As Colin Powell once put it: “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy”, and that’s certainly true for me: I start off with detailed plans and soon find all manner of unanticipated questions and conversations as my students raise issues that, given the differences in our training, experience, and orientation, I cannot always anticipate. Thus, Web Work: the place where my reading and conversations end up, having been tested in the classroom, edited to make them more generally accessible, and with additional references and commentaries for broader use.
Generally speaking, I am inviting my students to use the web to deepen the learning that goes on from their assigned readings, lectures, and discussions and to prepare for modern workplaces that use the web for research, marketing, and communications. To be somewhat systematic about it I’ve identified a number of topics and arranged them in the manner of a workflow, including such activities as:
Searching for conversations about our course topics
Reporting on these conversations
Reviewing and Summarizing these conversations
Connecting our audience to these conversations
Discussing and Evaluating what we find
Collaborating in teams to maximize both individual and collective work
On this page I’ll briefly outline what might be found here.
On this page I offer advice on looking ahead and finding things.
Using the web is mostly about looking ahead. While textbooks are great to get started, smart use of the web helps us to address problems that are only now just emerging. And forward-looking web use will help you deal with the future.
Build on what you know. As you read the assigned text, list keywords, cited texts and authors, and any links or footnotes that you think might lead to writers who are paying attention and sharing what they know.
Keep it personal. To go beyond the important fundamentals of technologies, business models, etc., that have been developed thus far and look for writers who are discussing change and the different ways people are dealing with it: look for the leading edge writers, the connectors, who make it their business to know how people are talking about things.
Once you start looking for things, you will find yourself with piles of stuff to select from, sort, arrange, and hopefully, store in a memorable, accessible way. This page will get you started on the path of personal data collection, storage, and retrieval.
Once you’ve found some interesting stuff you’ll need a way to talk about it. With report structures, you will be able to examine your sources critically and invite your readers to learn from and trust both your sources and your evaluation of them.
The purpose of reviews is to describe what relevant other writers are discussing in as neutral and clear a fashion as possible AND offer a critical commentary that, while it may include your opinions, is designed to illuminate the relevant issues and so contribute to the professional conversation: you write not simply to express yourself, though this is very important, but in a professional context we write to move the conversation forward and find solutions.
So that instead of looking for “the facts,” we look for discussion of issues organized by networks of commentators. Instead of looking for opinions, we look for professional debate and discussion of issues over which reasonable people disagree.
You might think of writing as a form of negotiation and your role as one of connector, where:.
You build trust with your author and readers when you sincerely acknowledge insights and information you have gained
You learn far more from listening and asking questions than when you do all the talking (and trying to show off what you know)
You demonstrate your openness and flexibility when you consider multiple and evening competing interpretations and leave the problem open for the opinions of others.
Ideas are important, and your having them is a wonderful thing, but the connector probably does much more, because he or she brings others together with a minimum of means to a maximum of effect — something we do when we find, evaluate, select, and present information, ideas, and arguments which our readers may evaluate quickly and efficiently and click on to discover even more valuable things — and return to thank us for the help!
Web Work
As Colin Powell once put it: “no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy”, and that’s certainly true for me: I start off with detailed plans and soon find all manner of unanticipated questions and conversations as my students raise issues that, given the differences in our training, experience, and orientation, I cannot always anticipate. Thus, Web Work: the place where my reading and conversations end up, having been tested in the classroom, edited to make them more generally accessible, and with additional references and commentaries for broader use.
Generally speaking, I am inviting my students to use the web to deepen the learning that goes on from their assigned readings, lectures, and discussions and to prepare for modern workplaces that use the web for research, marketing, and communications. To be somewhat systematic about it I’ve identified a number of topics and arranged them in the manner of a workflow, including such activities as:
On this page I’ll briefly outline what might be found here.
Finding Your Target Language/Conversation
On this page I offer advice on looking ahead and finding things.
Using the web is mostly about looking ahead. While textbooks are great to get started, smart use of the web helps us to address problems that are only now just emerging. And forward-looking web use will help you deal with the future.
Build on what you know. As you read the assigned text, list keywords, cited texts and authors, and any links or footnotes that you think might lead to writers who are paying attention and sharing what they know.
Keep it personal. To go beyond the important fundamentals of technologies, business models, etc., that have been developed thus far and look for writers who are discussing change and the different ways people are dealing with it: look for the leading edge writers, the connectors, who make it their business to know how people are talking about things.
This past will help you get started.
Collecting, Storing, and Retrieving
Once you start looking for things, you will find yourself with piles of stuff to select from, sort, arrange, and hopefully, store in a memorable, accessible way. This page will get you started on the path of personal data collection, storage, and retrieval.
Reporting
Once you’ve found some interesting stuff you’ll need a way to talk about it. With report structures, you will be able to examine your sources critically and invite your readers to learn from and trust both your sources and your evaluation of them.
They Say / I Say
The purpose of reviews is to describe what relevant other writers are discussing in as neutral and clear a fashion as possible AND offer a critical commentary that, while it may include your opinions, is designed to illuminate the relevant issues and so contribute to the professional conversation: you write not simply to express yourself, though this is very important, but in a professional context we write to move the conversation forward and find solutions.
So that instead of looking for “the facts,” we look for discussion of issues organized by networks of commentators. Instead of looking for opinions, we look for professional debate and discussion of issues over which reasonable people disagree.
5 Negotiating Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
You might think of writing as a form of negotiation and your role as one of connector, where:.
Ideas are important, and your having them is a wonderful thing, but the connector probably does much more, because he or she brings others together with a minimum of means to a maximum of effect — something we do when we find, evaluate, select, and present information, ideas, and arguments which our readers may evaluate quickly and efficiently and click on to discover even more valuable things — and return to thank us for the help!