At 18.59 -0400 01-04-22, Michael Erickson scrobe:
> Michael Roth wrote:
>>Writing is for me the primary activity... unless I can write something in
>>ways that others can understand I do not have the sense that I
>>understand. So
>>writing IS learning, whereas talk, and email is an extension of talk,
>>doesn't
>>do the same thing. Someone was writing here the other day that s/he was
>>thinking aloud... but thinking aloud is not understanding... it is a
>>process.
>
>For me, writing IS thinking--distributed across all the resources and
>mediated
>by the particular community and its rules that you can imagine. Ken Bruffe
>wrote that all writing is internalized conversation re-externalized.
> Or, as I teach my students: I only
>know what I know when I've read what I have written or heard what I've
>said.
>For what it's worth. Michael E.
Yes, this is my position as well: writing activities are activites of
thinking/learning, with a great potential for enhancing the process. The
thinking and the learning are components of the process of writing - and
thinking/learning turn out differently according to what resources are
involved in the particular activity. What I mean is nothing more esoteric
than the difference between the kind of writing (and learning) that occurs
in the sustained and painstaking process of writing a paper, an essay, a
whole book - and the kind of learning that occurs in written conversations
like those carried on over email, which is written in expectations of
others taking their turn before your own next go at fleshing out whatever
object you are worrying.
This learning-in-writing is a topic upon which I have learned much through
my years of remote presence on the xmca, so Michael R's note caught my
attention. Then, I'm not quite sure of your meaning WMR -
thinking/learning/understanding in a variety of "media"... it's ALL a
process, isn't it? Isn't it just the finished article/paper/book that is a
product? I'm not sure we disagree (I think your phrasing is confusing me a
bit) so if you'd care to carry on this thread on the side of the main
discussion, I would be happy to read more of your thinking about modes of
writing.
regards
Eva
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