Core Writing Skills
While new media has made an incredible impact reading and writing in so many different areas the core concepts are still the same. Reading is reading, and writing is writing. There are always expectations with new methods of teaching, especially when it involves technology that there is going to be a dramatic change, and a complete overhaul of lessons are implementing will need to take place. If we put the fears aside, and focus less on the challenges and the differences and just start considering that what I’m teaching is the same, it’s just the medium in which I’m teaching it is changing. Blogging is just writing, or journal writing, students are being taught how to write, consider them writers, not bloggers that must gain specific skills in order to successfully complete a task, and gain knowledge from it. They are simply writing, but using a different medium. One example of a transition from one medium to the next would be article reading and research. There was little to no growing pains from using traditional newspapers for media research, to searching online for articles. The goals for this task include searching through content, reading to understand, and filtering down to collect relevant material. When the Internet made its way onto computers in schools no one worried about this transition, it was a new available option and was adopted. The objective of researching articles shifted platforms without hesitation and without any differentiation between the two types of acquisition. The same needs to happen with writing.
Too many barriers are put up between writing, and everything else that is done digitally, blogging, texting, and e-mailing etc. The mediums have changed but the core concepts have stayed the same. Whatever type of online or digital writing that is available to teachers needs to be not only embraced, but also synergized so they are viewed the same way. Any method of writing that is most appropriate should be used, both online and offline types. Not having a strong difference associated between the two types of writing keeps writing as writing, and only the medium on which it is written is different.
Writing needs to have an authentic audience to become purposeful. As (Bolter, 2011) points out there are many more opportunities to write for an authentic audience online, and “a different relationship between author and reader” can be accommodated. This is important while the novelty of digital writing can and probably will wear off, the interactions, and responsiveness of online digital writing won’t. There will always be that elements of communication that keeps a writer engaged with their readers. As I’ve come to learn, digital word processing is only the first step to become fully immersed into digital writing online to the point where writing is just writing, whether online or off.
References:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Routledge
http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/what-is-digital-writing/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/gastev/2174504149