sure how many skills it would require for students to be fluent at using it well. I have similar questions about the use of these "windows." Trying to figure out how that kind of highlighting would work is beyond me technically--although I do agree that finding some way of scaffolding the reading experience is definitely important--especially as we think about how beginning readers--and beginning readers of hypertext--engaging with websites.
ReplyDeleteI've seen some websites that do a good job of indexing and organizing their pages, more from the use of framed link bars on the left and top of the page than the bottom, like the TC homepage (although it disappears as you get into some of the interior pages...). These kind of bars help organize me as a reader, and are also helpful in navigating back and forth within the material. While it's not quite as good (at least any that I've seen) in terms of matching the ways you can randomly access information in a text, a well organized and well scaffolded website can provide much of the same information.