In the end, blogging just a medium. Albeit, a faster and cheaper medium.

I think more teachers should take a pragmatic approach to grammar/spelling: teach it, but don’t expect students to memorize all rules (especially when they often don’t need to). Especially spelling, which is becoming more and more irrelevant.

@Claire: Same story with me: before I started blogging, I almost never wrote for personal reasons and certainly didn’t consider myself a “good” writer. I think the audience factor certainly is the greatest motivation to start and maintain blogs. Of course, the lack of it is also a common reason for dropping blogs.

As a geek, I also find it incredibly cool that what I post is broadcast out to over 250 people the second I hit “publish” — not even journalists could enjoy that kind of power 100 years ago, let alone students.

Twitter and IM also help us to be concise and focus on the art of brevity, which is highly valuable in an information-rich world.

Thanks for commenting!

I have never been a strong writer, but I have noticed improvement in my writing since I started blogging 7 months ago. When what I write is ‘out there’ for everyone to read, I find I take a lot of care to ensure that I’m laying things out clearly, and on a good day, concisely.

So to answer your question, “Does virtual communication improve writing or does it harm grammar?”, I think that overall it is going to improve communication. Twitter and other forms of IM force us to be concise (unless you ‘cheat’ and do 3 tweets in a row :-)) and I can’t see blogging for pleasure (ie not schooly blogging)harming writing for the reasons I mentioned above.

Thanks for another thought provoking post, Arthus!

Blogging is the vehicle for writing, not the creative act itself. Some great writers preferred handwritten drafts to typewritten ones: the addition of a machine would not have turned a hack into an author.

My feeling about blogging is similar to my thoughts on reading: I encourage our students to read what interests them, be it magazine, or manga or Moby Dick. If a student is interested in communicating online, it’s the communication that gives value, not the tool.

I believe that there is still a place in the curriculum for the study of language and grammar. But I certainly don’t advocate leaching the fun and creativity out of blogging.

diane