Flutterby™! : Writing & Education

NY Times: Virginia Heffernan: Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade:

Ms. Davidson herself was appalled not long ago when her students at Duke, who produced witty and incisive blogs for their peers, turned in disgraceful, unpublishable term papers. But instead of simply carping about students with colleagues in the great faculty-lounge tradition, Ms. Davidson questioned the whole form of the research paper. “What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in school — the term paper — and not necessarily intrinsic to a student’s natural writing style or thought process?” She adds: “What if ‘research paper’ is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?”

What if, indeed. After studying the matter, Ms. Davidson concluded, “Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers.”

That's Dr. Cathy Davidson, her book is Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. I may wander down to the bookstore and order this.

Anyone wanna weigh in on what this may mean about education bubbles?