What is Constructive Surfing?

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Constructive surfing

To appreciate the current innovation it is useful to first examine what is meant by the expression, “surfing” the Web?

The World Wide Web was commercialized in 1994 with the introduction of the Mosaic Web browser. Mosaic provided its users with direct access to a graphic rich media environment of Web pages by simply typing in the URL address of the desired Website into its address bar, or by clicking one of the hyperlinks embedded in a page. The term “surfing the Web” refers to the practice of discovering the Web’s content by simply, casually clicking the hyperlinks of rendered pages, one after another—recreationally, and thereby exploring this new multimedia world in an effortless, non-linear manner. This mode of exploration often led users to linked Web pages full of surprise and insight from distant countries, innovative start-up companies, obscure personal Web pages, government documentation, and esoteric knowledge bases. Metaphorically speaking, in those early days of this new medium, it was like surfing an ocean wave and enjoying its unique trajectory, regardless of where it might lead. Web surfing was, in effect, an experiential method of “discovery learning.”

Constructive surfing uses constructs and matrices to introduce a better way of exploring the Web. They provide a set of cognitive maps and reference points that organize the Web’s eclectic content into an easily navigated knowledge base. This improved method of surfing profits from the realization that certain “core constructs have sufficient breadth and depth of meaning to easily extend our initial understanding of them across multiple disciplines and into new subject areas.

How to surf constructively

Start with the constructs list, arranged vertically along the y-axis of Matrix 1 and click a construct. This will highlight a row of cells along the x-axis arranged by subjects/disciplines. Allow your cursor to hover above a cell and a  pop-up list appears showing  its contents. These are links to web articles  that illustrate that construct.  They can be opened in an adjoining tab with a click. Opening  a link with  Ctrl + click, allows you to continue within the matrix to make more reading selections.  Summary cells can be clicked to  provide an overview of all links for a given construct or domain. These are distinguished by the term “All”, e.g. All Subjects, All Sciences, All Society, All Arts & Humanities. When clicked, they generate a summary table.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”150px”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]