The hypertextual superstructure or the format proposed by academics

The use of the inverted pyramid on the web, however, is a matter of debate. Authors such as Bradshaw (2007, 2010), Canavilhas (2006), Edo (2009), Esquivel (2014), and Salaverría (1999 and 2005) argue that the traditional inverted pyramid restricts the possibilities of the screen and should be replaced, for example, by an accumulation of information (Larrondo, 2009: 209), which in practice should take place through referrals to other articles. Salaverría’s approach (1995), which grounds this second prescription and is based, for example, on Van Dijk’s now classic proposal regarding textual configurations (1996: 69 ff.), establishes the need to return to basic textual sequences — description, narration, exposition — with a synthesis in the base text and expanded information in articles, infographics, or videos. Thus, the structure of the news item would tend to have a basically descriptive-narrative core, from which, among other functions, the oral reactions of those affected or a framework that places the event within a chain of facts would emerge. In any case, the most notable feature of this organization, at least when compared with the inverted pyramid, is that it is no longer possible to speak of a hierarchy of data from most important to least important, but rather of a chronological narration, which in Van Dijk’s program (1990) is assimilated to the hypothetical structure of an informational schema: account of the situation and comments, episode and background, verbal reactions and conclusions. After reviewing the prescriptions of several specialists on how the superstructure of online informational articles should be organized, a description was made of the superstructural schema of 68 articles taken from clarin.com and lanacion.com.ar. The results of that description were compared with the previous prescriptions, and it was observed that, to a large extent, those prescriptions were not fulfilled. In particular, referral to a deeper treatment of aspects of the central article through links still has a limited presence on the screen, at least in the articles studied. One cause of this disagreement between what is prescribed and what is actually done is the fact that the articles appearing on the screen may move to print within a few hours, making their target medium ultimately ambiguous. Another cause is that writers have not been trained in journalistic writing, and their awareness of user behavior remains limited. Ultimately, distanced from expert recommendations and twenty years after the emergence of the press on the web, the informational articles considered remain strongly attached to the logic of print.

Lessons on the Work of Global Knowledge and the Silenced Histories of Educational Technologies

The headlines stated it clearly: “Teaching Machines: Blessing or Curse?” (Gilmore, 1961); “Do Teaching Machines Really Teach?” (Margolis, 1963); “What Is It Really About? Teaching Machines for a New World or Teaching Machines for a Brave New World?” (Morello, 1965); “Can People Be Taught as If They Were Pigeons?” (Boehm, 1960). In the 1960s, several articles in the North American popular press highlighted growing public fears around what cultural historians describe as a “boom” in the invention and promotion of teaching machines. Although the development of mechanical teaching devices dates back at least to the late nineteenth century, when patented devices for educational use began to appear, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that historians noted that innovations in “teaching machines” had managed to generate a more comprehensive movement in the materialization of broader applications. National and international conferences devoted to new teaching technologies were held, and popular and academic publications devoted covers to new research and applications (Benjamin, 1988; Cuban, 1986, 2010; Ferster, 2015; Watters, 2014a, 2015). The National Education Association of the United States even published a book on the subject, Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning, in 1960, approximately 724 pages long. A frequent concern was the impact that machines would have on education: whether a mechanized and interactive pedagogy would turn educators into secondary figures. Headlines asked, “Can Machines Replace Teachers?” and demanded that defenders of teaching machines respond. Years before completing his famous “teaching machine” in 1961, Harvard psychologist and inventor B. F. Skinner, attempting to calm fears, wrote: “Will machines replace teachers? On the contrary, machines will be essential equipment used by teachers to save time and labor. After assigning certain mechanical functions to machines, the teacher will show his true role as an indispensable human being. He will be able to teach more students than before, something probably inevitable if the global demand for education is to be met, but he will do so in fewer hours and with fewer burdensome tasks” (1958). These publicly visible debates remind us that the current increase in public and private investment in new educational initiatives promoting Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), interactive and teaching-oriented, in order to prepare populations for the information economy of the twenty-first century — from programs that offer laptops and tablets to each student to virtual platforms with massive open online courses (MOOCs) — is not the first boom in educational technologies. Historians of education have shown how various media technologies — from radio and film to educational television — were introduced into public schools during the twentieth century as a way to improve textbook-based pedagogy, using new media to transmit educational content.