Just Publishing
On page 209 of Raw Materials for the Mind, David Warlick says that there are three major benefits for having students publish online. These benefits involve motivation, authentic writing, and multi-media.
The large audience of the worldwide web not only encourages students to become engaged in writing which actually communicates to a large group of people, but takes the students beyond writing to get a “good” grade.
A goal to communicate something in particular to a specific audience leads to authentic writing. Students must plan and develop a subject and decide on the best way to inform or convince their audience.
Digital communication makes multi-media presentations possible for adolescent students in a classroom in southern West Virginia. The challenge is there, and the student is only limited by his or her own imagination. Posters thrown together the night before a project is due will no longer be the way to go.
Warlick goes on to explain that there are many benefits to this kind of communication. There is no downside. There is no waste of time and effort. This is not “busy work”. This is authentic communication which students will need to know how to do in order to be successful in their twenty-first century jobs.
July 2, 2007 @ 8:54 am
How true is your statement. Blogs and technolgy is here to stay and they are the new way to communicate. E-mail and others are beginning to be the new snail-mail. We as educators must embrace the new way of communciating and share it with out students.