Web Logs as Network Literacy

(Via Anne) Jill Walker pushes me a step further along in my thinking about Web logs as genre when she frames it as “writing in a network.” Click. That’s a major piece of what’s going on here and what makes it unique, and already my brain has started to think about ways I can facilitate that more effectively.

Bringing network literacy to the classroom means jolting students out of the conventional individualistic, closed writing of essays only ever seen by your professor. Here’s how I tried to do that, using blogs in my web design & esthetics class last spring: concrete tasks, in classroom; set up tasks where students linked to each other, feedback, link good or interesting posts from main course weblog, encourage feedback and editing of posts, reading and linking to other weblogs. In future: teaming up with another group of students elsewhere, crosslinking? Encouraging linking is key.

I’ve noticed that a few of my students are responding to their group mates’ blog posts, but I think the next step is to bring those reactions into their own spaces and link back. That’s really knowledge (or in this case, effort) magagement at its best.

Jill’s post is a great read.