critical thinking

Critical thinking is "the art of thinking about your thinking while you are thinking in order to make your thinking better: more clear, more accurate, or more defensible." Paul, Binker, Adamson, and Martin (1989)
Critical thinking is the formation of logical inferences. Simon and Kapplan, 1989.
Critical thinking is "the examination and testing of suggested solutions to see whether they will work."
I think that these three definitions best describe the formation of my hypertext so far, but I think the first definition describes my process the best overall. While I was making different pages for my hypertext, the second one, I has one set topic that I was writing on. As I started to write more, there were subcategories that were coming up in the main topic I was writing about and then I made links for those categories. The one page that I sought to make turned into 5 pages easily. Also, the much experimenting I did to come up with an effective design can best be described by the third definition of critical thinking pasted above. In class we were given suggestions on how to improve our site. From easy navigation to making it seem like there is less context on the page than there really is so it would not scare of the reader. In order to come up with an effective design for the hypertext one has to do a little of experimenting with the setup and placement of text and pictures. The writing has to be reviewed over and over again because you want the writing to be interesting and to the point because if there is excessive definition and unnecessary writing in the hypertext, the viewer is more likely to skim over the work and not read it. Also, I think that links have to be carefully chosen so that they are clear to the reader and so readers will want to click on them. The links are ways to get deeper into your site and you don't want people to miss the details which will then make your hypertext "more accurate" and "more defensible."
The difference between writing for hypertext and writing essays is that writing essays is a bit of a drag. With hypertext, your ideas don't have to be formal as in a thesis for each page. Each page of the hypertext is like a new paragraph in an essay but without the boring opening sentence and the transition sentence to the next paragraph in the end. All the pages are related to each other somehome and it doesn't matter what page you start with in the hypertext, whereas in an essay the first paragraph has to lead to the seond and the second has to lead to the third and so on. Hypertext can also include bullets instead of all linear writing as in an essay. If i had to choose writing in hypertext and writing an essay I would chose writing in hypertext. It's much more easy and faster to complete and besides from wanting to write in hypertext rather than in essay form, I'd also rather read hypertext than an essay.