It is the great potential of a web-based educational effort that it encourages a variety of unexpected paths to develop. Readers can move among levels in a variety of multi-linear directions. While the risks are serious, the opportunity is even greater. It allows a web writer to implement in practice an approach that does justice to the belief that culture is a continuum: very concretely, a reader can have direct access to higher levels of complexity in the argument and greater amount of detail in the documentation than a fixed, linear educational paradigm might anticipate.
A fundamental presupposition is that readers need not be pigeon-holed in fixed categories for which set boundaries of knowledge and inquiry are pre-set. We need not assume that a child should only be served a childish fare. We should, certainly, have a variety of starting points, but none with a pre-set end point. This applies to education in general. In our case, we seek to implement it in a concrete way in both our website and the physical site of Tell Mozan.
It is for this set of reasons that I chose not to have a separate website for children. Rather, we provide, within the full website itself, some suggestions regarding starting points and alternative follow-up paths. If this section were to develop to a level where it may no longer adequately fit within the main website, it may well be possible to open a parallel website. But, in my intent, it would retain the same basic presupposition – that of sharing, in an ascensional way as it were, the opportunity for the readers to avail themselves of the full range of entries in the main website as well.
The mechanism I suggest for this purpose is an inquiry path.
Back to top: Web outreach