Writing in a Multiliterate Flat World, Part II

Finding Audiences through Tagging and Aggregation

Abstract

This is the second part of a two-part article on how Web 2.0 tools freely available afford so many opportunities for collaboration among writers in the context of social networking, creating the means for student writers to write purposefully for worldwide audiences. Part I set the stage by placing writing in the context of new views of literacy due in part to revoluntionary changes since the turn of the century in how content finds its way to the Internet. It explained how artifacts created with such tools are aggregated and harvested as learning objects with potential to promote and augment communication and collaboration online, and to promote writing by giving students interesting and meaningful ideas to write about, thus significantly changing how the teaching of writing might be re-envisaged in the digital age. Whereas Part I examined the production side of this dynamic, Part II explains how the Internet resolves the marketing side of the role once played by traditional publishing and how writers and audiences can navigate this seemingly chaotic preponderance of content online by tagging their work and using RSS and other aggregation tools to find one another's written work and carry on conversations about it, thus providing truly authentic motivation for their writing.