Hyper mediated forms of teaching can erase the geographical barriers of the formal institution of print.

Words

in print

permanent

object

touchable

solid

representation

of thought

visible

The onslaught of electronic media is the downfall of students' ability to focus, read, and comprehend. The need for immediacy is replacing contemplation and insight. The old form of print is boring to this generation of children. They want the bells and whistles.

Disadvantages:

1. Cumbersome size of computers ... not portable or tactile
2. Can't read in bed (or by the pool)
3. Only the privileged can afford two monitors to make use of Intermedia features
4. Children are aquiring a fragmented sense of time-current news and history seems too immediate, current, happening now

Advantages:

1. Some programs (Storyspace & Intermedia) allow changes in font for easier reading
2. Easier access to footnote/endnotes through pop-ups
3. Notes can be longer (full essays can be accessed)
4. Some programs provide space for user to make notes
5. Increased global awareness-the breakdown of geographical boundaries

The way in which information is delivered has an effect on how it is received ... (the methodical turning of pages allows time to soak up information) today our problem is not with accessibility of information, but with the proliferation of it. With the bombardment, the reader can only retain bits and pieces.

Navigational procedures: how do you move around in infinity without getting lost? The structuring of the space can be so compelling and confusing as to utterly absorb the narrator and to exhaust the reader. And there is a related problem of filtering. With an unstable text that can be intruded upon by other author-readers, how do you, caught in the maze, avoid the trivial? How do you duck the garbage? Venerable novelistic values like unity, integrity, coherence, vision, voice, seem to be in danger. Eloquence is being redefined. "Text" has lost its canonical certainty. How does one judge, analyze, write about a work that never reads the same way twice?