I find that such overwhelming mass appeal usually points to something interesting about human behavior. Since I am generally a proponent of the theory that experience is the best teacher, I figured I should make a genuine attempt to see what the fuss was all about from the inside. And so I began writing this blog, reading and commenting on blogs of others with related interests, and corresponding with other education bloggers through online educator networks. While I had been using various Web 2.0 media in the context of teaching and learning for years, until recently, I had not yet committed to maintaining a professional blog and actively trying to penetrate the blogosphere, which, of course, is no small commitment.

Thus, I have begun to discover answers to my persistent pre-blogging questions. One good reason I have found to journal publicly is that writing helps to clarify my thinking, especially if I am writing for an audience beyond myself. This is not a new idea, of course; it runs through the literature on writing development and instruction, and good teachers have been capitalizing on it for years. But blogs offer some new affordances that provide significant leverage, and it is not inconsequential that such leverage can be felt by experienced as well as novice writers. For example, I can enjoy the benefits of writing to further my own thinking, while also potentially sharing that writing with others who might be interested in communicating with me, which can further my thinking even more, thereby smoothly fusing the cognitive and social benefits of writing.

This writing, which lives on the web and is therefore accessible to anyone at any time, can travel through a network of people at lightning speed, which keeps the collective thought processes in motion, engaging people who might never otherwise be engaged if it were not for the mighty web lifting the constraints of time and space. I am the manager of my own dynamic text, which means that I can revise it as I choose without interfering with its distribution; others can bookmark it, embed links to it within their own posts, or send it to others within their own networks, while I continue to maintain creative control over it. Linking to blog posts within discussion forums (and vice-versa) combines the advantages of both media. Time to reflect between interactions can deepen in-conversation thinking and allow room to confirm that we are saying what we mean.

Even if no one ever reads it, writing for a potential (real) audience makes the writing and the thinking behind it better than it would be if I were not planning for it to be read by others. (This well-known, but still vastly under-utilized tactic always worked well in teaching writing to my sixth graders long before blogs were a gleam in society’s eye, but blogs make it so much more practical.) The blog structure and conventions encourage bursts of writing that are short enough to feel manageable (for readers as well as writers), but long enough to be substantive and coherent. Successful writers generally agree that writing regularly is one of the keys to their success, as frequent practice improves anyone’s game. Periodic publication also helps to broaden one’s audience, especially in a medium that is so conducive to widespread dissemination. RSS feeds, trackbacks and pingbacks help to keep authors and their audiences connected. The fact that we are always writing in hypermedia means that the possibilities for directly linking our thinking to that of others are infinite.

Through blogging, we are able to establish dynamic identities as authors within online communities of practice that ideally complement rather than replace those offline. We are not necessarily writing for everyone, but everyone has access to our writing if we so choose, and thus we may find and engage audiences and conversation partners through channels previously unavailable to us. Strategic blogging can dramatically increase one’s chances of actually being heard, which is naturally one of the great thrills of the human experience at any stage. Authorship is empowering, and it helps us shape our identities, both internally and externally.

Where I went wrong in my pre-blogging thinking was in asking why anyone might be interested in the musings of random strangers. The key is that bloggers’ audiences and conversation partners are not random strangers; rather they are a self-selecting subset of people who share interests and might never encounter each other without the internet. We need not read every blog that is written, but if we find even a few kindred spirits with whom we can stretch our thinking, our minds and worlds are expanded.

These potential benefits do not void the challenges we currently face in managing information and communication on the Read/Write Web, but they make them worth tackling. For example, I am finding it difficult to keep track of everything I have written in conversation with others through discussion forums or other people’s blogs, and it can be overwhelming to try to stay on top of all the writing of potential interest that is being organically generated each day. Many of my comments go unanswered, so I cannot tell if I have communicated anything to anyone. Often I am not sure of the best cybervenue for responding to someone…in a blog comment, in a discussion forum within a particular network, or in a new blog post. We are collectively still sorting out both the optimal functionality and the rhetorical conventions of these new media, and, thus, we are not always playing by the same rules, which can cause communication interference. Blogging is very time-consuming, but at present, I feel that it is extending my learning and informing my teaching and my research enough to make the time and effort worthwhile.

Somewhat ironically, my previous post, entitled So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet), speaks to some of these challenges, while also demonstrating some of the benefits. For instance, across the world, Paul Beaufait responded to my post in two different blog posts of his own, So Little Reciprocity? and Balance, on all fours, as well as bookmarking it in Diigo and discussing it in a forum within an educator network called Blended Learning and Instruction, where I believe he first encountered the post through an embedded link. Both the contents and the mere existence of his responses informed my thinking about this post and its subject matter in general. Thus, as with any movement as organic and potent as Web 2.0, the benefits and challenges are two sides of the same coin.

So, at the risk of falling into the tiresome trap of blogging about blogging (or meta-blogging, one might say), I am using this opportunity to think through some ideas in writing, share them with any who might be interested, and potentially initiate (or continue) some constructive dialogue about them. The authorship drive is a strong one, and blogs clearly offer an inviting outlet for it. Before blogging myself, I could not fully appreciate the interactive writing experience that emerges from this particular set of affordances. The affordances of blogging have much in common with the affordances of participating in discussion forums and wikis, but they also differ. We cannot fully optimize these media in teaching writing without authentic experiences of authorship. And reflections on my own experience suggest that, in the context of effective instruction, blogging can potentially put a whole new spin on “writing to learn” at its best.

And yet, in all the present excitement about blogs and wikis and social networking and other web-enabled communication media in education, the old-fashioned threaded discussion has gotten short shrift. Threaded discussions facilitate true dialogue in ways that blogs and wikis often do not, especially when coupled with curriculum, instruction, and facilitation that capitalize on their affordances. For example, the nonlinear nature of threaded discussions allows participants to respond directly to a particular comment, regardless of the time it was made, which can promote a depth of discussion that has significant learning value. Responding directly to someone who has responded directly to you, all in the context of a public discussion, is quite a different experience than posting a comment on an author’s (blogger’s) published work. Both have value, but they are not interchangeable. Written discourse feels more like communication (and is often more engaging) when you receive a response, indicating that you have been heard. Blogs primarily facilitate one-to-many communication, while threaded discussions enable many-to-many communication, as long as those involved know how to take advantage of it. They can help teachers achieve that elusive goal of getting out of the middle of a class discussion and encouraging students to talk to each other. Such decentered discussions can potentially engage students in deeper, more authentic communication, which can enrich their learning in a variety of ways.

Naturally, successful instructional use of online discussion forums (much like successful instructional use of face-to-face discussions) requires clear expectations, generative prompts, shared discussion norms, and skilled moderation. However, under the right conditions, such online discussions can probe further and promote more substantive exchanges even than face-to-face discussions, with many added benefits. For example, threaded discussions afford the opportunity for any participant to enter the dialogue about any point at any time, regardless of where the conversation has traveled since the point was made. They are often more inclusive than face-to-face discussions, since many students feel more comfortable contributing to a computer-mediated discussion without the pressures inherent in speaking in front of an audience. The time cushion also allows for more thoughtful, reflective contributions, and there is no limit to how many people can respond to a certain point without sacrificing coherence.

Unfortunately, many of the most recently developed online tools and environments have abandoned the threading feature, which I believe is a big loss. Ning is one that does a nice job with threaded discussions from a technical perspective, and Tapped In is another. Most of the CMS/LMS/courseware environments also include threaded discussions, but they are not free. Many of the blogging tools lack this feature, which, in my view, limits their flexibility as communication media. Most blogs are essentially designed for readers to communicate with one author, which can be of enormous benefit in promoting authentic written communication (although readers can and do also address each other). However, I believe they could be even more powerful if they structurally supported discourse in any direction, encouraging readers to communicate with each other in writing, thereby distributing authorship more broadly. In this model, authorship can be viewed in a qualitatively different way, blurring the lines between author and audience, between speaking and writing, between conversation and publication. These blurred lines have important implications both for learning how to communicate (skills), and for learning about the subjects that are the focus of communication (content).

Another benefit of threaded discussions is that there are relatively low barriers to entry, which make them a good initial opportunity for participating substantively in the Web 2.0 community at large. I think that if students and teachers had positive experiences with discussion forums optimally implemented, they would get more out of the blogging experience and its potential to support interactivity as well as publication. I hope that the next generation of digital communication media will resurrect this important, often unsung hero of Web 2.0. Communication environments allowing for both instant global publication AND true dialogue would offer teachers and students the power and flexibility to take authorship to a whole new level.