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> I will be teaching an intro to Medieval Drama in the Spring and am
> considering having the class create a hypertext of all or part of at least
> one play, probably a Wakefield Master drama (this assuming I can get them to
> learn HTML pretty quickly).  Has anyone tried this yet?
 
I have taught students to create hypertext and have had them produce
materials for the web on a couple of different occasions over the
past 2-3 years.  You can do it, but it takes a lot of extra time.
Your time, students' time, class time, office hour time, e-mail time,
consultants' time, etc. etc. etc.
 
Originally I used the NeXT interface for the web, which allowed one
to create hyperlinks graphically (i.e., point and click instead of
writing out the code).  I would strongly recommend you find an html
authoring program that allows you to do this.  I haven't looked at
what's out there recently, but there are new programs appearing
regularly. It will spare you a lot of grief when it comes time to
teach the students how to create hypertext.  Your choice may be
limited/dictated by your campus resources--will students be working
in a specific lab over which you have some control or dialing in from
wherever?  Working out the logistics will be an enormous challenge,
unless your institution happens to be exceptionally well-equiped with
hardware, software and consultants.
 
One really smart option to teaching HTML to your students is to set up the
project with html Forms and have your students just fill them in and
let your scripting language do all the work.  You can do some very
sophisticated things and your student's don't need any extra
training.  It's a great way to get right to the task at hand.  Of
course, you'll probably need a good (very good) consultant unless
you can write your own code.
 
After those encouraging words, I would be interested in knowing more
about what you plan to do with a hypertext version of a play.
Conceptually, what will you accomplish that can't be done with a
paper edition?
 
I'm also interested in Peter's project (which I'm about to go look
at) and anybody else's.  How else is hypertext used successfully in
classroom and research?  What do you do about 'fair use' limitations?
Anyone have any VRML projects in mind?
 
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