Professor A. Reads Aloud from a Continuous Lecture

Narrated and linked by Sam Rebelsky.

I sat down for the third day of Professor A.'s course in hypermedia, ready to think more about the implications of this innovative way of thinking about information. As precisely 11:00 a.m., Professor A. walked up to the podium, placed some wrinkled papers on top, and began to read aloud.

Bolter, of course, questions this assertion. However, to understand Bolter's reaction, you must understand Bolter's approach to hypertext. As you may have noted, Bolter seems to talk both about computerized text and about hypertext. At times, he treats them as similar. At others, he is careful to distinguish them ...

I looked around in confusion. What assertion was Bolter questioning? Had I missed something? Had I fallen asleep between the time Professor A. had walked up to the podium and the time I first heard him speak? Then I recalled that Professor A. had, in fact, ended the last class with an assertion from someone else (admittedly, some philosopher I don't recall). That philosopher had asserted something on the order of ``video games are forms of hypertext''. I wish that I'd thought more about that final assertion, since Professor A. had ended the last class with the statement that ``Of course, not everyone agrees.''

This narrative describes a form of the technique I call ``reading lectures''. While it seems that Professor A. seems to be reading a continuous article, stopping when the class ends and picking up the next class, he may also be taking advantage of ``the incomplete idea''. It may be worth contrasting this lecture with a more traditional ``reading lecture''.

• Technique: Reading your lecture
• Technique: The incomplete idea
• Compare to a complete-idea reading lecture
• Contrast with another treatment of a similar subject