Hypercard, the first widely used hypertext program, was introduced on this day in 1987.

Hypertext, the method of linking words, images and buttons to other words, figures and pages—or in this case, virtual index cards—opened the door to an exciting and innovative way of presenting information that has dramatically altered multimedia development. HyperCard was the first program of its type to become widely accepted and used, particularly in the fields of education and entertainment—possibly due in part to its parentage (Apple). The program gave users an unprecedented flexibility to link and organize information in an intuitive and open-ended, rather than linear, way.

ReadWriteThink
Book Reviews, Annotation, and Web Technology (6–8) is a group-oriented lesson in which students explore the similarities between reading text in books and reading hypertext. Students write a group book review, take notes in their journals throughout the reading and discussion process, write short research papers as annotations for their reviews and then post the annotations to the Web, demonstrating the synchronicity of hypertext.

Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience (6–8) combines reading and writing in a collaborative, small-group learning experience. After reading several examples, students plan their own adventure story. Using Web-authoring software, groups create their own Web sites with the parts of the story hyperlinked to each other.

In Reader Response in Hypertext: Making Personal Connections to Literature (9–12), students choose four quotations that inspire personal responses to a novel they have read. Students write a narrative of place, a character sketch, an extended metaphor poem and a persuasive essay, link all four texts to the quotations and then publish the collected texts on their Web site.

Students create their own hypertext presentation after reading and analyzing the literary elements in a novel in the lesson Weaving the Multigenre Web (9–12).