Since I lurk on twitter a fair amount, and people suggest various blogs and articles to me every day, I end up trying to read a lot of this nonstop educational publishing that goes on. And I can’t help but notice one thing happening over and over again.
Some people write like they are creating a textbook.
I have nothing against textbooks per se. However, I will also confess that I never enjoyed reading them. They contain massive amounts of information, but just to give one example, you could read a Portuguese language text book from cover to cover and not be able to order a sandwich in Portuguese when you were done. Sure, you have been exposed to a large volume of data, but being exposed to it does not necessarily translate into assimilating and owning it. It's one thing to read a book about doing something, quite another to actually go out and do it. In my experience, they never match, unless I read the book 18 times . . . and even then . . .
Many textbooks try to encourage assimilation by including a series of questions at the end of each chapter. Yeah, right.
In a purely traditional mechanical educational environment, it is “good enough” to superficially expose students to information. However, to distinguish yourself in the great morass of the blog-osphere, I would suggest that, instead of a list of 7 to 100 tips and tricks, you take one single trick and discuss all the many variables pertaining thereto.
I see many people on the Internet who are eager to share multiple platitudes that they read in a book somewhere. What is so hard to find is someone who has had hard real-world experience, and is able to articulate it and willing to share it.
© Justin Locke
