Community = Communication
I’ve been reading a lot about the good and the bad of blogging this week. Jeff Plaman shared these two articles from The Atlantic : Why American students can’t write and How Self-Expression Damaged my Students . Both articles present a general position about the dangers of a learning environment in which there is too much freedom for students and too little direct instruction from teachers. These articles are in contrast with Jeff’s own writing about our digital identity and that of my colleagues Paula Guinto and Jabiz Raisdana . If I can grossly simplify the collective position of Jeff, Paula and Jabiz, I think it is that blogs provide a space for students to explore and develop their sense of themselves as writers and that a certain amount of “freedom” is absolutely necessary for this to occur. Central to this discussion is the concept of “freedom”. For Peg Tyre and Robert Pondiscio, the two writers from The Atlantic , freedom seems to represent an abdication of responsibil...