As I write, I'm at OHS, sitting in a workshop on using blogs and wikis in the classroom. We're seeing lots of resources out there about where and how to create them, some of which are already tailored for educational use (read: with ways of locking out everyone but your students, so as not to create a sense of impropriety, I suppose).
A thought that occurred to me while digging around those links (Moodle is a pretty cool resource, if we'd ever really have time to create anything for it, but that's a post for another time. The literary term of the day is "irony," kids...) is how many people equate "online writing" with "complete abandonment of the conventions of written English."
If I were to devise some kind of introductory lesson for my high school students that utilized blogs or wikis, it would most likely focus on how horribly people come across when they misuse "your" for "you're"...
Does that make me some kind of elitist? I don't care so much when people use commonly accepted I.M./text-slang, b/c every1 knows what u mean when u do that, but there's a HUGE difference (in my mind, anyway) between consciously using an abbreviation, and just being a piss-poor, careless writer...
