Last month, in preparation for my K12Online Conference presentation, I re-read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Good Business. Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning. In it, he states that the experience of flow - when the person is totally immersed in an activity and genuinely enjoying the moment - comes from “the steps one takes toward attaining a goal, not from actually reaching it.” He adds that:

People often miss the opportunity to enjoy what they do because they focus all their attention on the outcome, rather than savoring the steps along the way. Where does the pleasure in singing come from - finishing the song, or producing each note or phrase? … To be overly concerned with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance. If a tennis player thinks only of winning the match, she won’t be able to respond to her opponent’s powerful serve … our primary concern here is not with what constitutes a successful performance, but with the quality of experience during performance. If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination.

In education, however, the product - the grade, the final draft, the test mark - still often takes precedence over the process of learning - the sense of personal journey without which the final destination is meaningless. What is even worse is that many of our students are very comfortable with that idea. To them, school is often about “playing the game.” They follow along, raise hands, submit assignments, study for tests. Of course, there is nothing wrong with these activities as long as they do not impede their progress as independent thinkers, researchers, and writers. Unfortunately, most of the time, “playing the game” means following the rules that we’ve set up for the students. We bring in the hoops, and the students jump through them. It’s an easy process for everyone involved.

In my classroom - a predominantly blogging classroom - things have to be different. I believe that it is my role as an educator to ensure that my students are given opportunities to grow as individuals, and are not treated as mere pupils who passively receive information. As a result, the traditional approach to teaching and learning, to assessment and evaluation, has to be modified. It is a difficult process for both the students and the teacher. It is a process in which the classroom becomes more of a studio where learners engage with concepts that they find interesting and personally relevant. It becomes a place where they are given opportunities to create their own networks and become experts in their chosen fields.

In order to create that classroom, however, I need to continue to tweak my classroom practice. The students need a different, more conversational, expressive, and individualized kind of support. They also need to be gradually eased into their new roles of independent researchers.

At the beginning of the year, I always talk to my students about “growing” their own blog. It is a challenging concept because, when they are first introduced to blogging, they are all under the impression that everything they write will be graded and that their blog is just an electronic version of their notebook or journal. So, when at the beginning of the year, I start talking about blogging and the steps that the students need to take to “grow” their own blog, they are always a bit confused and surprised - my words suggest a lot of freedom, and freedom, as we all know, is not something that students associate with school.

For two years, I struggled to verbally explain the concept to them, with varying results. This year, however, I had a visual tool.

I created it this past summer and could not wait to use it in class. When I finally used it last month, the results were encouraging. The students looked at it and, when I said “I’d like you to think about how you are going to grow your own blog,” they knew exactly what I meant.

The diagram I created is intended to help them visualize their progress over the course of a school year. It assumes that blogging is not about posting an entry in response to a homework assignment but about engaging in writing that is personally relevant. The diagram helps students define their goals and ways of reaching them. It helps them realize that blogging is not about posting well thought-out entries, and that each entry does not need to present a definitive and complete view on a given topic. Rather, it helps them see that blogging is about engaging with ideas.

Blogs are perfect tools to encourage and assist students in cognitive engagement. Blogging is a process, a conversation. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, my students tend to see each blog entry as the equivalent of a well-composed paragraph response or even an essay. I admit, there is nothing wrong with producing well-written and well organized entries as long as the entry is not an end in itself, as long as the process of intellectual engagement does not end once the piece is posted. I want my students to understand that bloggers blog because they are on a journey, a quest, and that every entry is an opportunity to continue that journey.

So, when they see this handout, this planning sheet, the students realize that the academic year ahead of them is an opportunity to produce a body of work, to stay engaged, to use their time productively doing things they’re interested in as opposed to completing assignments for their teacher.

This planning sheet, called How to Grow a Blog, consists of three parts.

The first part refers to the blooming flower - the goal of any gardener or a serious blogger. This is the long-term goal. When I explain this first part, I say to my students that they should think about what they want their blog to represent at the end of the year. I tell them that they need a personal goal. I say that once they start blogging, they will continue to add to their blog thus creating a body of work. “What,” I ask them, “do you want to see there right before you graduate? What do you want the visitors to your blog to think when they see it in June? What do you want to accomplish?”

Keep in mind, this is not easy. Generally speaking, the only time students in grade eight think about long-term goals is when they worry about grades or getting into the high school programme of their choice. Engagement with ideas lasts only until the assigned deadline. Once the assignment is handed in, the engagement ends. Blogging is very different, of course, and the diagram helps them realize that.

Once they choose a personal goal, a topic that they want to pursue, I ask the students to fill in the bottom part, called “The Right Habitat.” Here, the students have to think about the steps they need to take in order to create the right environment for their blogs.

This part asks them to think about the root system for their blog. Where are the nutrients going to come from? Where will I find nourishment as a thinker and researcher? This is an opportunity to consider the fact that in order to learn and engage with ideas, one needs a habitat that will support it, and that the best way to build just such a habitat is to find other people and resources that one can converse with. In other words, I want the students to learn that blogging is about initiating and sustaining conversations. So, I ask them, “Now that you know what you would like to research or document on your blog, where is the inspiration going to come from, where are your ideas going to come from? What kinds of resources are you going to include in your habitat to help you grow your blog and extend your thinking?”

So, having chosen their goals, the students look for online resources that will help them learn more about their chosen topics. This is a perfect opportunity for me to make it very clear that blogs are about learning. Once they choose their topics, I always ask them how much they already know about the topic. The answers vary, of course, but fairly quickly the students realize that they do not know much about the chosen topic, even if it is something they are very passionate about. And so, a discussion about blogging turns into a discussion about learning. “Where will you go online to learn more about your chosen topic?” I ask them, “Who will you interact with and learn from?” This is how they begin to build their networks.

Finally, I give them time to consider habits and commitments - that’s what the stem represents in my diagram. I want them to think about the kinds of habits that, in their opinion, will be necessary to accomplish their goals. If the goal is to produce a body of work on globalization, for example, then they need to ask themselves what is required of them, on a daily and weekly basis, to achieve that goal. This is a difficult part for them to fill out because it requires a certain degree of self-knowledge. If they want their blogs to bloom, then they must think about the steps they need to take every day to ensure that they are on track. They must also know themselves and decide on the steps they need to take to develop good habits.

I believe that the most effective part of this diagram is that it gives the students an opportunity to do some long-term planning, which is not an easy task because, as students, they are used to short-term goals, such as finishing tonight’s homework. At the same time, they have to think about the little steps, the daily activities and posts and where they will come from. They need to find the right habitat that will inform their work. They need to think about strategies and habits necessary to both start and continue their journey.

In short, the goal of using this handout is twofold: to help students plan and begin their journey, and to think about the habits they will need for that journey. I want them to understand that the most valuable part of blogging is the process of interacting with ideas and people, not producing finished assignments on assigned topics. This planning sheet helps them define their long-term goals but, at the same time, it also helps them see that blogging is a journey. I have already noticed that this handout and the instructional conversations that it initiates help the students realize that successful learning is not about submitting definitive pieces on assigned topics, but primarily about what Csikszentmihalyi calls “the quality of experience,” a sense of meaningful immersion in one’s pursuits.

The challenge, of course, is that the students perceive traditional school work as something that is safe, much safer than becoming an independent researcher. They often find comfort in the fact that as long as the questions are answered and the work handed in, they will continue to do well as students. Blogging, on the other hand, is initially a big unknown. There are no deadlines and no clear guidelines. After years of jumping through hoops, students are suddenly faced with a lot of freedom which they often find overwhelming. I’ve noticed that the planning sheet I developed can provide a solid support mechanism that many young bloggers need at the beginning of this journey. It’s a good tool to use in order to start a process of conversational feedback and assessment.

Below, you will find some examples of how my students filled out their How to Grow a Blog planning sheets. Keep in mind that what these sheets represent is the start of their journey as researchers and writers. They provide me with an opportunity to engage students in meaningful conversations that can eventually lead to meaningful and long-term personal engagement on student blogs. Your feedback on this handout and the strategy behind it would be truly appreciated. If you are interested in using or modifying this planning sheet, please feel free to download it. If you do choose to use it, either in its original or modified form, please send me your feedback.

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I’ve spent the last couple of days thinking about the tools I will use next term with my classes (21classes? Edublogs? Ning? Wikispaces? PBWiki? MindMeister?) only to discover that what I’m really interested in is preparing the ground for learning. I don’t want to structure and pre-define. I do not want to create a community or a social network for my students. Instead, I want to create the conditions necessary for the right kind of environment to emerge. Building an environment for the students is likely to result in failure: environments and communities need to be build with the students, with their full participation, through their work and their interactions with and about texts. It’s not just about choosing a blogging platform and letting the kinds in. We need to move beyond the traditional approach of “pick the tools, add students and stir.” Unfortunately, my curriculum is still to a large extent dominated by units, lessons, assignments. Those are the realities of teaching and learning in North America in the 21st century - it’s not about the process, it’s about the product.

So, as a teacher in the 21st century, I am taking a stand: I want to have a classroom where my students can enjoy learning experiences. Instead of dividing the curriculum into neat chunks, I will try to set the stage for the right kind of environment to emerge - the kind of environment where learning experiences can take shape. The kind of environment that is similar to what Ben Wilkoff has termed, “the ripe environment,” one characterized by “a culture of connection.”

Before I explain what I have in mind, let me take you back to last term. I’d like to tell you about Vanessa. Last term, she chose to research child soldiers. She spent months reading articles, interviews, watching online videos, and documenting her research on her blog. Gradually, she immersed herself in her topic and learned much more than I ever could have taught her. Then, towards the end of the term, after documenting her research, reflecting on it, and sharing it with her classmates, she started writing poetry in response to this gruesome and difficult topic. Take a look:

I am part of the Revolutionary United Forces and I will stop at nothing for victory…

To overthrow the enemy one must not abide by the rules,
Governing ourselves, altering the thoughts of many
Vulnerability in a child is our advantage
Even in the children’s eyes, death is to be taught as the answer
The children have sorrow in their eyes longing for love
They cry,
Scream,
Weep for love,

Defeating the enemy, is of the utmost importance
No sympathy, no traitors, no survivors
The child’s innocence will not affect us,
Risking their lives will lead us closer to victory.
The children have sorrow in their eyes longing for hope,
They cry,
Scream,
Weep for hope

Respect given to the children will conquer any love once given to them
Our training methods constant and cruel
On the front lines of battle, they shed blood for us
We are the R.U.F’s, envisioning only supremacy
The children have sorrow in their eyes longing to defeat the enemy
They cry,
Scream,
Weep for victory.

I realized that this was a genuine personal response, indicative of a lot of personal investment in the topic. It was a kind of personal way of coming to terms with what she had learned. Vanessa wasn’t the only one. Trudy, who’d spent months researching Anne Frank, also posted some poetry:

The book opens
A new piece of information is just being handed to you
But you know at the end something dark awaits
And lets just say its not a happy ending

You read the beginning and then the end
Throughout each day personalities change
Feelings change
It is a new type of life unfolding right in front of your eyes

You witness life in the eyes of a young girl
The way she writes the way she explains,
Its like its happening
To you
Right this very moment
Everyday sounds and voices scare you
But shes just a 13 year old girl what can she do?
Nothing

New laws, new relationships are all so different
Its kind of like beginning a new life
Like a caterpillar growing into a butterfly
A new life unfolds

No fun, no friends
Just your family
With petite spaces and little boundaries
Closed windows make you want to witness nature
But you can’t

A new love,
Someone to share your feelings with
But is it true?
Or have you just gotten to the point you can’t think and you do things that you would never do in you old life

So many rules to follow:
Be Quiet!
Walk Slowly!
Sit Down during the day!
Read, write just be quiet….during the day!

When the sun has gone down and the moon has gone up
There are different rules:
Walk Around
Be Free
But Don’t open the windows
Or go outside!

With every pleasant thing you do,
There will always be a consequence
During this time of your life

All the personalities change so quickly
Funny
Talkative
Sometimes even ignorant
Personal

There is so much time but soon…. Sooner than you think
There will be no more time left.

At first, while certainly very impressed by the creative work of these thirteen-year-olds, I did not think that there was anything out of the ordinary about it. Then, I realized that there was. Having become researchers (one might even say content experts) in their respective fields, Vanessa and Trudy started contributing. Yes, contributing! We don’t often think of students as contributors. Even in the context of Web 2.0, I often talk about collaboration and connections, but rarely about genuine contributions. These poems, it occurred to me one day, are learning objects - they are unique artifacts that I can use next year with another class when discussing child soldiers or Anne Frank. Much like edubloggers around the world who, through my aggregator, contribute to my knowledge of learning in the 21st century, these girls were contributing specific artifacts to the topics they chose to study.

I started thinking about their progress as researchers and it occurred to me that the whole class seemed to follow the same pattern. Once I gave them the freedom to find a topic they were interested in, they began to seek out and immerse themselves in learning experiences. No one really seemed to care about grades or tests. Instead, they were immersed in learning about topics they cared about. Looking back, I realize that the process that the whole class engaged in consisted of four stages. Vanessa and Trudy, however, moved beyond into the fifth stage. The girls, along with their classmates, inspired me to start thinking about the process of creating learning experiences. The five stages described below illustrate my emerging approach based on my classroom practice and the work of my students (be kind - it’s still a work in progress):

1. DISCOVER:
First, the students were given the freedom to pick a topic of interest within a specific context that we had entered through our discussions of literature - the context of social justice. I gave all my students sufficient time to think about what they were passionate about, visit some sites, read some articles and uncover that one specific topic that they wanted to learn more about.

At this point, the students were really just surfing and lurking. They were visiting various sites and communities to explore topics that were of interest to them as potential ideas for future research. There were no conversations here, just fleeting interactions.

2. DEFINE:
During this stage, I gave the students time to post some preliminary entries on their blogs, to think out loud about their topics in general terms before they started their research. The point here was to allow them the freedom to start defining their research topics and possible ways of tackling them.

3. IMMERSE:
The next step was the longest and most complex. Having narrowed it down to a specific topic, the students then were given time in class to immerse themselves in the topic, to learn more about it, to start looking for, identifying, and interacting with valuable resources. This was an opportunity to bookmark relevant content and use RSS to start creating a network of valuable and reliable resources (I want to extend it this year to a network of peers and adult experts). I wanted my students to become researchers who locate valuable content, read, interact, and document their learning on the blog by writing entries about the topic and their journey as researchers.

4. BUILD:
The students’ efforts to document their discoveries and their learning contributed to the process of building their own knowledge in this specific area. The entries showed me and their peers - our whole community - how much they were learning. These were thoughts made visible. The students used their blogs to document their research and to build their own knowledge in their respective fields of expertise. There were many connections that emerged among students researching related ideas. The students interacted with each other by posting comments and by sharing and commenting on resources. They were engaged in their own research projects as individual researchers but, at the same time, there emerged many small networks within our class blogosphere of students interested in similar topics. They were all engaged and connected.

And that was where the process ended, or so I thought until I noticed Vanessa’s poem and then Trudy’s. Both girls were contributing unique, personal content to the fields they chose to research. That’s when I realized that in order for the learning experience to be complete, the students needed to go beyond researching, connecting, and network-building to become creators and contributors. Of course, one could argue that their research entries contributed valuable material to our class community, but this - their poetry - was unique and personal. These were artifacts which, despite their personal, literary, and creative nature, could enrich anyone’s understanding of child soldiers or Anne Frank. They emerged because the girls went beyond the process of documenting their research.

So, I realized that there was one more, final stage in this process.

5. CONTRIBUTE:
This final stage happens when, as learners, the students begin to contribute through their own creativity. It happens when, having acquainted themselves with the topic, they begin to rewrite or remix it in their own unique way and thus contribute to and enrich the field they’re researching. This is the stage when the students begin to create unique artifacts that contribute to the existing body of knowledge on a given topic. This final stage is not just about contributing links or resources to a group project or to a community. It is primarily an exercise in creativity. It begins when the students interact with ideas, resources, and people to create or enter a network. Once they can tap into the collective intelligence of their networks, they can begin to learn, and once they begin to learn, they can also begin to create their own resources - podcasts, films, creative writing, or any other artifacts that can then be used by others and can enrich their grasp of the topic.

Why can’t this fifth stage replace my traditional evaluation strategies? Why can’t I replace tests or assignments given to the whole class with the kind of engaging and personally relevant approach to learning that is encapsulated in the five-stage process above?

I think it can certainly be accomplished but, first, I need to foster in my classroom the kind of environment where this five-stage process can take place. This means that I need to think about how to create the kind of environment that fosters and supports learning experiences, not the kind of environment that imposes them on students. Perhaps, what I’m really interested in is what Dave Cormier calls “habitat.” He states that a proper habitat can “make it more likely for community to form and more likely that that community will do the kinds of things that were intended … that prompted the creation of that habitat.” In other words, as Dave argues, “a careful attention to the construction of habitat can increase the chances of a community forming.” I spent the last three years creating communities with my students and I learned that if the right (ripe?) environment is there, the community will emerge. It seems to me that the approach I described above can help create the kind of habitat that will lead to the emergence of networks, correspondences, and - most importantly - contributions.

In order to make all of this happen in a grade seven or eight Language Arts classroom, I need to think about facilitating connections and supporting my students in the process of creating their own networks where their contributions - poems, interviews, chatcasts, blog entries, podcasts, films - will be seen as enriching artifacts.

When I first started thinking seriously about my role in the class blogging community and reflecting on some of the findings of my research, the usual cliches came to mind: teacher as facilitator, guide, consultant, co-participant. I wasn’t happy with these vague labels and wanted to delve deeper into the impact of my blogging community on my role as the teacher. I needed to look carefully at what was happening to me and how I could best assist students in using blogs as thinking tools.

Two approaches proved to be quite effective: instructional scaffolding and the related concept of instructional conversations, often defined as “a dialogue between teacher and learners in which the teacher listens carefully to grasp the students’ communicative intent, and tailors the dialogue to meet the emerging understanding of the learners” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Over the past two years, I have been learning to make instructional scaffolding (or its variations) a natural part of my classroom.

According to Judith A. Langer, instructional scaffolding “builds on analyses of the characteristics of parent/child interaction that contribute to the rapid pace of early language development” (1984). She argues that the following five characteristics of instructional interaction are critical to successful classroom activities (Langer, 1984; Applebee & Langer, 1983; 1984). I would add that they also work quite well in the context of a class blogging community.

Ownership of the Learning Event

Langer argues that in order to use instructional scaffolding teachers need to ensure that the students have ownership of the learning event: “the instructional task must permit students to make their own contribution to the activity as it evolves, thus allowing them to have a sense of ownership for their work” (Langer, 1984, p.123). The project can be initiated or suggested by the teacher as long as the student has his or her own reasons for participating in the activity and is given opportunities to develop the topic as an independent researcher.

In other words, think about teaching English or social studies by organizing the course around one broad theme - social justice, for example. Then, give your students the freedom to pick specific aspects of that broad theme and then research them. As a class, the students will be engaged in exploring a variety of readings and events related to this topic but, as individual researchers, they will be able to focus on a very specific aspect of the topic and make their own contribution within the context of a class community of researchers.

Appropriateness of the Instructional Task

The task that the student is engaged in needs to be based, to some degree, on the skills and knowledge that the student already possesses. However, it “must pose problems that cannot be solved without further help.” Let’s say that the student has chosen a specific aspect of the broader topic of social justice and is in the process of collecting information and resources. In today’s world of the world wide web and information overload, the student can begin to feel lost amid all the information. This presents the teacher with a perfect opportunity to introduce RSS, for example, or a tool that can be used to aggregate video clips, such as VodPod or a YouTube account. It also presents a perfect opportunity to work with the student on specific curriculum related skills, such as summarizing. This can also be a fantastic opportunity to help the student start a research journal (on her blog, using a del.icio.us account, or a tumble log) or use mindmapping to develop a plan for further research. The point here is that once the student feels stuck, overwhelmed, or discouraged, a perfect opportunity presents itself for the teacher (or a more knowledgeable peer) to step in and offer support.

Supportive Instruction

In fact, this is where real teaching takes place. According to Tharp and Gallimore, two neo-Vygotskian researchers, “real teaching is understood as assisting the learner to perform just beyond his or her current capacity” (1991). This interaction in the student’s zone of proximal development awakens those faculties which have not yet matured but whose “buds,” as Vygotsky calls them, are already emerging. Langer explains that this process could take the form of “direct instruction in the form of questioning, modeling, or constructive dialogue … to help the student develop a successful approach to the task.” In other words, the student who has by now become passionate about the task needs to learn certain skills in order to complete it. Motivation is thus built into this process. The teacher engages in dialogue with the student only when the student is already motivated by both the work that has already been done and the student’s own goal that she is working towards. Whatever the student needs to master will be done not in the context of schooling, or in preparation for a test, but in the natural context of the activity chosen by the student - in a context that is meaningful to the student. The student won’t mind the teacher’s involvement (or that of her peers) because the sense of ownership is already present. In fact, that involvement will be seen by the student as one of the steps necessary to achieve the personal goal.

This is where instructional conversation is most effective. Once the student is engaged as a researcher/writer/thinker, the teacher can focus on conversing with the student. In a blogging classroom, the student’s individual blog can thus become an “activity setting” which, according to Tharp and Gallimore, maximizes “opportunities for coparticipation and instructional conversation with the teacher and, frequently, with peers” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Instruction, in other words, becomes a communicative event.

Shared Responsibility

As a result, both the traditional view of school work and the role of the teacher are redefined by supportive instruction. The traditional role of evaluator is reconfigured in this context because the focus switches from testing how much the student has learned to assisting her in exploring new ideas and building her own knowledge. It shifts from testing prior knowledge to assisting in developing new understanding. The teacher is no longer waiting passively for the project to be completed and handed in. Instead, he or she is actively involved in the student’s research. The student and the teacher become co-participants, engaged in building knowledge.

Internalization

Langer claims that, over time, as the student internalizes the new patterns of learning and the new approaches to learning practiced with the teacher, the teacher needs to recognize that growth by adapting instructional strategies. The focus here is to extend learning and to understand that the relationship between the student and the subject matter has changed and that, in fact, it continues to evolve. Once the initial scaffolding has done its job, it is no longer needed and can be replaced by a different set of scaffolds, a different kind of teacher involvement.

The sense of partnership that developed through the initial set of instructional conversations needs to evolve in order to be of benefit to the student. Since I now know (I have seen) that my student has made progress, I need to use different tools and engage in different conversations in order to ensure that the student does not see my involvement as patronizing or intrusive. The set of competencies that developed as a result of our instructional conversations now demands that our conversations increase in sophistication. The old rubrics, in other words, can no longer be used in this context. The rubric used in September will be inappropriate in May - there has been too much internalization and my attempts at assessment or evaluation have to reflect the progress made by my student.

Why Instructional Scaffolding?

I think that the most important impact of instructional scaffolding is that it dethrones the teacher from the traditional role of content expert. It also ensures that the transmission model no longer dominates classroom discourse. Learning happens because the students are involved in the process of researching their own topics. Schooling gets replaced by conversations about things that matter to the students.

From the point of view of instructional scaffolding, blogging and, specifically, blogging in a supportive community of peers, becomes a psychological tool - the practical activity that the student is engaged in is internalized and allows for the development of higher-order cognitive operations:

Many relations that first appear in real group activity are later internalized by the student as the relations between his or her inner intellectual processes. Thus the role of the teacher as an expert and advisor working within the group becomes internalized by the child as his own function of reference and control. (Kozulin, 1998, 57)

The instructional conversations that we engage in with our students (or interactions that the students have with their peers) are likely to be internalized so that the next time our students face a similar problem they will no longer need support. They will most likely need support with a different and more complex problem, but not something that has already been tackled in an instructional conversation. As a result, our conversations will continue to evolve and increase in sophistication. That progress towards increasingly more challenging tasks emerges from the student’s own involvement, not from our curriculum expectations. To me, this means that while instructional conversations can certainly seem like a template to be applied in a blogging classroom, the role of the teacher will always follow a different trajectory depending on the needs of the students. What we do depends on what the students are working on and not on a pre-defined notion of what a grade nine English teacher, for example, needs to teach.

What emerges from all this is the kind of learning that is de-institutionalized, where every student is not defined as a unit to be taught but as an individual who is free to learn and who can rely on the support of a more knowledgeable peer or the teacher.

Instructional scaffolding is not easy to implement with a class of thirty students. It requires time and demands that we read carefully everything that the students write. In my classroom, I see it as an approach that demands that I do the following:

_____________________________
Notes:

Applebee, A.N. & J.A. Langer (1983). Instructional scaffolding: Reading and writing as natural language activities. Language Arts 60, 168-175.

Langer, J.A. (1984). Literacy instruction in American schools: problems and perspectives. American Journal of Education. 93, 107-132.

Langer J.A. & A.N. Applebee (1984). Language, learning, and interaction: A framework for improving the teaching of writing. In A.N. Applebee (Ed.), Contexts for learning to write: Studies of secondary school instruction. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Tharp, R.G. & R. Gallimore, (1991). The Instructional Conversation: Teaching and Learning in Social Activity. Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. NCRCDSLL Research Reports. Paper rr02. http://repositories.cdlib.org/crede/ncrcdsllresearch/rr02

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And so another school year has come to a close. The last four weeks have been very busy: marking, exams, report cards. After months of thoughtful engagement with my students and their blogs, I spent the last few days of this school year calculating medians and grade equivalents that my students achieved on a standardized test. I also had to reduce the work of every student - months of network- and knowledge-building - to one final grade. I had to translate all that engagement into a number. Many of my students were also very busy calculating their averages and memorizing their review sheets for a variety of subjects. Reflection was replaced by the thoughts of “doing well” on exams or achieving that much-coveted average of 80% or higher. Who has time for reflection when we’re busy perpetuating the institutionalized commodity of learning?

Before the end of the year and the madness that comes with the final exams, in an effort to counteract this focus on grades, I encouraged my students to reflect on their independent research projects that they have been documenting on their blogs. Many of them took up the challenge and gave me an interesting glimpse into their learning.

Sooooooooooooooooo What?

This is unfortunately my final and last post. This is my so what. From my research, I have learned many things. First of all I have learned that children all around are suffering constantly and Canada is not involved in the coalition to prevent child soldiers. I have learned that the training is cruel and intolerable, an experience no child should go through. They are punished for expressing any fear or sincerity, tear shed will only cause blood shed. Overall I would like to continue researching this topic but due to the lack of time I cannot. I hoped I achieved my goal which was to raise awareness about this topic among my classmates. Hope you enjoyed following my topic. (Italics mine)

This is what happens when we compartmentalize learning into neat chunks. There’s nothing that’s stopping Chloe from continuing her research. I can make sure that she has access to her blog for as long as she needs to. She can also transfer her entries to a Blogger blog, for example, and continue her efforts there. Unfortunately, the one thing that school taught her very well is that learning ends in June, that it is organized into neat units, and that weeks and months of learning can be reduced to a single test or exam.

On Sunday, June 3, 2007, Michael wrote a reflection on his research on genocide and, specifically, the situation in Darfur.

When will we ever learn?

What have we learned now about genocide now? After all the things that have happened with genocide to people over the years all the death, people always forget the results of genocide. We have learned nothing. If we had this would not have happened in Darfur. This genocide has been started by: president Bashir, vice-president Taha, and security chief Gosh. These men are from the Sudanese government. They are supporting the janjaweed militia while lying about doing so. It is a massacre/genocide on all of the non-Baggra population. The Sudanese government is making sure no one finds out anymore and is trying to kill all witnesses of these things. Now this is agreed upon by everyone that this is a genocide. When the United Nations try to help the Sudanese government attacks them. What has begun at just Darfur is now beginning to spread all the way to Chad and Central Africa. This is a current situation that has already had a major effect on people in that area, already 450 000 are dead from violence and disease. This genocide is currently not very big and has not killed huge amount of people yet, but it is growing. Soon it will grow larger if it is not stopped soon. We must stand up and stop the wrongs happening in Sudan.

Both of the above entries show, in my opinion, that these two students engaged as learners. They researched topics that they were passionate about and they have both become experts. They certainly know more about their respective topics than I do. They have created on their blogs a cognitive trail of their efforts. They have created learning objects that I, their teacher, can now learn from and perhaps even use next year when discussing these topics in my class with another group of students.

Of course, I knew about child soldiers and the situation in Darfur - not to mention some of the other topics that my children explored this past year - before the research projects started. But through these blogs, through their research, I have learned more. I have also become engaged not as a teacher who needs to know what the students are doing in order to assess and evaluate, but as a human being whose thirst for knowledge was satiated by a group of fourteen-year-olds who set a goal for themselves - a goal of exploring issues they found relevant and interesting.

The fact that their goals were their own made a big difference.

Their work also made me realize that I can measure their success not only by how much they have learned individually but also by how much they have learned from each other and by how much they have taught me.

Here are some topics that they explored on their blogs:

Child soldiers

Darfur

Genocide

Children’s Rights

Current Human Rights Abuses

Nazi Human Experimentation

Anne Frank

War Diaries as a Literary Genre

Street Children Around the World

Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Domestic Abuse

Women and Children in the Holocaust

Fascism in Italy

The Warsaw Uprising

The Internment of the Japanese Canadians and Americans

Freedom of Expression Violations

Nazi Propaganda

This past year, through the research that they have been documenting on their blogs, my students expanded my understanding of all of the above issues. They have found many links that I eagerly added to my delicious account. They have expressed views that I had not come across before. They started multiple conversations and expressed themselves in what Darren Kuropatwa calls “galleries of thought.” They engaged as researchers interested in expanding their knowledge.

Too bad June had to put an end to that.

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