Meg's Learning Essay

Over the course of ten weeks, I went from being a completely non-tech savvy twenty-one year old who avoided technology at all costs, to a slightly more tech savvy near-college graduate who comfortably added Dreamweaver to her resume list of computer skills. Using Dreamweaver, creating an avatar in Second Life and manipulating film in iMovie were all acutely uncomfortable experiences for me, but were nonetheless engagements that substantially improved my technological literacy and comfort on the computer.

My first hypertext examines Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that I play, through the social lens of Capoeira creating community. Beginning with a personally meaningful and familiar topic eased some of the Dreamweaver learning curve growing pains. Composing this first, non-academic (though still research intensive) website was slightly easier than my later attempts to hypertexually discuss an academic topic. The nature of capoeira—an art with a rich history and a complex place in Brazilian and international society—lent itself well to a hypertext. Natural tangents in capoeira’s story begged for exploration and hypertextual writing allowed me to explore these tangents better than would have a traditional text.

The second hypertext project, an academic look at childhood online, was much more difficult to write in an efficient hypertextual manner. The rigidity of the academic writing, and the wealth of literature on the subject, made it difficult to find an angle to work with. My first draft was a rigid navigation bar-driven design that failed to engage the reader. Attempting to impose structure on a broad an unstructured discourse community was a challenge. I eventually decided to limit my discussion just a small selection of sources and create a structure that made sense within that microcosm. My second draft flowed much more like a hypertext, with second and third layers of content buried underneath the central navigation. I wrote the annotated bibliography and review of the literature after creating the website (odd, I know) which both worked and did not work. In order to substantially address the many aspects of the online childhood debate, I reviewed literature throughout the process as I would notice content gaps in my discussion.

I strategically chose my topic for the final civic engagement project: Urban Forests: Remembering City Trees. Writing the website on a personally meaningful issue supported by strong research and literature allowed me to combine the best aspects of the previous two projects. The topic, replete with tangential content, worked well in hypertext form. Also, I was more familiar with existing academic literature on the subject; I had a pre-existing mental map of the discourse community that significantly simplified the organization process.

I hope that my third website can bring attention to a much-neglected topic of great importance: urban forests. The phrase itself, “urban forests,” sounds bizarre, foreign. It sounded strange to me until I applied for a job in urban forestry and learned about the ever-present, ever-disregarded trees in our city centers. Having recently undergone the transformation from beginner to reasonably well-informed urban forest enthusiast, I attempted to create a website that could facilitate that process for others. My website is tailored for beginners, for readers with little previous exposure to the benefits of urban forests.

At first, the idea of hypertextual writing seemed simpler than traditional academic writing. I thought: Great! A writing style perfectly suited to the tangential, chaotic functioning of my mind. After completing three hypertext projects, I have come to the realization that hyptertextual writing is, in fact, demanding of internal organization. Exploration and tangents are supported, but without internal organization, the reader becomes lost in an unappealing maze of TMI: Too Much Information.

Other classroom experiences, using Second Life to film a machinima, writing and editing screenplays and reading extensively on the possibilities of internet-mediated culture (including organization-less organizations, and technology-centered education in both academic and fictionalized forms) were enriching experiences that broadened my understanding of technology. I now realize that things were not necessarily better in the vague past when communities spent time chit-chatting in barber shops. Technology presents new opportunities for communication across time and space and reinterprets old forms of communication in new ways.

My past experiences with technology have been primarily shaded by a deep distrust and discomfort, but this is slowly changing. Critical thinking, in the words of Moore and Parker, is “careful and deliberate determination of whether to accept, reject, or suspend judgment.” For now, I rationally suspend my judgment in order to tangibly learn how to use tools of technology. As many of the readings on technology in education emphasized, one of the most important technology-related skills for current students is the ability to intelligently navigate the new opportunities created by technology. Some opportunities are socially detrimental, some are liberating, some are ethically ambiguous and some are just plain confusing.