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Text plays multiple roles in cyberspace. Text is used to move information from the composer, to move information to the composer, to handle calculations, to build new means and patterns of composition and to create relationships between the works of different composers.
A common role for text includes word processing, and mixing word processing with images in desktop publishing, documents that are often printed and the cellulose technology passed along for others to read. With increasing frequency, text documents are posted as web pages and read from a computer screen. The World Wide Web is now made of billions of them. This work can be as simple as saving a word processing file in web page format. It can be extended to such ideas as cascading styles sheets which enable the same style to appear across multiple web pages and frame page designs which enable collections of web pages to appear alongside each other and much more. Text is essential to communication and calculation with numbers, another variation on text used in spreadsheets and databases.
Text takes on a new role in web pages as the basis for links, jumping off points to related web pages and information. Composers use links to relate their compositions to the work of others. In this role information is moving from the composer to the reader. Most unique in the history of composition, the web makes it possible to place any degree of text next to almost any kind and all kinds of other media and make this amalgam visible around the world, a role for text that requires one to move beyond the capacity of paper.
Text is also the medium used to program computers, to invent new computer programs and to extend and modify programs. Text and computer programming are key to a wide range of data analysis (e.g., XE Corporation's currency converter built with Javascript) and interactive messaging systems, from instant chat to email. Their combination is important in assisting readers in the transition from passive readership to active involvement in the world around them. To gain more direct experience with this concept, readers are encouraged to add to the messaging thread by clicking Post a Reply at any point in reading the example within the message discussion frame below. Don't hesitate to email this author and propose specific multimedia questions to add to this or other pages of this composition.
Such examples of computer programming are often seen as activity requiring exceptionally difficult training and significant time for the completion of such a composition. This perception misses the frequent use of programming to do little things and make small adjustments that can require but a few minutes of time. Embedded in millions of web pages and files are snippets of computer code in a variety of easily learned languages called javascript, PHP, PERL and more which enable composers to make their web compositions more effective.
Web design also provides for the concept of form pages, a variety of composition styles for collecting the ideas and information of the reader. This form page concept was designed to move text information from the reader to the composer, or from reader to automated answering services such as web search engines, but is also used for higher levels of interaction that become an open dialog, such as the example of text-based instant messenger services by AOL and others.
If users of this composition use links to choose the display of specific information and to choose the sequence of the information and take advantage of computer programming to insert their ideas or their data for calculation and analysis and to insert their concepts for the reaction of others, are these instead the actions of writers not readers? What is happening to the meaning of reading and writing? What might this form of multimedia mean for the teaching of writing and reading?
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Launch Parent Frame | Page author: Houghton