Multimedia educational resource as an example of a polymorphic

educational hypertext in the post-literacy era

Nowadays, in a conditions of the contemporary culture, which is

called a culture of the information society from the point of view of technical
and technological foundations of culture, and the culture of the consumer
society in terms of relations between subjects of culture and cultural
phenomena, the system of reading in general, as a social institution, has a
grate cultural and pedagogical transformations.
Internet is a multimedia superhighway (according to M. Kastels) 1, it is
at the same time the conductor and the source of information, and it also
puts tprofessors and students in new educational conditions and needs of
their joint response to the technological challenges of modernity.
Every professor knows today that students "do not read", but the
students in the humanities, as it always is in the universities, it is necessary
to teach, they should acquire useful knowledge and various skills and the
need for professional and social life skills.
On the surface the problem that students dont like to read (or postlitaracy)2, looks like the total non-literacy of the computers era generation,
but if we look at it attentively from the point of view of cultural studies
analysis we can see quite different substantive phenomena. In one of the
previous article M. Goodova wrote: Post-literacy is one of the form of
cultural and historical forms of literacy, including each of the preceding
forms. To be literate today means to owing all forms of writing and reading
demanding in todays culture and civilization. A modern civilized person
step by step studies to read and to transmit information originally in
1 . : , \\

http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Polit/kastel/05.php
2 . . : / ..

. .: : , 2005. 496 . ()

pictures, then in conventional signs and symbols, and, finally, through a

coherent and complexly written text. This person, from one side,
consistently passes all stages of literacy development in the culture from
pictographs to books, and from the other side, also consistently prepares
for mastering computer literacy, the main condition of this is mastering
pictographic, symbolic and alphabetic writing 3.
In a new educational conditions of post-literacy its not clear whose
task is more complex: the task of students, who perceive post-literacy
situation and Internet as something quasi-natural in their lives, or
professors, who remembers very well times where there were no problems
with reading, and they relate to possibilities which gives Internet with a
grate apprehension. In the perceptions of many professors, Internet is the
technology, which gives only minimal result in a terms of traditional
educational strategies: all this knowledge that professor was producing with
many years labor and would have liked to transfer, a student may very easy
to download.
This contradiction we can solve only if we recognize that modern
students reading has many levels, and that there are a morphological
diversity of the texts which modern information culture gives us in the
consumer society.
In a conditions of free access to the Internet in a process of education
more and more resources of electronic reading are permeate, although still
there are traditional paper-based sources of reading, giving the opportunity
for a peaceful, slow reading.

.. .//
, 5,2012 // teoria-practica.ru/52012/culture/gudova.pdf ..
.// . , 9(88)
. , 2011 , . 69-78. //
//http://urorao.rsvpu.ru/filedirectory/155/2011_09_N88.pdf
3

These are all kinds of

electronic educational resources, digital

libraries, electronic databases, electronic magazines, etc. As a result of this

process the most part of studying time takes electronic reading. This is
on-line reading, when students read text on-line, and also off-line reading,
when they read already downloaded texts.
A very common type of reading today becomes audio-reading,
especially for foreign languages studies, when on the base of this type of
reading assimilate phonetics, lexica, syntaxes and morphology.

In a

modern conditions students audio-reading is possible on any gadgets.

More radical way of students reading is so-called mobile reading
this is a reading on-line on mobiles screens which have connection with
Internet.
At the lesson on-line reading is fast reading, sometimes during
preparation for writing or oral exercise in the classroom. In this last case
learning reading turns into a search-reading or viewing-reading but this is
not enough for full-time studying process4.
From the point of view of technological civilisation this approach is
advanced, but in universitys educational practice there is an urgent need
to generate at technically well-equipped students of humanitarian and
socio-political sciences need to read slowly, with interpretation, pondering
in incorporated in the text codes, to understand that the process of reading
is a serious mental and intellectual effort.
We think that the task should be comparable with the possibilities and
needs of the modern generation of students.
Constantly communicating in a social networks, todays students
acquire skills of reading different media-texts, such as traditional verbal and
visual texts: for example, photos and illustrations; such as traditional visual
4 .. : -

// , 5 (9). . 8691. // http://icnp.ru/archivepnv-n9

and graphic texts: maps, charts, graphics, labels. Actively communicating in

a social networks students acquire skills in a reading of hypertext: audioand video-fragments, banners, texts which contain hyperlinks. Practically
living in Internet students polish their skills of reading polymorphic
multimedia texts of the modern culture. Thats why professors in
humanitarian areas should appeal to these skills and needs.
Educational texts for students have to be now as complexly
organizing and multimedia hypertexts, which make the processes of
reading more and more complex, and they should bring elements of game
in this process, like through a labyrinth where each of the part of the text is
hidden behind a twist. In this type of reading appears intrigue, and it
becomes an intellectual adventure.
As a rule, professors in humanities have accumulated in their
pedagogical activity different types of texts: verbal and audio-texts of
lectures, additional texts of studying materials, musical-, art- or cinema
materials, tests and so on. But in the past, in pre-media culture, to use the
diversity of these texts during the lessons had to carry a lot of technical
devises: TV, video VHS, audio centre, film projector and so on. Today, in
digital multimedia era, for technical support of the studying process we
need only computer with Internet and multimedia text which contains all
types of didactic, illustrative and control materials.
This complex logistical problem can solve a creation of educational
multimedia interactive recourses with different types of courses: special,
optional, mandatory etc.
For creation of educational multimedia and interactive resources
professors need to raise the level of computer literacy, which lets to work
and to use programs allowing to download all materials and texts.
Educational multimedia resources, generally, apply on a special
universitys website5 and they are open not only for students and
5 . // http://media.ls.urfu.ru/start/

professors of this university, but for all people who are interesting in a
problems of history of culture and modern society.
Posted in resource not only lectures and textbooks texts, but also
articles and current publications professors and post-graduate students in
Russian and English, creators of this resource can consolidate around it
imaginary humanitarian society and promote university in Internet. Due to
resource its possible to organize the discussion of different questions of
modern culture and provocative texts of humanitarian theories.
Multimedia content is easy perceived and emotionally attractive
because using materials are not only illustrating the main ideas, but also
complement the theoretical view on a problems. Also the use of
morphologically different texts lets make cases more varied and complex
than cases made in traditional verbal form 6.
This type of courses should be interactive, it means that professors or
students directly have to create and accommodate in resource the best
research and control works, such as essays, presentations, cases, articles,
reviews, which were made student individually or in groups.
Such interaction of professors and students makes resource alive,
reflecting the real students vision of problems in humanitarian area and
real intellectual level of these students. The uploading different types of
students works on resource is motivate the students to make them more
creative, and helps professor quickly update content from one lesson to the
other.
It is very important that students have possibility to assimilate
intellectual content of resource, if it is necessary, independently or remotely
without loosing the real connections with educational process, in spite of
the various circumstances of life.

Students can upload their works

6 .., .., ..

//

( -2013).
- . (06-08 2013). , , 2013. //
http://media.ls.urfu.ru/notv/818/1839/

themselves not only in a classroom, but also from any social networks,
such as, for example, VK or Facebook.
The result of the introduction of educational multimedia resource is
concentration of educational and scientific material, which is enough for
mastering any type of humanitarian course from any time and any
computer with Internet access. Availability of educational multimedia
resource gives an opportunity for students and professors interactive
communication and joint filling of the content.
When we use educational multimedia resource in a studying process,
students became more interesting in achieving high educational and
research results, because their intellectual product, published in resource,
is open for viewing and assessing any visitor.
The most important thing in a functioning of resource is that it decides
the problem of monologue and the monotony of the educational process,
which is one of the characteristics of the traditional educational strategy.
Thanks to the new multimedia educational technology studying
process becomes more variable and more polymorphic because of the
different format of the texts. And it is more variable also because of a new
ways of filling of the texts and new ways of organization of discussion.
Resource, which functions in Internet, may be easy editing by
professor new parts and topics connecting with previous, parallel or future
courses.
Generalizing the practice of creation and implementing educational
multimedia interactive resources, we can say the following: teaching in
post-literacy time this is a process when professor upload his/her lecture
in Internet, before he/she came to teach, and students checked on their
gadgets polymorphic hypertext connecting with the problem and then came
to seminar to discuss them.