Internet writing different and important

Internet writing

Skills: noneConcepts: importance, frequency, quality and types of Internet writing, text as a data typeThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. 1In this presentation, well see that Internet writing is important, we do a lot of it and the quality is good.

Well outline three types of Internet writing writing short documents, conversational writing and collaborative writing.

Writing is content creation, and the data type is text.Where does this topic fit?Internet conceptsApplicationsTechnologyImplicationsInternet skillsApplication developmentContent creationUser skills2When we write, we create text content, but this presentation deals with writing concepts not content creation skills.

Well look at writing skills in other presentations.

Lets begin with a few characteristics of Internet writing.

The first is that it is important.Internet writing is importantProbably the most important thing and probably one of the surprises is you have to work with people who are good writers.When hiring, Jason Fried looks for:A positive attitudeA well rounded, flexible personA quick learnerTrustworthiness an independent workerA good writer

Writing (34 sec)All five criteria (2m 42sec)

3Jason Fried is the founder of 37 Signals, a prominent Internet software company.

Fried speaks and writes frequently on software design and development.

In one talk, he outlined the five things he looks for when interviewing job applicants.

As you see, he considers being a good writer the most important.

Stop at this point and listen to these two short excerpts from Frieds talk.

The short excerpt focuses on writing.

In the longer one, he explains each of his five hiring criteria.Writing is important for technical peopleBeing able to write clearly, to write English clearly is more important to developing useful software I think than almost anything else. Joel Spolsky, 2009.

Listen:

4Joel Spolsky , the co-founder of another prominent software company, also writes and speaks frequently on software development.

Spolsky feels writing is very important for technical workers like software developers.

Pause and listen to his comments as well.83% of parents of teens feel there is a greater need to write well today than there was 20 years ago.

94% of black parents say that good writing skills are more important now than in the past, compared with 82% of white parents and 79% of English-speaking Hispanic parents.

86% of teens believe good writing is important to success in life.Pew survey, more informationParents and teens say writing is important5The Pew Charitable Trust conducts national surveys on the Internet in American life.

They found that US teen agers and their parents agree that writing is important.

Its more important and were doing more of it now than in the past.

In the Internet era, writing has replaced talking in many situations.I spend 3 1/2 hours a day online.I will write 42 pages for class this semester ... and over 500 pages of email.I will read 8 books this year ... 2,300 Web pages and 1,281 FaceBook profiles.I buy $100 textbooks that I never open.

Students do a lot of Internet reading and writingMichael Wesch's class survey, more informationWatch the video6Internet writing is not only important, it is ubiquitous.

Students do a lot of Internet writing.

These are some of the results of a survey Michael Wesch conducted of his students at Kansas State University.

As you see, the students spend a lot of time online and read and write a lot of material.

They presented the results of their survey in a short video in which they hold up signs showing the findings.

Ive listed the survey results pertaining to reading and writing here, but you should watch the entire video.

Trust me -- youll like it.US undergraduates are online a lot

How many hours per week do you spend online?44.8% post videos on the Web41.9% post on wikis37.3% contribute to blogs Educause study of US undergraduatesMore information7Educause is a leading professional society, which focuses on the use of information technology in education.

This Educause study shows that US undergraduates average 21.3 hours per week on the Internet, and many of them write on wikis or blogs.

How many hours a week do you spend online?

75% said they write regularly -- online and off.

56% said they had a profile on a social networking site, such as Bebo or Facebook. 24% said that they have their own blog.

Children who write on a blog were more likely than others to enjoy writing in general and to enjoy writing for family/friends.

Children with blogs and social network profiles were confident, more likely to believe themselves to be good writers than others. Children write tooSurvey of UK children ages 9-16, more information8This survey of UK children found that many of them write online.

Those who write are more confident in their writing and more likely to enjoy writing than those who dont.Students are writing more than ever

Some of their life writing is profound

Their writing is done to achieve some purpose or goalUndergrads are writing more and betterStanford five year study on undergraduate writing, more information9One often hears the claim that Internet writing is careless and sloppy, and that is no doubt often true.

But this five year study of the writing of Stanford undergraduates found they not only wrote more, they also wrote better than their predecessors.

One of our goals in this class is to learn to write better ourselves, to write carefully and thoughtfully.

Internet writing is easily copiedA final characteristic of Internet writing is that it is easy to copy and spread around, so only write things youre proud of.

Youre responsible for what you write and it reflects on you.

As they said on the Well, an early online community, you own your own words.10Internet writing is differentAs we saw with Michael Weschs students, Internet reading and writing often take different forms than writing for print.

In our class, well look at three types of Internet writing: conversational writing, writing short documents and collaborative writing.

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Conversational writingInternet writing is often conversational, perhaps an email exchange to decide something, a threaded discussion in a forum or comments on a blog post.

Careful reading is the key to effective Internet conversations.

12Writing short documentsPrintInternetWere more likely to write a long document for print than for the Internet.

We write many documents on the Internet, but theyre typically short.

Were more likely to write a Web page, blog post or a Twitter tweet than an article or report.

Writing good short documents takes time first drafts are seldom finished documents..13

Collaborative writingInternet writing is often collaborative.

The group of collaborators can be large or small.

It might be two people working together on a report or project plan or hundreds of people collaborating on a Wikipedia page.

14Conversational writingWriting short documentsCollaborative writingTips forWe have separate presentations on all three types of Internet writing, and each will contain tips and suggestions.

If you skip those three presentations, let me leave you with a tip for each:

When you write a short document, your first draft sucks. If at all possible, leave time for revising it after it has been set aside for a while. Better yet, ask someone else to read it for you and give you feedback.

For conversational writing, carefully reading what the other person said before replying is critical. If you read carefully there will be no loose ends at the end of the conversation. We all tend to skim and read superficially on the Internet. Superficial reading leads to ineffective conversations.

Finally, for collaborative writing it is not sufficient to have a shared document to work on. You and your colleagues need a second communication channel for organizing the team and the emerging document, The second means of communication can be an Internet tool like chat or a discussion page or face-to-face meetings.

15We will focus on three types of Internet writingWriting short documentsConversational writingCollaborative writingInternet writing isAn important skillDone frequentlyHigh qualityEasily copiedSummaryWe saw three types of Internet writing: conversational writing, collaborative writing and writing short documents.

Well focus on each in other presentations.

We saw that Internet writing is important in work and school, and that we do a lot of it.

We also saw that the quality of Internet writing is high and its easily copied.

You should only write things were proud of.16Do you recall the three types of Internet writing we will cover in our class?We saw four characteristics of Internet writing do you recall them?Do you agree that Internet writing is an important professional skill? What have you written on the Internet today? During the last week?Have you done Internet writing for any of your classes? If so what did you do?What does Jason Fried look for when interviewing prospective employees?Self-study questionsSome blog posts on writing for the Internet: http://computerliteracy3.blogspot.com/search/label/writingBeloit College mindset list, more informationJoel Spolskys talk on software design and development: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4044.htmlJason Frieds talk on software design and development: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail471.htmlPew survey on writing: http://computerliteracy3.blogspot.com/2009/12/findings-from-pew-survey-on-writing.htmlPew Project on the Internet in American Life: http://www.pewinternet.org/Michael Weschs class survey: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2008/03/characteristics-of-todays-students.htmlEducause study of undergraduates and information technology: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ers0906/rs/ERS0906w.pdfSurvey of UK childrens writing: http://computerliteracy3.blogspot.com/2009/12/many-uk-children-write-on-internet-and.htmlStanford study of undergraduate writing: http://computerliteracy3.blogspot.com/2009/11/research-on-writing-for-internet.htmlResources