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The links between the Web and literature
by Andrew Seguin
One of the main features of the World Wide Web is its capacity for linking one Web page to another Web page. For example, if you’re reading this, you must have clicked on a link, either on Chapin’s home page or in an e-mail, that led you to this page, where the full text of the article is available. In a sense, the Web functions much like a book does: It’s full of pages that are connected to one another according to the author’s plan.
No wonder, then, that Class 9 English students were charged with using the Web to explicate a paragraph from a book. The girls worked in pairs, and each pair was assigned a paragraph from the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. The girls picked three words from the paragraph to use in their explication, and then used a Web-programming language called hypertext markup language, or HTML, to make those words into links that led to a related piece of analysis. Confused? To see a sample of one assignment, please click here. The words highlighted in blue are the ones being used as links and vehicles for the explication.
“The assignment shows the girls the value of looking at words closely,” English teacher Mara Taylor said, explaining one of its goals. “There’s also the satisfaction of seeing their work on the Web,” Ms. Taylor added.
The project was a collaborative effort between the English and technology departments. In their computer proficiency classes, the girls learned the HTML needed to make the links in their Web pages, while their English classes gave them an analytical framework with which to investigate their paragraphs.
You can investigate another sample of an assignment by clicking here, and one more by clicking here.
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