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to the web cites just mentioned. By creating links the children show a degree of complexity in
their web pages. The links illustrate a desire to display a milieu of interests. The Internet user
points the cursor at the link, clicks, and is transported over time and space to another web page
that the child has chosen for them to see. The child is empowered in this way because they
decide what links to include and where people who use their web sites will go when they point
and click the hypertext.
Text was almost always included with the visual images. Besides the caption and
descriptive verbal information that accompanied the images on the web pages, the children
learned of an inherent relationship between visual and verbal information in web page designing.
The relationship between the HTML text and the web page became apparent to them (remember
that the student wrote their own HTML code). The placement of images, color, and other visual
components were affected by the HTML text. The visual image was, then, dependent on verbal
manipulation of HTML code.
Most of the children broke their web pages up into various boxes and frames. Some
included many framed-off boxes within their web pages while others only had a couple. The
frames create a linear, organized look to the web page. The frames form the boxes in which the
various images are found. The emphasis was on the use of square shapes.
The square elicits a certain feeling to the web pages. The square is one of the basic
shapes, the triangle and circle are the other two. Dondis (1973) tells us that each shape has its
own character. Squares are associated with ideas such as dullness, honesty, straightness, and
workman-like. The square is one of the simple shapes that is basic to the primitivistic style and
dullness, rather than being a negative quality, merely reflects the flat aspect of the square shape
that is also stylistically appropriate. Straight and honest are appropriate adjectives to characterize
Convention