Even if this type of project is carried out in a state-of-the-art computer lab, there are still challenges related to the technical skills students require. At a minimum, students need to know how to connect to, browse, and search the Internet and how to scan and manipulate images, code text and pages for posting, save and copy files, and upload files to a server.

When asked what was the most difficult aspect of the project, all of the children responded in the same fashion: "getting on the Internet," "finding stuff on the Internet," "saving and copying files." In her journal, April wrote, "I am so excited about finally getting this up and running and getting a real page going. I lost [electronically] all the stuff we made and that discouraged me but we remade it and I'll survive."

The technical training took much longer than I had anticipated, forcing me at times to contradict my own philosophy of inquiry-based education. There were occasions when, in the interest of expedience, it was more efficient to provide direct instruction than to wait for the students to discover a need and address it on their own. As I wrote in my reflection log toward the end of the project,

Graphics have turned out to be a much bigger factor than I imagined.... I hope we'll still have time for writing! This was supposed to be a literacy project, but it's turned out to be more of a "learn the software" activity. This must be what computer literacy is all about.... I've learned that the technical training takes much longer than I thought. The kids haven't really begun the actual design process after seven weeks of exploration!

The final challenge to collaborative hypermedia design that I will highlight is the downside to collaborative models of instruction. Besides being time-consuming, this approach can also lead to competition, hurt feelings, and outright hostility. For example, when I asked April what her least-favorite part of the project was, she replied matter of factly, "Working with my teammates. It really stinks sometimes." There was a significant turning point in the fourth week of the project when the students, who were in two different classes, asked if they could meet as a group of six one day. I then arranged for three of them to skip a class so they could meet with the others to share ideas and collaborate. Although there hadn't been much conflict within each triad, there was a great deal of competition between the two groups (particularly between the girls, who were split evenly between the two groups) -- so much so that most of them wrote about it in their reflection journals and were still harboring unspoken resentments toward each other several months later:

Maria: Today both groups came together. It was frustrating because the other class wouldn't listen to our group. They were so stubborn. But it's cool. I don't have to talk to them anymore. I think it's going to be hard to use our ideas together. We will just have to cope.

Danielle: I thought today's Pow-Wow of both of the classes was a giant step forward! I feel we are finally really getting started on designing. It was really neat listening to everyone else's designs and ideas. I really hope it turns out. We'll see. P.S. I felt there was alot [sic] of competition between classes.

This disharmony and competition was also mentioned by most of the students in their final interviews:

Maria: Well, that one day when we were with the other class, I didn't really like that, just because I don't work well with people that I don't know, and I just felt more comfortable with Danielle and Brian, just because I know them and I'm with them, like, every other day in a class. I don't know, I just didn't know the other...the three other people very well. It was just uncomfortable for me because I didn't feel like I could say anything because then they'd get the wrong opinion of me.

Danielle: I just think it was, it was a lot of work, and I really sincerely think that we should have had all the people in one class. I think....if they were to.... You know, next year when they're updating [the website]? I would have them in one group. I don't know, I felt kinda tense when I was with the other group. I didn't.... I guess we were just competing majorly and I was...I felt like they were rejecting our ideas, making us feel inferior, but nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. But it's...it's still.... They were trying real hard.

Interestingly, neither of the boys seemed to perceive competition between the groups. Brian didn't even mention the event in his journal, although he did have a difficult time persuading anyone to listen to him during the whole group meeting (in fact, he resorted to waving his hands in the air and shouting, "I have an idea! Listen to my idea!" to which no one responded). Jason's journal entry from the day of the meeting is actually quite positive, although he acknowledges the tension that existed:

It was cool to finally meet the other group. They have a lot more ideas. I'm glad we have groups because I think we'll be moving much quicker now. I felt a little tension between everyone but it turned out all right.

In sum, although there are exciting benefits to having students design school websites, there are also some significant challenges. Educators need to take these challenges into consideration when making decisions regarding the use of hypermedia technology in the classroom.

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Benefits for Language Arts

As a language arts educator, I have a particular interest in how multimedia technology and telecommunications can be harnessed into the language arts curriculum in ways that may offer specific benefits beyond those already discussed. Throughout the study I paid close attention to the traditional language processes of reading, writing, speaking, and listening that the students employed as a natural part of engaging in hypermedia design. I was also interested to see if the students used any other kinds of literacies during the process of constructing the school website.

Besides employing the four "traditional" language processes, I discovered that the hypermedia design process prompted students to use problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Further, in using hypermedia to express themselves to an authentic worldwide audience, the students exercised two additional types of language processes specific to multimedia-based literacy. These I have termed interpreting and composing.

Print-based literacy: Reading and writing. Throughout this design project I observed the students engaging in various traditional print-based literacy activities. For example, the students read lesson handouts, took notes, wrote in their reflection logs, outlined interview protocols, wrote announcements for the school newspaper, read text online, and composed short texts for their webpages. Although they did not engage in reading and writing extended text, they used skills of previewing, skimming, checking, and rereading while browsing and composing online. This sort of reading in hypertext environments will be a necessary literacy for the 21st century. (For thorough discussion of hypertext reading skills, see Anderson-Inman, Horney, Chen, & Lewin, 1994; Horney & Anderson-Inman, 1994; or Reinking, 1994.)

One of the most compelling findings of this study is that all the student participants had a strong sense of a diverse worldwide audience while constructing the website:

(226K; file transcript follows) Maria: Because to design a webpage you have to, like.... When you're making a page you have to write, um, like, links. You have to make them understandable for little kids, old people, and, like, middle-aged people to understand. And, like, you have to be very versatile with what you write.

(194K; file transcript follows) Danielle: You need to know what's interesting to other people to write about. And, I mean, the webpage.... You can't just have information, just like, it's supposed to be information, but you've gotta make it fun to read so you gotta learn language skills to use the right words to attract people to your webpage.

It was a momentous event when the students received their first e-mail from a "real" reader. An alumnus of FWJHS, now in his late forties, discovered the students' website while trying to find a website for the district high school. His message read as follows:

You people did a great job on your web page! I graduated from Flowing Wells Jr. High in 1966, that of course is when it sat next to the High School. I went on to attend the High School until 1968, then moved to Alaska and finished there. I started in Kindergarten at Iola France Elementary in 1957. The Jr. High was basically sandwiched between the Elementary School and the High School in what at the time was referred to as "the portables."

The reason I'm writing is because several months back I tried and found the High School site, there wasn't much there and as of today I can't find it again. You students have a great oppportunity as you move into High School to improve on that web page and create an enviroment where you will be able to sign on in the future and stay in touch with your friends. Alumni lists and class reunions are perfect for the Internet. If you need to see what I mean, check out "alumni.net" or "classmates.com".

You may not think too much about it today, but 15 or 30 years out of High School there will be someone out there you'll wish you could say Hi to, one more time. Don't take my word for it, ask any adult. And when you do, look at their face and you'll see a little mist in the eyes, a far off look, and maybe hear a sigh.

So get to work and graduate. Get that site up and running. We (the alumni) are out here and we will be watching and waiting. Good luck and good fortune.

The pedagogical benefits of students' having a sense of audience when they write are well established (Cohen & Riel, 1989; Lehrer, Erickson, & Connell, 1994; Neal, 1995). The existence of an authentic audience inspires students to produce higher quality work than they might when writing for an audience of one (usually the classroom teacher). Skye and Brian explained this phenomenon:

(166K; file transcript follows) Skye: Well, if I were to design my webpage, then it's kinda like.... If everybody's gonna be reading it, then you're gonna try to make it as nice as you can, and like, not sound like some little girl is, like, writing it or nothing, and then.... 'Cause everybody's gonna be seeing it.

(135K; file transcript follows) Brian: Because when you make a webpage, you, like, have to type words and you have to read over it and recheck it and make sure you wrote it right and make sure it sounds right, 'cause you don't want somebody saying, "What does that mean?"

The opportunity for students to publish their writing on the Internet has enormous potential from the perspective of a language arts teacher. The students were most definitely aware of this potential -- as Danielle noted, "Instead of getting a story published, you could get it on the Internet and let the world read it, which would be pretty awesome. I've always wanted to do that with one of my stories." The web crawlers took turns making weekly school-wide announcements about their student works contest, with the goal of publishing student writing and artwork on their Student Honors & Works webpage.

Danielle describes the thrill of seeing her own work on the computer screen (see Figure 9) in this way:

(165K; file transcript follows) It's like, your own product. And it's pretty cool to see your own, like, my drawing.... When my drawing came up on the computer screen it was like, "Oh, my gosh! I drew that!" you know? 'Cause it's...you don't usually see it on a screen. It's just.... I think that was really special.

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Oral literacy: Speaking and listening. In addition to print-based literacies, the students were aware of the need to use oral literacy during this project. Not only did they have to listen to me as the instructor, but they had to communicate with one another and with people they interviewed (see Figure 10) in order to achieve the common goal of constructing the website.

Two of the students, Jason and Skye, were brave enough to present the website to the entire staff before school one morning toward the end of the project (Figure 11). Preparing and delivering a coherent presentation to 90 adults would challenge anyone's oral language skills, let alone a 12- or 13-year-old presenting to an audience of his or her own teachers.

Regarding the use of speaking ability while constructing a website, the students shared some sage advice, such as Maria's comment that "you have to ask questions when you don't understand things so that you don't have them in the future when nobody's there to help you." Maria elaborates further:

(235K; file transcript follows) You have to be able to communicate with other people that you're making the webpage with. Not necessarily, like, on an everyday basis -- but you have to be able to say what you mean, or what you want to accomplish, what you need to have to make a good webpage. You can't just be, like, a hermit and, like, just sit there and not do anything.

Jason shares a similar observation:

(117K; file transcript follows) Like, to explain stuff that you want.... Like, if you wanted something on the webpage, you have to be able to explain it real well and when you...when you say things you have to say it real specifically.

In reference to using listening skills as part of the web design process, Danielle suggested, "Well, first you gotta learn how to do it. I guess that's half the battle: listening to the person who's trying to tell you how to do something." Skye offered a similar piece of wisdom, noting that designing webpages "is kinda hard, so you have to listen to people to be able to do it.... You need to know what you're doing, otherwise it's gonna be all messed up. And you're not gonna be able to get started."

Oral literacy tends to be overlooked in favor of print-based activities in many language arts classrooms, particularly in the upper grades. Integrating hypermedia design projects into the curriculum is one way to bring oral language back under the language arts umbrella. This contention challenges the widespread fear that multimedia activites are going to replace the traditional language arts; on the contrary, the language arts of creating, organizing, and delivering effective spoken communication -- important since before the advent of print -- may take on an even greater role in today's multimedia world. Lemke (1993; online document) goes so far as to predict that mass schooling may actually be reverting to the oral tradition from which it began. While Lemke's may be too strong an assertion, this study does suggest that hypermedia design projects have the potential to enhance students' oral literacy skills.

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Hypermedia literacy. Hypermedia design is complex and challenging. In the course of constructing the school website, the students had to apply problem-solving and critical thinking skills throughout the process. They also employed two multimedia-based language processes that I have termed interpreting and composing.

When asked what they felt they'd learned as a result of this project, most of the students identified "working with other people" and "computer skills" as the top items. The students' responses to the question of what advice they would give others who might try to make a school website offer a window into their perceptions of the process involved in composing with hypermedia. Brian advised other students to "take your time...be patient...get organized...and make a schedule." Maria recommended compromise, organization, and patience, because "sometimes the computer is retarded and it doesn't work." Danielle counseled, "I would tell them that planning would be the best part, planning it out step by step, like we did. 'Cause if we had just got in there and just tried starting to make it, I don't think we would have...gone anywhere. I think the planning, the storyboarding, and, first, looking at other [schools'] pages was a really good idea."

This lengthy process of planning, critical thinking, and problem solving is further explained by Jason:

Oh, I'd tell 'em to be open-minded, think about everything, go through every step, go through step one and go all the way through. Don't just try to rush through it, 'cause that won't help it. And also, go for quality over quantity. You don't want too much stuff and have it not be any good. [You should] have a little bit of stuff and have it be really good.

Based on my observations and on these student remarks, it is clear that the process of hypermedia design demands collaboration, organization, planning, critical thinking, and problem solving. These are exactly the kinds of skills and strategies that educators seek to promote.

The hypermedia environment is also a semiotic medium through which students experience not only new forms of representation but can also create their own new forms of expression. Several of the students recalled the excitement of seeing things on the Internet that they'd never seen before -- as April said, "Wow! I've never seen anything like that before!"

Themes associated with this view of the Internet as a unique semiotic medium are beginning to emerge in the research on hypermedia design in the classroom. For example, students interviewed at the end of one hypermedia design project reported that its most satisfying aspect had been "the freedom to design their own presentations and the opportunity to incorporate a variety of media into their projects" (Finkelman & McMunn, 1995, p. 2). Similarly, the students that Tierney et al. (1997; online document) interviewed stated that multimedia "afforded opportunities to engage in ways of connecting ideas that otherwise would have been less possible with traditional texts." Through transmediation, students have "the opportunity to see how the same piece of information could be transformed in multiple ways through its participation in different systems of knowledge" (Lehrer, Erickson, & Connell, 1994, p. 231). The dynamic, interactive, and multisensory qualities of multimedia and the web enable students to "express themselves and their worlds differently than they do with traditional learning materials" (Riddle, 1995, p. 7).

In my study, April was especially stimulated by the experience of expressing herself in a medium that combines many symbol systems:

(263K; file transcript follows) It helps me explain basically who I am. If I see some really neat background, I go, "Yeah, that's what I mean".... It helps a person express themselves. So, I think that it could improve your writing because you could...you could tell more about your experiences or it could help you describe things better. So, you really don't have that experience anywhere else.

Within this new medium, the students engaged in two new forms of language processes that reach beyond the four traditionally recognized language arts of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. At the beginning of the project, they spent several sessions analyzing other schools' websites with the purpose of critically evaluating their communicative strengths and weaknesses in terms of content, appearance, and organization. In order to accomplish this task, the students needed to be able to interpret the multilayered, multimedia messages that the other sites were designed to convey. This critical thinking process involved far more than "just" reading.

Similarly, when the students were constructing their own webpages for the site -- determining its overall organization and appearance (including background patterns and colors, text colors, fonts, images, and animation) and negotiating the placement, emphasis, and relative sizes of the different forms of representation on each page -- they were engaging in a complex process of composition that involved a great deal more than "just" writing.

I therefore propose that language arts educators begin to view the standard language arts model more broadly, to include the multimedia-based language processes of interpreting and composing (see Table 3). Sign language also uses the word interpreting and it, like multimedia, is a process that represents a semiotic system extending beyond print- or oral-based language. Similarly, music, in which composing is crucial, represents an alternate sign system that constitutes a form of expression, as do multimedia, drama, dance, and the visual arts.

If multimedia processes are added to the traditional language arts model, then educators will need to incorporate multimedia-based content into their language arts curricula. Because multimedia applications and telecommunications are becoming increasingly widespread and will only grow in importance, it is time to begin teaching our students how to interpret and compose hypermedia texts. This is not to suggest that these new technologies are replacements for the old. As Rose and Meyer (1994, pp. 293-294) point out, all the language processes will continue to be required for effective communication:

As technology development expands with blinding rapidity, one thing about language arts education is clear: As our children grow up, they will use not one technology but many. It will not be sufficient to teach children merely how to be effective as writers, or speakers, or even multimedia composers. It will be necessary to teach them how to be effective in each and, most importantly, how to choose the most effective medium for the job.... Language arts must be defined as an expanding set of communicative skills, and language arts instruction must begin to encompass competencies in the use of varied media. The role of language arts instruction is to teach children to communicate effectively. Ever since Plato, that role has involved teaching children to use the most powerful tools available. For centuries, the most powerful tool has been print. For the centuries ahead, the toolbox will be much bigger. And better.

I will conclude this discussion of my findings regarding the purposes, processes, benefits, and challenges of student-designed school websites with insightful words from Jason, who produced this gem in response to the question, "What are some other situations that making a webpage could be useful for beside making a school website?"

(355K; file transcript follows) Jason: Um, like, to let people know about stuff.... Like, if you knew a lot about something, some certain subject -- 'cause, I mean, there's so many people in the world, there's no doubt that any subject you make it in, somebody's gonna wanna learn about it. So, no matter who you are, that's why everybody makes webpages, 'cause they know that somebody out there that wants to know about it. Somebody out there wants to know about their toilet paper.

Author (laughing): I'm very curious about the toilet paper!

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Section References

Anderson-Inman, L., Horney, M.A., Chen, D., & Lewin, L. (1994). Hypertext literacy: Observations from the ElectroText project. Language Arts, 71(4), 279-287.
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Cohen, M., & Riel, M. (1989). The effect of distant audiences on students' writing. American Educational Research Journal, 26(2), 143-159.
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Downes, T., & Fatouros, C. (1995). Learning in an electronic world: Computers and the language arts classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Finkelman, K., & McMunn, C. (1995). Microworlds as a publishing tool for cooperative groups: An affective study. East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 384 344)
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Goodman, K.S. (1996). On reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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Horney, M.A., & Anderson-Inman, L. (1994). The ElectroText project: Hypertext reading patterns of middle school students. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 3(1), 71-91.
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Lehrer, R., Erickson, J., & Connell, T. (1994). Learning by designing hypermedia documents. Computers in the Schools, 10(1/2), 227-254.
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Lemke, J.L. (1993). Education, cyberspace and change. Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture, 1(1). Available at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/e/ejvc/aejvc-v1n01-lemke-education.txt.
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Neal, N.L. (1995). Research and publication on the World Wide Web: A fifth grade class' experience . East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 384 345)
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Reinking, D. (1994). Electronic literacy (Perspectives in Reading Research series). Athens, GA: National Reading Research Center, Universities of Georgia and Maryland. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 371 324)
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Riddle, E.M. (1995). Communication through multimedia in an elementary classroom . East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 384 346).
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Rose, D.H., & Meyer, A. (1994). The role of technology in language arts instruction. Language Arts, 71(4), 290-294.
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Tierney, R.J., Kieffer, R., Whalin, K., Desai, L., Moss, A.G., Harris, J.E., & Hopper, J. (1997). Assessing the impact of hypertext on learners' architecture of literacy learning spaces in different disciplines: Follow-up studies. Reading Online [an electronic journal of the International Reading Association]. Available at http://www.readingonline.org/research/impact/index.html.
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