"A writer needs 3 THINGS..."

"...experience, observation and imagination; any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others." -- William Faulkner

I wanted to use a quote by Einstein, but this one seemed to fit both the title requirement and the topic of this post.

I think it best to start with a list of the blog posts I read. I'm sure it was more than 5, but I'll list them to be sure. (And so you have a point of reference for later on.)

1. Bud the Teacher's "What's 'Print'?"
2. Betchablog: "The Myth of the Digital Native"
3. dy/dan (Mr. Meyer): "Why I don't Assign Homework"
4. CoolCatTeacher: "Spies Like Us"
5. Extreme Biology: "09.09.09 Homework: Observations and Inferences"
6. Students 2.0: "Teaching Brevity"
7. Andy Carvin / Learning NOW: "An Open Letter About Cyberbullying"
8. Pair-A-Dimes (David Truss): "Students, Information and Schools"
9. Wandering Ink: "How to Prevent Another Leonardo Da Vinci"

Yup. More than 5. I liked the reading part of the assignment. Can you tell?

Several of these blogs remind me of magazine articles or certain newspaper articles. Not the formalized, reporting the news articles, but more like op-ed columns. )Though I supposed they could be considered editorials, since we're looking at self-published blogs.) They're personal opinions, but usually well written and well argued. I'd say that #1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 all fall under this category. And in some ways, so does #7. Andy Carvin's post is almost a "Letter to the Editor", aside from it appearing on his blog, and not in "Wired" magazine.

The big difference between these blogs and magazine articles is the hyperlinks. I often found myself pausing in the middle of reading the post to follow a link to a related website or blog post. In fact, I sometimes found myself hopping from post to website to article to website, without actually fully reading any of the pages. I had to make an effort not to follow the links right away, but instead right click and open them in a new tab, so that I could go read the related sites once I finished with the first one. It's amazing how quickly the amount of reading you intended to do grows!

For example, I really enjoyed reading Dan Meyer's blog, starting with his "Why I don't assign homework", then following his links to read about the software he uses to help keep himself organized, how he analyzes his use of classroom time, and his ideas on how assessment should be handled in a mathematics classroom. I had 4 or 5 tabs of his blog posts open at one time. (And now, so might you!)