Conversational Style Rules!

I know that I will enjoy blogging because I enjoy typing my thoughts. For whatever reason, my brain works better when I write, than when I speak.

This week has held numerous learning curves for the students in the cohort. We've been learning about content in the form of CLT and about applications like del.icio.us, Blogger, and Google Reader.

What struck me this week was the stark contrast between the blogsite:
Creating Passionate Users: Crash Course in Learning Theory by Kathy Sierra and Dan Russell
and the article
Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design: Recent Developments by Fred Paas

I completed reading the thirteen pages on the blogsite and thought there is a lot here, I may want to reread this when time permits. There were numerous sections, that if read in the chunks, would be a series of terrific “how tos.” It was a bit much to absorb reading it straight through, but there were visuals, great examples, the text width was manageable and it was written in a conversational style. The information flowed.

Then, I opened the five-page PDF article, which was dense in its appearance. I felt like I was looking at an article written by a professor who was adding to his article quota in order to remain on staff at a doctoral university. The juxtaposition of the two “writings” made the comment in the aforementioned blog absolutely hit home. The blogger said, “Use conversational language. Conversational writing kicks formal writing’s ass.” If it’s true for me, at midlife (or just beyond midlife, yikes) then it must be true for young people who have grown up with the Internet and social writing. The PDF of the article was enough to make me ill, just based on appearance. The fact that the appearance and the academic language contradicted the message of the article is a story for another day. The blogsite was attractive, colorful and written in the conversational style that encouraged me to keep reading.

Lesson learned.