Response to Article: Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You Grade a Conversation?

After reading Trent Batson's article Learning in the Webiverse: How Do You grade a Conversation?
I thought I would be enlightened about how students/teachers can use the Internet and the Web to broaden learning skills. I was shocked to read this article. Either I am such a novice with "Web" vocabulary or etiquette that I simply don't understand what the goal of his article was, or this is a poorly written and uninteresting article. "If the students extended their discourse skills to synthesize several comments in their own comments, they got even higher grades." I do not think this is a well constructed sentence, and if I were to grade this article on content, grammar, etc., I would give him a D. He would miss an F grade simply by attempting to write an article and using several twelve point Scrabble words.
I understand his point that the author must be aware of, and write to his audience. Since the audience is other students, and most importantly the teacher, how can one have a "conversation" and not consider this a "performance?" The student is judged/graded on this conversation, so I would expect a more formal essay type response rather than chit-chat.
I had my mother, who was an English teacher read this article. Her response, "This article shows that computers MUST be creating a new type of illiteracy." And I would have to agree.