A great Howard Rheingold piece on Twitter literacy. (I wrote my own shorter version here and another piece about Twitter and journalism here.)
I had a half-thought upon reading this: (I wonder, with Twitter will people stop talking about thoughts that are half baked and talk instead about Twitter thoughts v. blog thoughts v. quill pen thoughts to distinguish the amount of thought you'd put into them. Then we'd just have to get people to start matching their expectations with the location of those thoughts. Don't scream for complexity from a Twitter post. When I say I wonder about this I recognize that it's already happening. Can you wonder rhetorically? You can, I know I was just...)
Anyway, the thought:
What are the skills we need to learn and teach kids about online life and writing. How do we teach them to tune, as Rheingod puts it, and master their attention (which is a test of biology as well as focus-- which is to say I can keep my focus much better in the morning than in the late afternoon. Knowing this, I try to work accordingly, writing in the morning and grazing in the afternoon? My point here is that parents are totally out of touch with the way their kids need to learn. I wonder how in touch their teachers are? I say all of this while also maintaining this deep desire to teach myself and my children the power of slow uninterrupted focused thought.
I had a half-thought upon reading this: (I wonder, with Twitter will people stop talking about thoughts that are half baked and talk instead about Twitter thoughts v. blog thoughts v. quill pen thoughts to distinguish the amount of thought you'd put into them. Then we'd just have to get people to start matching their expectations with the location of those thoughts. Don't scream for complexity from a Twitter post. When I say I wonder about this I recognize that it's already happening. Can you wonder rhetorically? You can, I know I was just...)
Anyway, the thought:
What are the skills we need to learn and teach kids about online life and writing. How do we teach them to tune, as Rheingod puts it, and master their attention (which is a test of biology as well as focus-- which is to say I can keep my focus much better in the morning than in the late afternoon. Knowing this, I try to work accordingly, writing in the morning and grazing in the afternoon? My point here is that parents are totally out of touch with the way their kids need to learn. I wonder how in touch their teachers are? I say all of this while also maintaining this deep desire to teach myself and my children the power of slow uninterrupted focused thought.
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