idealibertarianist:

Web 2.0, the sudden rush of personal and social content, has done remarkably little to influence most major so-called “core” classes.  English, history, math, and science classes have changed remarkably little in the face of the fast-evolving internet culture.  Web 2.0 has, however, influenced the interactions and culture of the students attending these classes.  Logic follows that instead of cloistering itself off from societal change, college classes should embrace and encourage this cultural change as a model for future writing assignments, research projects, and classrooms.

Keeping the class structure of yesteryear does not allow students to reach their full potential. Digital personae replace assumed personae, and someone online does not have to follow the normal rules of structure   The common, contemporary college student reads 2300 web pages (including 1281 Facebook profiles) while only reading 8 books, writes 42 pages in essay form, 500 pages in email form over a year, and spends 3.5 hours per day online, according to a survey of 200 Kansas State University students (http://www.faithengineer.com/2007/10/how-college-students-spend-their-time.html ).  This alone should be enough to show even the most solid skeptic that attempting to keep classes, especially English classes, as they have been for decades can not and will not work.  Students in the video linked above admitted that many use laptops in class for non-class related things, such as Facebook.

Because of the time spent on the internet in digital interaction with others, the lexicon and dialect of the common student has changed from a formal literary attitude to a more laid-back, communicative attitude.  Forcing a student with an internet lexicon to write in a formal lexicon is akin to asking someone to switch to the British spelling of colour and favour.  This is not to say that literate essays need not be written.  I have no problems with actual essay writing, and have always had an aversion to spelling you “u” and abbreviating “see you later” as “c u l8r”.  The problem lies in the difference of attitude and angle required to write a blog and to write an essay.  In a blog, many points are personal preference.  Blogs that have no citations and pull figures out of the blue are rarely highly prized in the hierarchy of the blogosphere.  The information necessary to write both a blog and an essay are essentially the same: one must have an actual idea or position, support, and commentary on the support that ties it to their position.  Unlike blogs, essays require the reader to step outside of the essay, and act not as a writer but as an omnipotent, non-existent vessel of knowledge.  Students have historically found it difficult to write essays, and I believe this is because writing an essay is a completely unnatural and profoundly idiotic medium for knowledge sharing.  Of the first six hits of a google search “how to write an essay”, only one is an essay (http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMG_enUS291US303&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=how+to+write+an+essay).  That essay is not an essay on how to properly write a good paper, however, it is a model.  100% of the first six hits on google use formats other than essays to explain how to write an essay.  If the essay were really the quintessential form of information transfer, wouldn’t the majority of websites host essays on specific topics instead of their current, communicative formats?  Obviously, the essay is not superior to every single form of information transfer, and so many websites do not use them.  It should follow, therefore, that not all English assignments should be in essay format.

Online blogs or other public hosting formats allow multiple people to submit ideas for an essay topic.  Even if the bulk of the writing is done by the original writer, commenters can still suggest improvements, provide counter-examples, and even grade the “essay”.  Many websites have advertisements tailor-made for the web pages they sit on, that pertain to the page’s information.  Products or services that relate to the essay could lead anyone on the page to learn more about the topic.  These advertisements could even be used by the writer in order to learn more about their own topic.  Passive research can occur, in which information comes to you without you having to do anything but write what you think is right.

Editing publicly broadcast writing assignments can also result in a better end product.  Common practice on blogs is to use the “strikethough” like when a mistake, misinformation, or a previous iteration of information is to be removed.  Instead of deleting it, the blogger strikes it out, allowing all to see the mistake (and the subsequent change), and lending more credibility to them.  This allows readers to follow the writer’s frame of mind while reading the blog, and can make unclear ideas become clear by showing how a poor sentence was initially written.  Just as this practice lends credibility to a blogger, it could make a student a better writer.  Using strikethroughs instead of backspace when you change a sentence structure can allow a teacher to understand where a student is struggling and how to best help them.

Writing anything on the internet gives the assignment a form of permanence that paper assignments could never have.  Not only do paper and ink cost money, but (more importantly) they can not be lost, eaten by the dog, or ruined out of negligence.  The only way information on the internet becomes inaccessible is in the case of a massive server malfunction.  It has been my own experience that this has never hindered anything I have done in the past, including useless facebook time as well as using online servers to store information.

Not only do structured, formal paper essays hinder the creative mind (all the more so when Ms. Schaefer is included), they fall short of what they could be.  Essays require a student to think in a way that is not native, nor conducive, to the flow of ideas.  The mind is not structured like an essay.  It flows.  It has gaps in logic.  It is not a concrete detail followed by two commentaries, as has been taught to me for the last fifteen years.

Final Word Score: 1031

Mister Harutunian or Grader: If you want a printed version to grade and mark up with red ink, please feel completely free to email me at jdraulinaitis@gmail.com and I will bring the printed essay to the next available class period, or drop it into a box.

I agree with your assessment, however, essays are taught not because of ease of use or because they are truly education to kids. They are teaching kids how to write in an academic manner. You would not write for an academic journal the same way you would a blog, which is why the informality of a blog would not be present in an essay. Although, it is wierd. Some of the stuff Hoisington taught us, I have been forced to forget and not use in my college English class.