What is a

Anyway?

The original model was something like this:

A Pedagogical Sequence is like a "chapter". The boxes represent individual
Web pages (one URL for each). These in turn are roughly equivalent
to "sections" normally meant to be read in a linear sequence (red arrows).
"Pedagogically Distant" links are shown in green.

That is, a regular textbook translated to HTML and delivered on the Web with lots of hyperlinks. The idea was [and still is, in slightly modified form] to make it easier for readers to look up unfamiliar terms and generally jump around in response to "need to know" and/or curiosity impulses. Doing this with a paper textbook is tedious and clumsy; any "inter-chapter" links rely on an index in the back of the book.

The trouble is, this model does not "scale" well. If there are N URLs (Web pages) then the number of potential links scales as N². Furthermore, maintenance of such a "static" HyperTextBook would be difficult: any alterations to one P.S. would require potential modifications in every other module. While this is possible, it would strongly discourage the free evolution and flexibility we desired.

The other parts of our vision for the HyperTextBook were (a) that it would be highly customizable for individual student needs and tastes, and (b) that it would grow and evolve with the input of its users. These features were basically incompatible with the original model, so we changed it.

New Model: Dynamically Generated "Virtual" Hyperlinks

We decided to build a searchable database of "learning quanta" (Web pages) in which a number of attributes of each URL would be stored. The HyperTextBook is then a combination of that database, the content to which it refers, and a collection of tools for generating lists from user queries, navigating among the corresponding URLs, looking up unfamiliar terms, providing feedback (evaluations and suggestions, etc.) and submitting new content. The last feature is the most difficult . . . and the most important, since this will eventually make the HyperTextBook a self-regenerating resource!

One may view the HyperTextBook as "simply" a customized (interactivity and presentation optimized for inividual needs and tastes), specialized (content is preselected to be appropriate to the subject of First Year Science and "certified" as reliable and accurate by people who ought to know) search engine. This doesn't sound as exciting as it is. Numerous other projects are building on this model to make the Web more useful as a source of information; we have the advantage of a relatively limited scope and direct control over the Web server and much of the content.

To learn more about the HyperTextBook, you really should just try it out and see for yourself. If it is not self-explanatory, please tell us why and we'll do our best to fix it.