Culture and Technology

I enjoyed reading “Hypermedia Authoring as Critical Literacy” by Meyers and Beach (2001) because it offers useful examples of how students can benefit from hypermedia tools. One of the pluses of using hypermedia is exposing students to multiple viewpoints in relation to history, literature, current events, etc. The article illustrated this point with the example of Robinson Crusoe for which students crafted alternative endings to the story and explored the theme of imperialism. Using hypermedia, students can also connect themes found in literature, such as the example of Fahrenheit 451 (thought control, censorship, etc.), to their own lives in creative and dynamic ways. As a teacher, these aspects of hypermedia are really appealing to me because they may motivate students who are not as readily interested in literature to become engaged with texts and explore their reactions to texts more deeply. Allowing students to use sound and images in a variety of ways may also allow English language learners to illustrate their comprehension and analysis of literature more thoroughly than with writing alone. What I enjoyed most about the article is Meyers and Beach’s call to go beyond using hypermedia to simply illustrate the events in a story. Rather, the authors suggest using these tools to critically analyze texts. Further, I appreciated the authors’ including possible challenges with the critical approach. For example, they mention that students may only choose materials that support their current beliefs. Though these challenges exist, I think there are so many advantages to prompting students to use a critical lens when responding to literature through traditional means or through hypermedia.