it's OK to make mistakes

I know that I haven't yet read or commented on the second paper, but I want to spend a little time thinking about some of the things mentioned in the Benfield article.

"As in face-to-face teaching, the online teacher needs to reassure students that this is a learning environment, in which you are allowed, even expected, to make mistakes."

Whilst it may not appear as such to the student the making of mistakes in the public arena of an online discussion can be regarded as an advantage. You make mistakes, and your peers and tutors notice them... hence you can be corrected or directed to the right information.

In blogs by comparison errors or misinterpretations may go unnoticed, and uncorrected - and may even be consolidated and reinforced by successive misinformation whilst the blogger pursues a tangent. Furthermore the visitor to the blog does not have a sense of responsiblity for the content, and hence though they may notice error/s they may not feel obligated to notify the blogger. If however a message with an error appears in a discussion board to which I belong I do feel an obligation (altruistic or not) to point it out in a subsequent post.

Hence it may be better for learning to make a mistake in a discussion board and be corrected, that keep the misinformation in your head, or write it in your blog.