This article from eSchoolNews does a good job emphasizing some of the relevant lessons from a recent Pew report:
For most media outlets that reported on an important new
survey measuring the impact of technology on teens’ writing skills, the
big news from the survey was that emoticons and text-messaging
abbreviations are creeping into students’ formal writing assignments.
:-(Buried beneath the alarm of writing “purists,” however, was a
promising finding with equally important implications for schools:
Blogging is helping many teens become more prolific writers.
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On another entry, Eric posted a link to a relevant article from the CS Monitor, which offers another take on the Pew Report:
"Over half of teenagers from all races and income levels have social networking profiles, like on MySpace or Facebook. This flourishing of creativity and expressiveness should be harnessed in all schools."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0513/p09s02-coop.html?page=1 (That URL actually takes you to page one -- the quote is from page two. Whoever designed that website without a "see full article" option didn't think about the inconvenience of having to explain why the link to the article doesn't display the quote.)
Lee McClain's comment is intriguing: college students are more adept at writing than reading carefully. Equally important is Dr. Jerz's comment that "blogging helps many teens become more prolific writers."
One would hope that as students learn to distinguish misleading information in the media from scholarly work, they will start to question their own assumptions and read blogs by their peers from a more analytical perspective. They might develop their own voice as responsible writers in an academic discourse community. Online writing is, when all is said and done, an evolving, situated conversation.
This helps explain a phenomenon I've seen: college students who are much better at writing than they are at reading. I'm amazed at how quickly and prolifically our students write these days. Good news for all of us: writing is fun again! (and, oh yeah, educational too).