"Bueller?...Bueller...?"

In his most recent post, “It’s not 1985,” Dean Shareski, author of the blog, Ideas and Thoughts, describes the failure of teachers to teach their students digital writing skills in this day and age as being “educational malpractice.” He’s right. It would be an understatement to say that teachers who neglect to incorporate digital writing into their pedagogy are simply shortchanging their students. It’s as if teachers who dismiss digital writing believe that the quality of their students’ writing will diminish as a result of the Internet. Actually, quite the opposite is true. Of course, teachers must still teach their students the conventions of good writing, but they do not have to do so at the expense of teaching their students how to write in the digital world. Teaching students how to effectively incorporate blogs and wikis into the writing process actually serves to enhance the overall quality of their writing. Moreover, students who possess such digital writing skills will also be better prepared to navigate and thrive in the ever-changing, technological world of tomorrow.