Skype Lecture w Clarence Fisher

Dead Writing.

The idea of writing and presenting in a school environment is too often contrived. In math, when I see hwk answers that say nothing more than =12, my teacher hackles go up.

No no! I say. Show your work. Pretend that I don't know the question!

Why are we asking students to pretend?

Similarly with so amny forms of academic written work. Traditional teachers are always forced to ask studnets to suspend belief and work in contrived environments of writing to imaginary non-expert readers- when in fact, they are writing for teachers who are subject matter experts.

The internet, blogs and wikis eliminate this problem. By writing on online environments, the audience is the world and students no longer need to write to pretend audiences.