Distributed conversations, augmented intellects, networks of inquiry: though I’ve been blogging for over a year, it’s still a thrill to make contact and find new sources of wonder and wisdom.

Today’s case in point: “Blog of Proximal Development” author Konrad Glogowski responds to my response to his blog, thus teaching me and sharpening my thinking. Konrad then links to Joan Vinall-Cox’s lovely and deeply thoughtful College Quarterly piece on “Teaching Writing in the Age of Online Computers,” which also bowls me over. New horizons for thinking and conversation open up as a result.

I could get used to this.

Pull quote from Konrad’s blog:

This reminds me of what Prensky calls “legacy content” – students need to learn about great minds and the ideas they produced and not just what’s online. They also need good teachers, people who are experienced “connectors” – people who will help students discover that Copernicus, for example, connects to the geocentrism of Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy but also to the heliocentric view of the universe and to the notion of immanence, subjectivism, intellectual freedom, the Renaissance, and religion in general.

As the kids say in Peanuts, THAT’S IT!

Pull quote from Vinall-Cox’s article:

Now, in this new digital world, students are more comfortable producing writing and their prose is less constrained and constricted. Some may still have spelling errors or use the wrong words, some may research shallowly and show little evidence of critical thinking, and some may fail to structure their material for the reader, but they all can produce a flow of words. This is new, and, I believe, a direct result of their use of the online computer as a social tool.

Does it improve them as writers? In terms of the amount of their text output, it does. Does it make them good writers of academic papers? Yes and no. They still have to learn how to think critically, how to structure material, how to cite authorities, and how to use the capacities of the new writing tool, the online computer. Some will learn those skills, and some will have trouble learning them. All, however, now start out with the ability to link to their “inner speech” (Vygotsky, 1962, p 148) and that is a major difference.

Ditto the above.

I am grateful to both of these writers. I’m also grateful that the content was on the Web, not in a walled garden. I want to get used to this.