I chose this book because I'm hoping that I will be able to use it to redesign a course I teach at a community college. The course is Practical Writing. I want to incorporate digital reading and writing as part of the course. Because I teach adults, I feel that I need ways of explaining digital literacy to many of my students who are digital immigrants - adults who grew up without the Internet, cellphones, and other forms of technology that younger generations (digital natives) are accustomed to.
Richardson's book begins with an introduction about the development and rapid growth of the Internet. He explains that "the original vision of being able to read and write to the Web was slow." He claims that this was because writing on the Web required knowledge of html codes. Richardson goes on to explain that it is much easier to write on the Web today. He calls this a "society of authorship." In fact, in 2009 there were over 133 million blogs.
One of Richardson's examples of changes in the modern world that I found most interesting is the idea of participatory journalism. "In 2007, USATODAY was among the first to make it possible for reader to comment on any story - adding opinions, asking further questions, or even correcting what was written - and most other online newspapers have since followed suit. In essence, every article is a blog post."
I have been looking for an interesting way to use blogs in my classroom. Maybe encouraging students to participate with online newspapers would be an authentic way to bring in digital reading and writing in my class? I'm not sure how to realistically do that, however. It seems like that would be difficult to plan and score because I may have to have students send me links to the postings they share. Maybe I could use a wiki or blog to make a class online newspaper, where we could share news and post comments, critiques, and corrections. That seems less authentic, though.
Richardson also writes about the ways that businesses have begun to use Weblogs, wikis, and Twitter. This might be an interesting area for me to explore. Our textbook for the Practical Writing class focuses on writing for business purposes, so maybe I could incorporate digital writing for businesses. I'm hoping that Richardson's text will give me more ideas.
Richardson brings up the issue of transparency. He states "These technologies make more of our lives transparent to others in ways that many find unsettling." This is something I need to keep in mind because I teach adults from ages 18 and above. I wonder how my students will view the issues of transparency and privacy with writing on the Internet. Maybe there will be a range of opinions?
Overall, this seems to be a practical and interesting book. I hope what I have shared so far seems interesting to others. :)
