For the final stage of your project, your assignment is to establish substantive hypertext links to relevant projects by three of your classmates. What is meant by substantive links? To establish a good link, you should

* survey projects to discover a point you wish to engage with. This could be a point that contrasts with one of your conclusions, that complements your analysis, or one that reinforces your point and makes it more powerful.

* place the hypertext link in your text

* revise your text to comment on it. Revisions should do more than merely mention the point of connection. A link that says "Arthur's analysis of suburban white picket fences reinforces my point about the lawn" is not very informative, useful, or exciting. Substantive links need substantive revisions. Develop and refine your text to engage with others--argue with them, show how another's point adds an important dimension to yours, how your project takes up an issue someone else overlooked, or otherwise articulate the nature and relevance of the connection you're making. Feel free to put the commentary on your link in the form of a letter.

* consider your links one further opportunity to revise and strengthen your project after thinking about how your conclusions compare and contrast with others.

Hypertext capability offers some intriguing possibilities. By linking our projects, we can create a class website that offers a much more powerful analysis of suburbia than any single project could offer by itself. Hypertext also allows us to cross-reference our projects. People cruising through our pages will know through your links that there are other projects nearby that treat similar subjects. Hypertext links allow us to acknowledge that there may be more than one legitimate point of view on an issue and to improve our position by testing it against an opposing argument. They can also foster collaborations that allow us to strengthen our own projects by citing and using sections of related projects.

Hypertext links encourage the kind of monitoring of our own thinking, gaining more knowledge, and rethinking and revising our ideas that characterizes good critical thinking.

Your hypertext links are due on Tuesday, Oct. 12th.