A few years ago, I received an email from a colleague with the following auto-sig:
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es
...and I began to wonder what had happened to written communication between people in the 21st Century. It would be one thing if email replaced only the 20th Century postcard, but it also replaces the letter, a format where no one would dream of putting pen to paper with only three sentences in mind.
Long form communications develop voice, convey subtlety, and realistically represent the true complexity of ideas and experiences. This blog, beyond being a collection of essays on actual topics, serves to illustrate the kinds of ideas not expressible in In a world of 140 character limits or three-sentence emails.
My profession, and passion, is the implications of technology use by educators and learners. But I'm not the usual bleeding-edge celebrator and promoter of everything technology brings. Like any revolution in educational practice (or anything else for that matter), there's good news, and there's bad news. With the explosion of information comes access to masses of intellectually vacuous media and writing. With online knowledge construction comes the world of "me too" retweets and copy/pastes. The power is there, but its users and promoters are better served by thoughtful selection, with a firm eye not on the prize of assimilation, but on human improvement and knowledge advancement. There must be history, science, and goals to any endeavor worth pursuing.
It is my hope that this blog might, in some way, help.
No comments:
Post a Comment