Via Blogs for Learning, a new site from Michigan State, comes this pretty interesting article “The Technology of Reading and Writing in the Digital Space: Why RSS is crucial for a Blogging Classroom” by David Parry from the University of Albany. It has a higher ed slant, but is very relevant to younger students as well. Some relevant quotes from the article:

• “One of the most significant concerns about using blogs in the classroom is that students often feel as if they are doing the same writing, just placing it on the web. Since context determines meaning, the method and message of writing necessarily changes as students compose for the internet; however, many academics fail to convey this information to students.”
• “If one simply transfers the “book-way” of writing onto the digital space, students have learned little that they could not have gained from more traditional writing assignments. The situation may even be worse than one of unnecessary reconfiguration, for in the digital medium, writing often produces technological frustrations which, if not offset by other gains, leads to negative experiences for the students. Since the context of writing has shifted in the digital, it is important to demonstrate to student how authorship itself has shifted in the age of the digital.”
• “To write “well” in this space students need to learn not only how to cite and link, but indeed to package their writings in a different way. RSS helps accomplish this goal.”
• “The speed of reading in the age of the digital has changed, and we need to help students navigate this…Reading on the internet requires two separate skills: one, the quick analysis to find what is worth reading, and the second, a switch to slow analysis to carefully consider what has been found. What RSS does is allow students to make this distinction, to receive content as “bits” easy to scan, and then to select what they want to read.”

I think it’s great to see some more pedagogy centered articles about RSS coming out.

technorati tags:rss, education, learning, blogging

A few more thought-provoking lines from Henry Jenkins’ new book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.“ It’s been giving me quite a bit to chew on in the 30 or so pages I’ve read. I think he has an amazingly perceptive read on how access to people and ideas change the equation in the classroom. Just for some context, these are all from a chapter titled “Why Heather Can Write” which was expanded from an article published a couple of years ago in the MIT Technology Review. It’s primary focus is on kids turning to fan fiction, in this case, Harry Potter fan fiction. But the larger conclusions are pretty powerful, I think.

First, there is a discussion surrounding Paul Gee’s so-called “affinity spaces” which says that “people learn more, participate more actively, engage more deeply with popular culture than they do with contents of their textbooks” (177).

Affinity spaces offer powerful opportunities for learning, Gee argues, because the are sustained by common endeavors that bridge across differences in age, class, race, gender, and educational level, because people can participate in various ways according to their skills and interests, because they depend on peer-to-peer teaching with the participant constantly motivated to acquire new knowledge or refine his or her existing skills, and because they allow each participant to feel like an expert while tapping the expertise of others.

That resonates so powerfully with the way I reflect on my own practice as a blogger and with this community: constantly motivated to learn because of the connections that I have to the community of learners in this space. And it’s powerful because of the way learning is nurtured. As Jenkins says

In the classroom, scaffolding is provided by the teacher. in a participatory culture, the entire community takes on some responsibility for helping newbies find their way.

I love the language that Jenkins uses as well when talking about the potential effects of the fan fiction world on learning.

What difference will it make, over time, if a growing percentage of young writers begin publishing and getting feedback on their work while they are still in high school? Will they develop their craft more quickly? Will they discover their voices at an earlier age? And what happens when these young writers compare notes, becoming critics, editors, and mentors…As we expand access to mass distribution via the Web, our understanding of what it means to be an author–and what kinds of authority should be ascribed to authors–necessarily shifts.

Our students have a plethora of opportunities to publish right now, and more are opening up each day. (In fact, Barbara Barreda is writing about just such an opportunity in her blog.) When are we at least going to start thinking about the possibility of publishing work instead of just handing it in? I think that’s one of the most powerful shifts this is bringing about in our classrooms. If we don’t start considering the potential of publication soon, we’re going to find ourselves more and more irrelevant. As Jenkins puts it, we now live in a world “where knowledge is shared and where critical activity is ongoing and lifelong.”

Not surprisingly, someone who has just published her first online novel and gotten dozens of letters of comment finds it disappointing to return to the classroom where her work is going to be read only by the teacher and feedback may be very limited.

Finally, Jenkins writes eloquently about the new power our students have in this culture.

They are active participants in these new media landscapes, finding their own voice through their participation in fan communities, asserting their own rights even in the face of powerful entities, and sometimes sneaking behind their parents’ back to do what feels right to them. At the same time, through their participation, these kids are mapping out new strategies for negotiating around and through globalization, intellectual property struggles, and media conglomeration. They are using the Internet to connect with children worldwide and, through that process, finding common interests and forging political alliances…In talking media pedagogies, then, we should no longer imagine this as a process where adults teach and children learn. Rather, we should see it as increasingly a space where children teach one another and where, if they would open their eyes, adults could learn a great deal. (Emphasis mine.)

I just find that to be such a powerful articulation of what’s happening to learning in this new world. And I just don’t think many if any of our schools are really looking through this new lens very clearly yet. How are we supporting these types of connections in our curricula? How are we helping our students to become globally conversant? To what extent are we really handing over the power of these tools and teaching them how to use them well?

Much to think about…

technorati tags:Henry_Jenkins, literacy, fan-fiction, Paul_Gee, education, classroom, learning

Kim is writing powerfully about her practice, and a few days ago she posted this:

Here’s the amazing thing about blogging for me. When I go home to my family or talk to friends, noone really wants to talk about education, or my ideas, or drop out prevention, or student achievement. Mystandard response to “how was your day?” is “great” and that’s about it. But I still have my students, school and it’s challenges swirling around in my head a substantial percentage of the time. So now I find blogging and it’s an instant connection to others who are interested in the same thing.

Amen. How many people have passions that they can’t share because they are too esoteric or because geography separates them from others who share it? This is about connection in so many ways, on so many levels, but none more profound than the one that brings us to meet via our ideas in this virtual space. It’s so very cool, and so very powerful when you think that just a few years ago it, for all intents, couldn’t be done. That is what makes not having the time to read and write so frustrating…the connection weakens.

technorati tags:blogging, education, connective_learning

So this “High School’s New Face” Conference has been really interesting and another example of how the people out here in Western New York are working hard to move schools and education in a different direction. There are about 150 educators here with each school bringing at team of teachers and a building principal or superintendent They have been split into four cohorts: Engaging the 21st Century Learner, Connecting the 21st Century Learner, Designing a School for the 21st Century Learner, and Leading the Way, the last for the administrators. The idea is that the different teachers from different districts take different strands and then will get back together after the conference to teach each other what they learned and hopefully have meaningful discussions about how to move forward.

I’ve been working with the Connecting group to learn about the tools, and I have to say that despite some connectivity issues, they have been absolutely great. We did two sessions yesterday (the last until 9 pm.) two more today, and will have one more in the morning…a total of almost 16 hours together! We’ve listened to students from local districts and from the Met School in Providence talk about what good teaching and learning is. (One of the students from the Met school read an incredible poem he had written basically about how the school had saved him from drugs and crime in his neighborhood…it was absolutely amazing.) We’ve teleconnected with an educator in Kansas, and tomorrow we’ll be hearing from the creators of Tech Valley High. It’s just been very well planned and delivered, and I’m just getting a really positive vibe about all of it.

The 50 or so members of my cohort are already producing some interesting content too. Kim Moritz who is a principal at a local high school, is asking some great questions about her curriculum. Beth McIntyre is already reading and thinking and writing about what she’s reading and thinking. And there are others who are just starting. We have our own Mother Blog and a cohort wiki as well. We’re getting there. As always, it will be interesting to see how much of it sticks, but if the conversations and ideas are any indication, much of it should.

technorati tags:blogging, education, Met_School, change, school_reform

Welcome to Ellicottville, NY where I have about 30 teachers and administrators in the room for the first session of what will be three days of immersion into blogs, wikis, podcasts, rss feeds, social bookmarking sites etc. AND pedagogy! (What a concept.)

So before we set up Blogger blogs, I give them my impassioned warning about how you have to be willing to talk (or blog) to the empty room, but that if you keep writing good stuff, people will find you. I draw the “Long Tail” on my tablet, give them strategies to find other bloggers, tell them how to comment on other posts and link back to their own. “Keep the faith!”

Then we make blogs. Five minutes. I tell them to read first, then write. To break intellectual sweat. To reflect, think, post. To…ah, whatever. Just post. But, of course be patient. Keep at it. The comments will come. Don’t…

When wouldn’t you know it. Like that moment in the big Bingo parlor when you call out “N-34″ and someone’s hand shoots up declaring victory, someone in the room says “Hey! I got a comment!” Six minutes after posting.

Six.

I run and put her blog up on the big screen. Even I am impressed. Six minutes. How did that happen, I ask? (Maybe I’ll tell them after dinner.)

I think we’re gettin’ it…

technorati tags:blogging, education

Konrad Glogowski has an amazing post today about his grade 8 students’ blogging experiences, and it’s one that should be trumpeted far and wide in this community. Imagine being a part of this:

My community of grade eight student bloggers became so big and so engaging that I spent every spare moment reading and writing within this community. My class community suddenly blossomed and I started seeing myself as an important part of the classroom community and no longer as a teacher who peddles content. I became a participant in a series of dialogues. I witnessed the emergence of a semantic network, one where all links, all interactions were based on meaning.

One thing I really like about Konrad’s blogging is that he points me to so much good stuff about learning theory in the context of telling his stories about his students. Here, he references the community as networks of semantic relations that Stephen Downes writes about, Brufee’s “community of knowledgeable peers,” Bereiter’s “progressive discourse,” Scardamalia and Bereiter’s “intentional learning” ideas, and others. It’s a veritable feast for the brain, and it teaches me. And the best news is that he’s documented his transformative experience and plans to teach me, and us, even more in the days to come.

What really jumps out at me here is the power of the idea that we can now create learning communities of meaning that are much more powerful than communities of proximity. This community that I am a part of is testament to that. We are self-directed, nomadic learners, moving purposefully down paths that interest us, engaging in conversations, building connections and networks around our passions and our zeal to know more about them. We share our experiences to confirm our own understanding in the context of the community, hoping to teach, I think, and hoping to move the discussion forward. Is it strange that I get butterflies when I read things as powerful as what Konrad writes? That I can’t wait to make sense of it through blogging, to figure out what about it resonates? That I can’t wait to point others to it? Konrad is writing about his students here, but I think this could easily describe what we as edbloggers do as well:

…the idea of knowing in this community as“the intentional activity of individuals who, as members of a community, make use of and produce representations in the collaborative attempt to better understand and transform their shared world.”

A lot of us will be proximate next week at NECC, and that is always a good thing, but we’ll continue to learn from each other regardless of where we are. As long as, of course, we remain willing to contribute. In the case of kids, Konrad has found the best of both worlds:

That’s when I realized that this class community was truly engaged, that its members were interested in pursuing knowledge as researchers who are passionately involved and not as students who need to absorb the content.

How cool is that? Read the whole thing…

technorati tags:necc, necc06, connective_learning, blogging, education, learning

So, using David’s questions about blog assessment, here is how I might assess this post as I write it (with some commentary on the questions along the way.)

1. What did you read in order to write this blog entry? Yee Haw! Blogging starts with reading, and I read David’s post, which leads me to blogging. (I read some other stuff, too. See below.) And I think an even more interesting question to add is “What was your process of reading?” In the previous post about Net Neutrality, I worked between three or four different readings to assemble the ideas contained in the posts. There was nothing linear about it, which is another aspect of reading/writing literacy in hypertext environments that really interests me.

2. What do you think is important about your blog entry? I think the importance here is the deconstruction of the process and the inherent reflection that goes with it. Sometimes blogging is work, and it’s when I’m crafting a post (as opposed to writing it) that I know I’m involved in some real learning. As a blogger/learner, it’s crucial that I recognize and understand the decisions I make about what to write (based on feel and audience), how to write it, and when to publish it.

3. What are both sides of your issue? Well, some feel whatever you do in your blog is blogging. As is well known, I disagree. I do think this reflective assessment about the blogging can point to the power of reading, thinking, synthesizing, writing and reading some more.

4. What do you want your readers to know, believe, or do? I would add learn to that list. And I would also move this up to second in the list (if we are looking at this as process.) The audience aspect of blogging is central to the task, and if we’re not aware of what our purpose is, we won’t communicate it well. This is the Donald Murray school of anticipating the readers questions, responses, reactions. We have to become the audience (if there still is one, of course.)

5. What else do you need to say? I’m not sure this question works for me, because I’d hope that if I had more to say I would say it. What about What have you learned from the process? or How will you find out more?

Regardless, some good initial thinking on how we might begin to teach the metacognitive aspects of blogging.

technorati tags:blogging, assessment, education

Doug Noon posts about an interesting paper from Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel titled “Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy” that does a nice job of framing the difference of mindeset between the traditional view of the classroom and the emerging view.

I think the underlying premise between the two mindsets is interesting: “The world is much the same as before, only now it is more technologised, or technologised in more sophisticated ways” vs. “The world is very different from before and largely as a result of the emergence and uptake of digital electronic inter-newtorked technologies.”

I know I keep coming back to MySpace, but if nothing else, what’s happening there should be a starting point for just how much the world really has changed. The ability to network widely changes everything, and the kids and adults at MySpace are showing it.

technorati tags:connective_reading, connective_writing, social_network

Last month, if:book released news about Sophie, a project that is aimed at changing the way we think about books. The bottom line is that reading and writing are changing, and as more and more people step into these social Web tools, more and more will be expected of them. There is much to be intrigued about here (from the .pdf):

Sophie will blur the lines be­tween reading and writing in a way past the capabilities of print books. Imagine that I’m reading a book: I find something that I disagree with. If it’s a print book, I might write “This isn’t true,” or, if the margins are wide enough, I might start scribbling an explana­tion of why I think it’s not the case. Were I using Sophie, I could add a note – a note that’s longer than the book, if need be. If I own the book, I could attach that note to the book permanently. Or I could spin new note off as its own, linked, book. Or to go furthest of all: if I have permission to do so, I could rewrite the content entirely.

Other sorts of less confrontational commentary will also be pos­sible. If I’m reading a book and I find something that reminds me of a webpage, I can attach a link to it. I could pass this annotated book on to a friend; she could read the book, read my annotations, and attach her own. If I had a hundred friends, they could all do the same…

Sophie will make it possible to integrate the writing of the report with the slideshow that would have accompanied it. Sophie treats all media equally: if adding a slide show would be helpful to a primarily written report, the student can add it on to the page it’s intended to illustrate. No longer do you need to switch from Word to Powerpoint.

Sophie will live in a networked environment. This will be possible in many different ways. As mentioned, Sophie books can link to other Sophie books. However, the two Sophie books don’t have to be resi­dent on the same computer: the linked Sophie book could very well be on a remote server over the Internet…

Books aren’t the only thing that can be remote: resources used inside of Sophie – for example, streaming video – can be remote. Because Sophie is extensible (see below), it can also link to or include information outside of Sophie – a webpage, for example, or informa­tion from a database. You could put an RSS feed inside Sophie; you could update a Sophie book with information from a blog.

Where does Sophie end? It should be clear that Sophie is not just an environment for creating and reading books in – it’s an environ­ment for creating and reading that’s conscious of its place in the ecosystem of information.

Apparently, a beta is coming soon…

Seems I’m forever saddled with Bloglines backup these days, and it’s so frustrating not to have the time to read and think and write as much as I’d like to. And then when I do have the time, I read such interesting stuff that it’s hard not to take extra time to read and reread and dwell on the ideas. I’m starting to think that in my perfect blog world, I would have only about 20 kick butt feeds in my aggregator that I could just slowly chew through and breathe with, and then turn into some decent blogging. When I feel like my blogging sucks, like I have the past couple of weeks, it’s not about the writing. It’s about not having the time to read. I think that’s one of the most interesting things about this practice, by the way, one that not a lot of people really understand until they do it. Learning to me does not come very much from transcribling my life as it does capturing provocative ideas and deconstructing their meaning and relevance in my own practice. That’s where this becomes a lifelong learning addiction, in the connections between the reading and the writing.

The good news is that not everyone blogs like Barbara Ganley, ’cause if they did, I’d manage only five or six feeds max. Her latest post covers the ways in which she’s getting out her students’ way even more through blogs and podcasts and digital storytelling. She talks about teacher as DJ:

I believe wholeheartedly in having a huge stockpile of exercises and assignments in my pocket, and then ditching them all for something that evolves, that emerges from the learning community and the learning moment.

She talks about learning as a process, not an event:

So I am comfortable viewing the course as a living organism that will often take us places unanticipated at the beginning of the semester or even at the beginning of the class hour. This is an essential characteristic, I believe, of a successful blogging teacher.

And she writes about reinvention:

I have resisted setting up many guidelines for the stories–I want them to feel their way to their stories from this moment here in time. And right now, many of them are surely thinking that I have lost my mind–they look for the due dates; the detailed, clear instructions for success; and they really wonder why we aren’t just sticking to notebooks and keeping their creative writing, for the most part, private, between covers where for many of them it has lived since they were children, or slipped to the professor only when absolutely necessary…And we will blog–sharing the bumps, the pleasures, the questions, the discoveries. Already they feel self-conscious about posting, but that they are writing about that self-consciousness in their opening posts shows a willingness to speak honestly. Even i this opening week, the comments they leave one another illustrate already what the connectedness of social software can do for our students–they do not feel isolated in their learning, and if they feel a connection with others, well then, they will engage with the learning opportunities the group offers.

That is such good writing, and such good reading of the kind that makes me promise myself that in my own reinvention I will make time for my own process every day as an important part of my learning.
—–

Now I�m not saying there is anything necessarily bad about the old (or should I say current) forms of writing conferences that teachers have with students. Having taught writing for 20 years, I know the positive effects of sitting down and speaking with a reader�s voice can have when reacting to student writing. (By the way, one really excellent book on this subject is Lad Tobin�s Writing Relationships : What Really Happens in the Composition Class.)

What I AM saying, however, is that now we have so many other ways to share feedback and create opportunities for readers to respond to writing. Ways that in some respects I think can be even more effective than the traditional method where we will always find it hard to escape our role as teachers and become real readers in our students� eyes. Ways that with a little planning we could do safely. For instance:

The Distributed Conference�Have students post writing to a blog. Point other students, mentors, public types to it and ask them to post reflections/feedback either in comments or on their own blogs (assuming they have them.) (This is how I look at the writing “conferences” that occur about the ideas on my blog.)

The Audio Conference�Capture the voices of the teacher and student by recording it on the computer (or MP3 player). Advantage: It�s easier for the writer to return to the ideas expressed in the conference and reflect more effectively. Becomes part of the portfolio or archive.

The Screencast Conference�This time, capture the conference with Windows Media Encoder (free). Advantage: Writer can refer back to the discussion AND the markup and can subsequently reflect on the conference more effectively which can then become a part of the student�s writing portfolio. And, of course, the screencast is archivable, too.

The Skype Conference�Ask the writer to convene a Skype conference call with mentors, friends, other teachers, family members, or a mixture thereof�anyone outside of class. Have the writer read the piece (publishing) and then listen to the reactions of the listeners. (This could be more structured for the listeners in terms of the types of feedback they should be giving.) Record the conference, and have the writer reflect on the conversation. And, of course, it becomes a part of the portfolio.

The Skype Conference Take 2�Post the piece to the blog. Invite readers to volunteer for a Skype discussion. (It occurs to me that this would be a very cool thing to try with a blog post�hey wait a minute�)

HERE’S WHERE YOU GET TO PLAY ALONG… Ok, so I�m opening up a Skype conference call at 3 pm EST tomorrow (12/15) about this post to discuss these ideas which I will record and subsequently post as an addendum to this post. (Huh?) If you want to take part, my Skype name is willrich45. I�ll take the first three people to respond. Any takers???

So with some pointers from Barbara Ganley, I’ve been doing some reading on hypertext theory and over the past couple of days have immersed myself in Jay David Bolter’s Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print. The second edition came out in 2001, just before the blog explosion, but the table is clearly set by what he’s writing. This is probably the first of a couple “capture the main ideas” type posts about the reading.

We’re in “the late age of print” which captures the feeling I have about paper texts so well. Bolter says that the possibilities for print have pretty much been played out (2) and that “Digital media are refashioning the printed book” (3). Inherent in this discussion is the idea, I think, that hypertext is forcing us to shift our thinking as to the value of print.

In the late age of print, however, we seem more impressed by the impermanence and changeability of text, and digital technology seems to reduce the distance between author and reader by turning the reader into an author herself. Such tensions between monumentality and changeability and between the tendency to magnify the author and to empower the reader have already become a part of our current economy of writing (4). [Emphasis mine.]

Echoes of Jay Rosen, no doubt. And echoes of the connective reading that we must do when we are “empowered” by the ability to enter space with the author. As we read, we connect to ideas and personal knowledge with the intent to respond, not simply to passively, internally grapple with the meaning. Bolton connects this to Plato’s Dialogues which “invite the reader to participate in a conversation and then denies him or her full participation” (104). Not so any more.

What I’ve found especially interesting is how he discusses the network necessary for electronic writing.

If linear and hierarchical structures dominate current writing, our cultural construction of electronic writing is now adding a third: the network as a visible and operative structure. The network as an organizing principle has been present in many forms of writing; indeed Homeric oral poetry shows that the network is older than writing itself.After the invention of writing in the ancient world, it became the writer’s task to establish his own network comprised of references and allusions within the text and connected to the larger network formed by other texts in the culture. From that time until the advent of electronic writing, the referential network has often existed “between the lines” of text;that is, in the minds of readers and writers. Now, however, the network can rise to the surface of the text (106).

Digital technologies call into question the traditional treatise in which the writer assumes control over the argument. And this is the way we teach exposition today, without ever thinking that what is written may be connected to other ideas or interpretations.

Why should a writer be forced to produce a single, linear argument or an exclusive analysis of cause and effect when the writing space allows a writer to entertain and present several lines of thought at once? (107)

What a concept. This idea that a text speaks with a singular voice does not as easily stand in these new writing environments:

Publishing is fundamentally serious and permanent; a scholar or scientist cannot even retract his own previously published argument without embarrassment. A dialogue, on the other hand, speaks with more than one voice and therefore shares or postpones responsibility. A hypertextual essay in the computer could in fact be fashioned as a dialogue between the writer and her readers, and the reader could be asked to share the responsibility for the outcome. [Emphasis mine.]

Really good stuff, much of which seems to validate the shift in thinking that we’re going to have to complete in order to fully prepare our kids for what’s out there. That’s not to say that we don’t continue to teach linear forms of writing as well. But we have to begin introducing the idea of transactional writing, of writing in and for networked audiences that are invited into the conversation. The more they understand that writing is a part of a process of learning and not just a product of it, the better off they will be.
—–

I’m home sick today. I should be sleeping. Instead, I can’t stop reading and learning. So much to know…

I missed this post by Jay Rosen a month ago, luckily linked to by Ken Smith who has been blogging greatly lately and who I’ve been catching up on today. This is the way of connective learning, isn’t it? Based on personal passions, asynchronous, spontaneous, complex…

Jay says

Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they�re opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out, re-building it around new stuff. Come to some conclusions? Put them in your weblog, man, but just remember: it doesn�t want to conclude.

People trying to explain their attraction to the weblog form say it�s conversational, two way, personal, a medium for the individual voice� plus interactive with our untold wealth in information, and fun. All true. Doc adds something: weblogging is an inconclusive act� and that�s attractive, part of the fun.

I love that. But it’s so different from the way we teach writing now. The paper essay is a statement of opinion. The Weblog entry is a statement of opinion in progress. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach the former. But if we believe the future rests in digital communication (which I do, btw), how can we ignore the latter? If our students don’t have the skills to negotiate their learning instead of state it, are we really preparing them for their futures?

So I’ve been thinking more about the whole “connective writing” idea and its potential importance as a unique genre of writing in this “new” Web environment. They way it’s framed in my brain, it’s a type of writing that is inspired by reading and is therefore a response to an idea or a set of ideas or conversations. It is writing that synthesizes those ideas and remixes them in some way to make them our own and is published to potentially wide audiences. Because it is published, it is writing that then becomes a part of a larger negotiation of a truth or knowledge that is evolving in the larger network. And finally, it is writing that is written with the expectiation that it too will be taken and remixed by others into their own truths by this continuous process of reading, thinking, writing (and linking), publishing and reading some more.

As I’ve thought about this, one of the key ingredients has been David Weinberger’s idea that texts no longer have value based on what they contain but on what they connect to. So, now that we can publish easily, now that markets or schools or (your plural noun here) are conversations, now that paper is becoming more and more irrelevant as a communication platform, we need to repurpose our texts (in whatever medium) from being simple containers of ideas into being complex connectors of ideas. To me, that represents a very significant shift.

In the last couple of days, a number of people have pointed to a great article at Kairos titled “Why Teach Digital Writing?” that begins to get to this idea of connective writing:

Computer technologies allow writers with access to a computer network to become publishers and distributors of their writing. And chances are they will get feedback, sometimes immediately. Therefore, audiences and writers are related to each other more interactively in time and space. Writers can easily integrate the work of others into new meanings via new media and rescripting of old media�text, image, sound, and video�with a power and speed impossible before computer technologies. The depth and breadth of this type of collaboration�both implicit (�borrowing� from others) and complicit (communities of writers)�may be one of the most significant impacts of computer technologies on the contexts and practices of writing. This context presses up against larger issues of intellectual property, plagiarism, access, credibility of sources, and dissemination of information

At some point, we’re all going to have to shift our thinking about some of the ideas in that last sentence. (Talk about a disruption.) But on the current topic, here’s the money quote:

When we put it all together, the ability to compose documents with multiple media, to publish this writing quickly, to distribute it to mass audiences, and to allow audiences to interact with this writing (and with writers) challenges many of the traditional principles and practices of composition, which are based (implicitly) on a print view of writing. The changing nature and contexts of composing impacts meaning making at every turn. [Emphasis mine.]

There’s more here too, much more, that I will get to at some point. But I’m thinking about how we begin to move our students, young students even, away from container texts to connector texts, about how we start to prepare them for a world of conversations (as David Warlick implores) and negotiations and meaning making instead of meaning taking.

And, almost more importantly, I’m wondering how we move our teachers to doing this as well.