I so want to give Bud the Teacher a hug!
In his recent post, Thinking ’bout Linking, Bud (and his smart commenters) examines digital writing and the art or practice of linktribution — or at least offering additional pathways of discovery along the information super-highway.
I’ve been wondering if edu-bloggers understand the power of connectivity as it relates to extending conversations and resources. Part of the trap may exist from old habits, but this is new media.
I’m fortunate that I have a social mediatician on my team. When I learned how to write digitally (blogging), the mantra I kept hearing from my teacher was, "At least one link out." As I developed the practice, I found myself going along a discovery path — and many readers have experienced the same.
In his post, Bud asks aloud about what a ‘connective writing’ class may look like. And with some quick thoughts (Bud promises more posts to come on this subject), he offers his assessment,
"I’d kill to teach that class."
And if you remember the video I recently posted, kids are asking for such a class. If we are to put learning first, we should be generous (and relevant) with outbound links. Extending conversations. Providing prolonged research to our learning readers.
If together we are smarter (and we are), shouldn’t we consider incoming and outgoing links as connective brain food? Why don’t edu-bloggers do more of this? Business bloggers are all over this technique. It benefits both reader and writer.
This post right here – the one you’re reading right now? I could’ve cut to the quick and posted a comment on Bud’s blog. However, by extending the conversation out to my audience — and by linking back to Bud, now we share the conversation with a larger audience, yes? I’m trying to model the behavior we edu-bloggers should implement in our blogging practice.
Bud – let me know when you start that class, put it on Teacher Tube, and I’ll so link back to it.
Photo part of the collection found at the Paul De Koninck Laboratory site.
