When television began to exert its magnetic force on American culture, Marshall McLuhan responded with the idea of the “post-literate” society, a world where families would sit around their cathode ray tube and happily satiate their new-found passivity. With the emotional pull of television drawing people in, the interest, the necessity and, therefore, the ability, to read and write would naturally wane.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to post-literacy—digital media, and digital media’s favorite
format, text. Back in the (merely literate society, text appeared i books, newspapers, mail, signs, an we even wrote or typed on paper a well. In the digital age, however, w have all the old formats, but we ca also send and receive text on ou televisions, on our cell phones and of course, on the Web. Because tex is the least data-intensive content t distribute, text is everywhere.
Text is not only easy to manipu late, it’s easy to generate and distrib ute. Anyone online can create a We page any other person on the plane can see. More recently, the Web log or “blog” has appeared, whic enables users to easily publish muc longer pieces on the Web, somethin much more like 19th century lette writing. The blog phenomenon i much more widespread than you’ (or, at least, I’d) imagined. Accord ing to the Perseus Developmen Corp., in 2003, over five milliot blogs were created on the Web, an that number will double next yea (http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/applications/article/0,,1301_3088661,00.html#table2). Although many of these sites ar quickly abandoned, those number still boggle the mind.
The staggering ubiquity of tex has become a critical component t the social lives of our students. Stu dents write in electronic media t maintain friendships, flirt, arrange dates—all the social minutia so critical to their lives. It behooves us, as educators, to exploit this trend for all it’s worth.
Here’s a simple idea: give each class a blog and have them write three substantial (at least a paragraph or two) comments per week. The comments could be original points, or responses to other students’ comments. The subject matter should be left wide open, but within the bounds of good taste. Most importantly, although what they write might be discussed in class, as long as they participate, there would be no grades involved. Without the stick of grades, the kids will write better, and their blog will become an opportunity to explore a process, rather than a chore that might include punishment.
Students can then be introduced to other blogs, which include some of the best current writing. Since they will be using exactly the same technology to create and distribute their writing as the pros use, the students can start thinking of themselves as real writers, creating content for a real readership, personally responsible for what they write. And the best part is that the students will never ask why learning to write on the Web is relevant to their lives.
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