Writing for the web.

Writing for the web: a new way of learning

By Ross F. Collins, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Communication,
North Dakota State University, Fargo

I. Getting out of Line: An introduction to student web-based projects.

II. Tiny ships in a vast sea: Non-linear thinking.

III. Web sites and apple trees: Planning your pages.

I. GETTING OUT OF LINE

WELCOME TO THE WORLD of Web-based writing. We're pleased you have decided to join in, but feel obligated to fairly warn you: you are about to enter a creative world perhaps unlike anything you have likely encountered before in your assignments. Beyond is a vast sea of information. You must navigate through this new medium, and eventually, add a cup of your own material to it. You have no guide. You do have maps and charts. You do have your own skills: ability to read, to write, to find information. You'll need them, and more: ability to execute simple designs and computer code. And you'll need to develop understanding, ability to navigate through a new way to gather and present knowledge. It is an exciting, yet demanding world.

And in return? Perhaps nothing less than your ticket to a place in a future of human knowledge unlike the world has ever seen before. The plane is already pulling back from the gate. Do you want to join now, or risk being left behind?

Why the Web is different
To understand the real potential of the Web as a learning tool, we have to think a little about how we usually acquire formal knowledge. Books and class lectures are designed to present information sequentially, in an order selected by the presenter. You sit in a media class, and I tell you what I think you need to know, beginning with point A and on to point Z. There's no way to fast-forward a lecture, even if you've already heard points F and G in another class. As well, there's no way to pause on point Q, say, for more information to satisfy a little extra confusion or curiosity you may have there. Television and radio are similar, offering a sequential presentation of material. Sure, you can record and play presentations again, but sequence is basically the same.

Similarly, book authors present materials in a sequence controlled by the numbered pages. While some modern publishers have tried to offer non-linear "points of entry," so you can jump into the book at any point, still you have no immediate resources beyond the text itself, presented pretty much in a linear way from intro to conclusion. What's exciting about the multimedia environment, and in particular the World Wide Web is its non-sequential presentation of information.

Pretend you've just moved to a new city, and know absolutely nothing about it. You begin by taking a walk, looking at the buildings around you, hearing the traffic and the voices, reading the signs.... You consult a map, greet some neighbors, take a tour, find the essential conveniences.... And using all your senses in many ways you gather information about your new home, taking from here and there, choosing from possibilities as your needs and interests take you.

This, cognitive psychologists contend, is our innate learning style: visual, active, wide-ranging, quick and non-linear.(1) If we translate that real world into the world of multimedia, we might build a learning opportunity like this:

• Able to run on a computer.
• Able to call up text, illustrations, ideally movement and sound, that is, multiple media to appeal to several senses at once.
• Able to allow user interaction, choices on how material appears, and when.

This means, for instance, that television, while including sound, pictures and text, is not multimedia, because it's not interactive. A sound and light show might be a feast for the senses, but because it's not presented by computer, it's not multimedia. Multimedia offers a learning experience more fun, and more effective, because like walking in town, you become an actual participant instead of a passive listener. (2)

How the World Wide Web fits into multimedia
The web is just one of many protocols by which computers can communicate, and it's not even the first one. Some decades ago, in an era dominated by mainframe supercomputers, a few researchers thought out a new, revolutionary idea. Why not link many small computers to share computing capabilities and together meet or surpass the power of one giant?

One famous episode of television's "Star Trek: the Next Generation" required the good starship "Enterprise" to battle a most formidable foe: the Borg. The immense Borg battleship actually was a force of combined computer-like beings, each one linked to cooperate in a force of irresistible power. Defeat came only by planting a computer error into the system.

Whether or not our own immense Borg of the internet could be defeated by similar means is perhaps futurist fiction, but the fact is that today anyone connected to the network can tap into an incredibly powerful network of information. Geography, time mean nothing: a database held in Japan is as close to our screen as a web site at North Dakota State University. Only traffic or our own slower modems add seconds, perhaps, but not days or weeks to our search.

How we transmit this material depends on the protocol we use, and on the importance of preparing our computer to send and receive information. A program on our machine, called the client machine, may connect to any computer offering material of interest to the internet, called the server machine, by way of a number. Computers like numbers; we like words. So we address our request in "domain names" such as:
http://ndsu.nodak.edu

A program called the Internet Domain Name System translates those words into Internet Protocol (IP) numbers to find the address of that server, such as
134.129.134.10

The address we humans can read is called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

The server can transmit information by many means. Some of the older and most familiar are FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and, of course, electronic mail. One thing is missing here, however: the multimedia of pictures, sounds, and interactive pages.

The World Wide Web was actually invented by Tim Berners-Lee in the CERN labs in Switzerland as a way to transmit research information around the world by computer. Multimedia was not really the concern: what was needed was some sort of standardized way to transmit information to discrete computers built on all sorts of different formats. The solution was called Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), part of a larger language called Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

Picture yourself as an editor, preparing copy for a printer. You want some words boldface, some as headlines, some as italic, space to insert a photo, and so on. To indicate this, you use shorthand terminology such as bf, ital, 24pt, slug, etc.

HTML shorthand tells a computer generally how a document ought to look. Using standardized commands that can be read by a web browser (Netscape and Internet Explorer are most common), a server tells a computer how to draw the document. But it doesn't actually render it for our us-that's up to our own machines. It's as if I told you how to draw a picture, but didn't touch the pen myself. Common commands in HTML language are called tags; you're tagging text with suggestions to a receiving computer on how a document should appear.

Along with this, HTML coding can tell your computer to do other things-such as how look for other files containing pictures and sounds, and how to display them. It can also offer opportunities to easily call up more information from other sources, that is, links to other servers. Your computer and web browser software dutifully render the results by reading the HTML.

So why, when you call up a pretty colored computer file we've nicknamed "home page," do you not see a clog of ugly coding? Ah, but you do--it's only masked by the browser's response to the commands. One HTML expert compared it to the old horror movies where the seductive beauty rips off a mask to reveal a hideously misshapen face. Like the monster, the web wears a mask, a pretty picture over an ugly truth. To rip off the mask from a Netscape-rendered home page, for instance, merely choose View and Page Source from the pull-down menus. (Choose Source from the Internet Explorer View menu.) Horrors. What gibberish behind such a pretty web site.

You'll be learning to write simple gibberish in this guide, at least the simple amount you need to produce a Web-based term paper or article. But writing using Web concepts won't be like producing a stunning web page. We're sticking to basic functions offered by the web, and if you want to reach farther and farther into the technology, you can find all sorts of tutorials in the bookstores or actually on the web. You also can select a web-writing program such as Dreamweaver, or even a word-processing program, to do it for you. You can learn to add splashy graphics and handy forms using Javascript or Flash. But here we begin by learning to crawl: despite all these great tools, a web author still needs to understand good old serviceable HTML, the language that started it all. We'll do a bit of that below.

Notes

1. Sueann Ambron and Kristina Hooper, eds., Learning with Interactive Multimedia. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press, 1990, 194.
2. William Gates, "The Promise of Multimedia." The American School Board Journal 180:3 (1993), 35; William E. Halal and Jay Liebowitz, "Telelearning: the Multimedia Revolution in Education." The Futurist 28:6 (1994), 22.

II. TINY SHIPS IN A VAST SEA

THE FIVE LITTLE WOODEN SHIPS, wrought on medieval building techniques but resting on a Renaissance ideal, sailed from Sanluca de Barrameda in the fall of 1519. Navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached South America, rounded the stormy cape now named in his honor, and came about to face--infinity. A vast, placid sea of unimaginable size, breathtaking, daunting, a shining sheet reaching beyond the horizon. Two whole months' of sail took the starving and exhausted sailors to their first sign of land, Guam. The world was indeed bigger than any medieval mind had believed.

Today the physical world seems so much smaller, yet when we sail out after knowledge using the internet as our sea, the vastness is an exhausting mental challenge. An on-line web workshop(1) once reported a computer data firm's research showing that in 1985, the number of documents in the world was doubling every five years. By 1989, the amount was doubling every three years. In 1991 they doubled every year, and in 1994, they were estimated to double in nine months. Pages on the web may be doubling even faster-I can't keep up. I don't think anyone can. Google the doughty search engine tries: in September 2002 it reported its ability to search 2,469,940,685 web pages. What must it be today?

Everyone who has jumped into the web for a ride knows how quickly the hours can tick by as screen after screen of colorful text and links pass our tired eyes. We call up one page, then click an intriguing link to another page, then to another, and yet another colorful scene, a mesmerizing parade of text and images we call net surfing. It's informational inundation like trying to drink from a mug under Niagara Falls. And at day's end? Little to show for our glutted mind.

This is the challenge of the dawn of a Web-based age of information, the vast sea of knowledge through which we must navigate. Metaphors of seas and waterfalls, or highways and surfers, seem to be the only way we can explain the terrifying excitement of this ocean at our keystroke, yet perhaps it gives us some feeling of what students are up against. It is ironic that on the one hand we welcome the non-linear aspect of multimedia education, and yet on the other hand, we can let it drive us to stupor. Let's try yet another metaphor. Back to our walk in a new city. Let us suppose that the new city was Cairo. A first walk in this ancient crossroads of civilizations is a sensorial assault: flying taxis, roaring streetcars, aggressive shopkeepers, the swirling colors and dust of multitudes crammed through narrow streets. After the first shock one may be tempted to retreat back gasping into the hotel. But slowly we learn to find our way through.

Turn off the computer
We said that the non-linear aspect of multimedia learning appeals to our natural tendency to pick up information interactively, using all our senses. It seems that to organize your multimedia-harvested research for your own writing or Web page design, however, requires some means of controlling the itching clicking finger. Otherwise, you can too easily ricochet off your main topic and onto interesting, but ultimately irrelevant, tangents.

A first step is to turn off the computer. (Um.... After printing this guide, perhaps.) Why? Because you need to pull together a plan. Think about your topic, about ways you can refine your research, to ask specific questions. Similar to looking up very general questions on a library's computer card catalog, inputing very general terms to a Web search engine will pull you off on a chase far from the information you need. Because Web pages offer so many distractions, some of them helpful, some of them not, you need to hold onto a clear focus of your topic question as you dive in. Write a paragraph to help you focus, if necessary, and to help you settle on a research question. It may still be somewhat vague at this point, but the more specific you can be, the easier you will be able to control the glut.

All right, now turn on the computer. Navigate first to what is an old and familiar Web search aid, Yahoo: www.yahoo.com.

Yahoo offers to search by topic, somewhat like a library card catalog. It's called a database searcher, because someone has gathered the sites for you to look through.

On the other hand, some searchers launch a search on request for Web pages which contain that topic, whether or not they're part of an index. Try everyone's favorite, www.google.com. Or my favorite, www.dogpile.com.

As you find pages and links, scan for information germane to your topic. Follow links as you think they may have a bearing: part of research is serendipity, and the Web makes it so much easier than following written footnotes.

You'll probably want to copy material you may find useful. Avoid copying too much, as it becomes as dreary looking back through it as it might looking through page after page of photocopied articles from the library. In fact, some find it's better to open a word processing program and take on-line notes, toggling between the word processor and the Web page. In fact, I use the medieval method of scratchings on parchment, I mean ballpoint on notebook, to keep track of notes. You can always call up the pages again, if necessary. Keep track of URLs in your notes, or in your Web Journal (see below).

A knotty problem students face using the web is the quality of information. While the credibility of sources is certainly worth careful consideration in traditional library research, information there usually has been screened and edited by a publisher. You can put confidence in material offered by a publisher known for high standards, whether it be a scholarly journal or nationally-respected organization.

A web page can be thrown up by anyone, anywhere, often without any editing filters at all, and because companies are in such a rush right now trying to build a "web presence," the quality of their material might be lower than in published sources. Generally you can use anyone's web material to help point you in the right direction, to help spark your ideas, but you can only use web material from legitimate and well-known sources in your final paper. Anything less, and you run the risk of producing an argument you can't easily defend by resting on information from an expert.

However, the WebPaper concept asks you to look at footnotes differently. Instead of footnotes, you provide links. We'll talk about the mechanics of that below.

Note

1. Thomas P. Copley and Barbara L.Copley, "Make the Link" workshop, Tutorial Number 5/1, by e-mail, 1995.

III. WEB SITES AND APPLE TREES

WE'VE TALKED ABOUT how people learn non-sequentially, gathering information from several senses, somewhat at random, like a kid kiting apples from a tree. I like the apple tree metaphor because it helps me to plan the concept of web-based writing. Some students begin a standard writing project by preparing an outline of points they wish to cover, and write based on this rather formal checklist. Others just start writing and see where their words lead them, checking for accuracy and comprehensiveness during the editing and polishing process.

Producing student web-based writing, what I like to call the "WebPaper," borrows from both these concepts: on the one hand, you need structure, but on the other, you need room to explore. Here's where the metaphor of the apple tree comes in. If you draw a tree trunk at the bottom of a large piece of paper, you can picture it as a sturdy support for all the branches and fruit above. Going out from the tree are branches of various sizes, some holding many apples, some holding only one. The branches may stray into other branches, and from there into yet other twigs, but eventually they all can be traced back to the main trunk.

You already see where I'm heading here, right? The trunk is your main topic, or your home page. This page forms the base from which a reader can navigate around the tree, around various sub-topics under your main topic, while never losing sight of the basic structure at the bottom. This gives your reader the opportunity to explore and catch apples of information somewhat at random, but still attached to a trunk for support when necessary.

Let's take an example. If you call up, appropriately, the "Minne-apple's" home page www.minneapolis.org, you'll find a delightful display of opportunities to explore the city through its web site. Click on the index bar or fuzzy disk to find more specific information. From there, you again often have the opportunity to click on another index for further information. Or you can go back to the original home page, the "trunk," by choosing "back" from the menu bar, or the Minneapolis logo at the top. Other choices bring you information on the city weather, advertisers and promotions. Or search for information from the search box.

So you can go to various branches of the tree to bring home the apples that look most interesting. But it's always clear how to get back to the original trunk, where you can begin again for more choices.

Try to think of your WebPaper like this "Minne-apple" home page. You want to give your reader a variety of starting options, a variety of links, but still a good solid idea of where he or she has been and how to get back there. So try to place sub-topics on your pencil sketch as places readers can go by clicking from your main page. From these you can branch off more sub-topics as seems logical. Some sub-topics may also be linked to other topics, as you see connections. Write those possible links down also. (Note: URLs are case-sensitive, so be sure to copy exactly.) Leave plenty of space so that you can fill in more links to other URLs, more of your own material, photos, etc.

This offers a first step to help you find your way as you do research, so that you yourself can think in a non-linear way about your topic presentation. That's pretty different from the way we've been taught to write, each topic handled as part of a sequential whole from beginning to end. Providing this new kind of logical but non-sequential guide is called information mapping.(1) We try to begin by offering information viewers can relate to, perhaps arranged in a familiar way, leaving openings for the new discoveries, and occasional side trips. If you've ever done a storyboard for a video advertisement, the concept is a little bit the same.

Clustering the apples
As you add possible links on the tree, it's sometimes helpful to work fairly quickly, without great deliberation. This "clustering" style (2) helps free your right brain creative energy to new possibilities you may not have thought of. Don't worry about making it messy--you can always cross out or copy the tree over again. It's just for your own use. But there will come a point of closure, when you instinctively feel you've gone far enough with the sketch and now are ready to gather more information to fill in the hollow of ideas you've set up.

At this point many term paper research students will have to begin by relying on that old-fashioned, linear-based library. But they might not need to use the stacks so often: research is usually available through the library's databases and web resources. The time may come when every journal, every magazine, every book, every newspaper article will appear on a web server somewhere. It's not here yet, and in fact some of your information probably will still have to start from the dusty stacks. So begin your WebPaper by perusing library sources, gathering as many notes and information as you believe necessary for a strong information base. As you take notes, try to think of key concepts as possible links, items to add to your tree and to serve as a key word for a web search. Look for illustrations, too. While it is NOT legal to actually publish someone else's copyrighted art as a web page without permission, it is okay to use it as part of your WebPaper submitted as a class assignment. If you want to actually launch your WebPaper on a server, however, you'll have to either remove these photo links, get permission, or find copyright-free downloadable illustrations on line.

Notes

1. Ronald D. McFarland, "Ten Design Points for the Human Interface to Instructional Media." Technical Horizons in Education Journal 22.7 (1995), 67.
2. For more on clustering as a creative, non-sequential tool for writing inspiration, see Gabriele Lusser Rico, Writing the Natural Way. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher Inc., 1983.

For more information:

North Dakota State University web design pages: http://www.ndsu.edu/wwwdev/web_team

W3Schools: http://www.w3schools.com

Web design group: http://www.htmlhelp.com/.

Web pages that suck: http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/.

Return to class resources.

Go to web writing exercise.