Liberal Education Tomorrow: » Teaching writing in a social media age: one recent example

Liberal Education Tomorrow: » Teaching writing in a social media age: one recent example.

A writing instructor at UT-Dallas explains how and why she has incorporated blogging and digital video into her teaching of rhetoric and composition.

A strictly digital approach is not for everyone. I will always prefer a paper book, believe memorizing grammar rules is essential, and don’t think everyone needs a blog. Nonetheless, these are issues students should be aware of. Creating work in a vacuum delegitimizes it. When the goal of your course is to teach students to persuade, and you don’t include what is now the most influential tool for disseminating your argument, you are crippling your students.  Writing and reading online is different than performing those same tasks on paper. We communicate differently on the Internet, and as more and more people read from their phones and portable e-readers, our understanding of communication will change further still. As technology shifts, so does our means of persuasion; if students do not explore this, they will find their skills quickly out of date.