Stephen Downes is blogging from an international airport again. In his entry titled How to Write Articles Quickly and Effectively, he shares his wealth of experience and passion for writing with an apparent goal of improving the lives and productivity of those around him. Consider the potential audience available through posting these techniques on the Internet. Add to that the audience garnered from Stephen’s daily newsletter (OL Daily) and futher add the audience of other bloggers who take the time to comment on Stephen’s advice, offer some of their own, and expose the concepts to an entirely new audience.

Today’s offering is a reminder not only of the immediacy and power of blogging during travel, but that nothing worth learning should be withheld.

This is the learning experience as it should be. An open dialog between many where-in ideas are shared, modified, demolished, re-built and/or dissected. In order to learn, I share with you. You, in turn, share with me. Separately, but together, we evolve our understanding of the concepts discussed.

Consider how much better the world could be if knowledge sharing was the norm rather than knowledge hoarding. Sure, we’d all like to believe that a free exchange of ideas is occuring in both the corporate and academic world, but in my experience the adage knowledge is power is as accurate and powerful today as it was in the mid-ages. In general, humans do a rotten job of sharing and working towards laying a level playing field for all who come to the table.

As for the advice provided in today’s article? All I can say is “Stephen, you’ve been holding out on me!”. I really could have used the guidance provided when I returned to university as an adult learning (10 years divorced from formal learning environments) and rusty at writing anything outside of code, reports, and random rants. While I feel I’ve slipped back into the swing of writing for an academic environment, I’ll certainly be keeping this link handy for future reference.

Technorati Tags: stephen downes, writing tips, knowledge sharing, knowledge hoarding

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.