As unlikely as it may seem, this paper is the result of a literature review that we
developed under a consulting contract. The goal of the contractor was to establish a
rationale that might lead to a fundable idea. Our goal was to make some extra money. As a
result of putting together the review we learned a great deal about the rural South, the
rural United States and, we assume, a good many other rural areas throughout the world.
(Barbara was raised in rural North Carolina. John grew up in suburban Philadelphia but has
lived in the South for over 30 years). Both of us were moved by our work on the consulting
project, but it wasn't until it was well along that we really began to reflect on the
contribution of our field, and ourselves, to the plight of rural communities.
Our goal in this short piece is obviously to get us all to stop for a moment and think,
not of learning communities, or on-line chats and constructions at a distance, but of
plain old communities; not of how much money we can make selling our courses on line, but
how our on-line courses might help develop a community which would like to hold on to its
children and grandchildren; not of what the system does for those of us who are
privileged, but what it does to those who are not. We think maybe the first step for folks
in Educational Technology might be a community-based needs assessment. Then maybe a
systems perspective...
About Interactive Papers
The "Interactive Paper Project" developed by Jim Buell and Jim Levin of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provides a simple way to create interactive
papers using a web-enabled database thereby allowing a wide range of writers to create
much richer ways to interact with their readers.
An Interactive Paper is stored in a database with each "chunk" of the paper
to be commented on stored in a separate database record. The author can select what these
chunks are, whether multiple paragraphs, single paragraphs, multiple sentences or single
sentences. When a reader sees the paper, a "button" for making or reading
commentaries appears after each chunk of text. Each reader can see the commentaries made
by others, and can either add a separate commentary or can respond to a commentary. By
responding to a commentary, a reader is joining in a "thread" of conversation
between the writer and one or more readers, contextualized by the part of the paper being
commented upon.
There are two different ways of viewing and commenting on this paper. In the
"linked commentaries" view, a reader sees the paper and the commentary buttons,
and only sees the commentaries when he/she selects it from a selected button. In the
"inline commentaries" view, a reader see the paper with all commentaries
displayed immediately following the chunk for which they are a commentary. Each view is
useful for different purposes, but any comment entered through one view is seen through
the other view. This concept of an interactive paper being an entity that can be viewed in
many different ways depending on the viewer's goals is a way in which this use of
interactive media is qualitatively different from the more static medium of print on
paper.
We of course welcome your comments on the substance of this interactive paper by Levin.
We also welcome your comments on the use of this Interactive Paper format, especially your
feedback on whether this is useful for broader use in future issues of this International
Journal of Educational Technology.
