Hyperlinks from Word

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Using Hyperlinks

Some educators may miss out on the efficiency benefits of using the hyperlink capability of the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Most people use the browser's Bookmarks or Favorites to mark a useful Internet site. This is quite efficient over re-typing the url of the site when you wish to return.

Unfortunately for the educator, the list of 'useful' places is quite large. There may be a need to manage the browser with a supplementary program or plugin. Why not use the hyperlink capability of Word or Excel. For purposes of discussion, Word will be used. However, the exact same process will work in Excel.

A little organization and background discussion is in order before discussing the process. Imagine you have 500 different Internet sites each having some value to you, the educator. If 500 isn't enough, image 1000 or 1,500 (any very large number will do.) Some organization is needed. Who wants to wade through the large list to find a single url?

While it is possible to edit the name of the bookmark or favorite to better help you remember that url, most of us will not recall why you thought a particular site was useful when it is sandwiched between 100 or 200 other url's that have been captured. You need to be able to capture the specific url address AND why you would ever go back. You need to be able to annotate your bookmarks. Enter Word to the rescue!

In Word (or Excel) you have the ability to create a hyperlink to another document. (These programs typically use a 'chain link' icon to indicate a hyperlink.) The document can be anywhere the computer can 'see' (Hard Drive, Diskette, Server, or Internet page). Conceptually it works like this. Once a document is linked in Word, the user of the document has only to click on the link and shortly that document will be found. If it isn't a Word document, the computer will launch the application required to view that document. For example, you may link to an Excel document and the computer will launch Excel and display the document.

In the case of the Internet links, the computer will launch the browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer) you have set as the default browser and find the HTML document and display it for you. My experience with this process has been with computers that had limited RAM resources. It seems to work better on 'under-powered' machines if the browser is already launched and minimized.

The process works like this:

Enter the specific web address you would like to use. This means using http://www.....
Enter a short description of the site or page. You describe why you would ever want to return.
You organize the listing of links and descriptions in a way that is meaningful to you.

For Example:

http://www.tsupc.edu/hutcheson

This website contains several useful readings for technology-using educators. If you have forgotten some specifics of Excel or PowerPoint, view some movie clips. There are some thoughts on WordProcessing, Spreadsheets, Databases, and Presentations that might be useful for ideas on using these applications. Helpful for Graduate study or staff development.

A suggestion for organization of links and descriptions:

Start with two lists...links for you as a professional and links for your students. Your links might include websites of professional organizations, sites that have teacher resources like lesson plans, research, or simply any site that you find useful. The student sites are places you might recommend or assign to students for specific instructional reasons.

When you first start out, you will build to the point you have 10-15 in each category. There is probably no need to organize further. As you collection builds to 25 or 50, you will find yourself scrolling through the list to find a particular site. When this 'searching' seems a little too much effort, it is time to further refine your organization. If you are very active in professional organizations, you may have 10-15 organization sites. It is practical to use your 'cut-n-paste' skills to group all of your organizational sites together under a heading of professional organizations. If you have too many sites devoted to lesson plans, group all of these types sites together under the heading of lesson plans.

Two logical choices appear next. You may have a single (and long) word processing document that groups together similar links. The advantage is obvious--a single place for all of your links. However, this could become less efficient as the number of links and descriptions cause you to expand into several pages. While you can make a 'table of contents' and link within a single document, it might be easier to have several small documents descriptively named (lesson plan links, organization links, etc) and put all of these links in a single folder. If you are looking for a web address of a professional organization you would launch the 'organization' document and click on the particular organization you are seeking.

Common Mistakes with the Organization and Linking Process

A. Brevity of Description

You will remember the exact contents of every page of a site when you first make a visit. How much will you remember 6 months later? Consider two examples:

Weak	Strong
HTTP://www.lessonplancity.com Contains excellent plans for a busy teacher.	HTTP://www.lessonplancity.com Offers lesson plans in Math and Science for the Middle School. Particular strengths are for the Pre-Algebra section and life science.

You want to give enough of a description that a re-visit is not necessary to remind you what is there.

B. Too Wordy

You don't want to read a lengthy description if a shorter description would have worked just as well. Common abbreviations that will have meaning months later will help. The best wording is a tight, concise description. Remember the more words, the more scrolling to get to the next link if the one you are reading isn't the link you need.

One of the instructional benefits you will find is with the links for your students. Many educators have balked at having students spend so much time on a search engine looking for a useful site. It is not uncommon to have hundred's of thousands of 'hits' on search techniques that are too general for the intended purpose. Teachers wishing to have some of this lost instructional time back may find the students respond well to giving them several links that might be relevant to the topic of investigation. Since it is very easy to produce a 'live' website from a mistake in typing, you may avoid the waste of time or the appearance of some objectionable sites by linking to the correct site rather than typing its url address.

If you have kept your links for students in an organized way, it is not too difficult to use a copy/paste technique to produce a set of potentially useful links in a Word document which can be handed to students on a diskette or posted in their work folder on a network.