Well, waste not want not! Here’s the alternative conclusion to Inside Out, if I don’t put it somewhere it’ll get lost forever (which may not be such a bad thing after all!)…..there are a number of significant issues for literacy educators that derive from the deep learning of our engagement with these new literacy practices. We beklieve that our study throws some fundamental features of writing into sharp relief. These features apply to paper-based abd screen-based texts, but are differently nuanced (!) because of the potency of online practices which are dynamic and immediate.

Firstly, writing is essentially an act of self-representation. What motivates or inhibits writers (irrespective of medium) is as much to do with the desire to communicate or the affective pull as it is to do with content or skill.

Secondly, understanding the material affordances of the textual form are central in the sense that they offer limitations and degrees of freedom. he mulimodal and hypermodal affordances of blogging software allow for new ways of writing. We learn to work with the affordances through situated social practice.

Thirdly, communicative purposes are intertwined with our imaginings of audience and our writing, as a social practice, is located within familiar and unfamiliar social networks. In our blogs these are mulitlayered. Audience is important to our performance of self, whereas textual affordances determine the nature and character of interaction…..

Well that’s the unedited version of what I wrote on the plane. I reckon what will become the published version in the New Literacy Sampler book will actually be better. But there’s a couple of germinal ideas in this that might be worth hanging on to.