- John Dewey, Democracy and Education

I’ve written about this before, but the concept of engaging students in conversations and engaging, as an educator, in conversational assessment, is something that I continue to investigate.

Of course, it is not easy to have meaningful and authentic conversations with students about a literary text that they’re reading. First of all, they know very well that I’m an expert - even if I don’t see myself as one. Therefore, they are absolutely convinced that they cannot contribute anything to the discussion that I don’t already know. No matter how much I try to show them that there are still many aspects of a given topic that I am not very familiar with, students persist in their belief that teachers are experts.

So, I often try to start conversations and create activities that are just as challenging for me as they are for them. This calls for quite a bit of creativity and forces me to abandon tried and tested lesson plans.

Last month, I decided to help my students engage with Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl as more than just a literary text. I wanted them to look at it as an experience, as life written down by someone their own age. They find it difficult not to treat the diary as just another "big book" that they study at school. I wanted them to think about Anne as a person and her diary as a personal record. I wanted them to have an opportunity to engage with the text and think about what Anne’s words and experiences meant to them. I wanted to create an avenue for a personal connection - not an easy task in a classroom setting where every text we study is likely to be perceived as a literary text first and a personal experience second. At the same time, I also wanted to engage myself as a participant. I wanted to model the kind of personal engagement I wanted my students to experience.

It occurred to me that one way of doing this would be to create a soundtrack for the diary. So, I spent some time browsing through the SeeqPod and SkreemR archives on the mixwit page . The next day, I walked into our classroom and explained to my students how I got the idea:

I always listen to music when I read. Last night I was listening to Mozart and re-reading parts of the diary for our discussion today. Suddenly, I realized that the piece I was listening to suited the passage I was reading perfectly. It felt almost like the best soundtrack for that specific passage. So, I decided to make a list of songs and classical pieces that, in my opinion, would work well as a soundtrack for Anne’s diary.

And then I showed them the soundtrack I had made and we listened to a couple of tracks. I saved my soundtrack using mixwit’s highly visual interface and then embedded it in my blog in the grade eight blogosphere:

(Click here if the above widget does not work)

Then, I continued:

I want you to know that this took a long time and I found it very difficult to choose the songs. I kept searching the mixwit database for all kinds of songs that I thought would be perfect, but then I realized that the lyrics didn’t really work or that the song was actually very different from how I remembered it. In other words, I had to spend quite a bit of time not just coming up with possible song titles for this but also justifying my choices.

So, I would like you to do the same. Create a mixwit account and then search the database for tracks that, in your opinion, would be perfect for a soundtrack for The Diary of a Young Girl . There’s one catch, though: You have to be able to justify your decisions.

And then the conversations started. The one thing that made a huge impact was that I had challenged them to create something that I myself had already done. They could interact with my playlist and learn from the process I had engaged in prior to starting their own. They could critique my work and analyze it before embarking on their own journey of creating a soundtrack. In other words, I had entered the classroom and started the conversation as a participant. Creating my own mixwit tape placed me in the position of a learner. I eagerly shared with them my experiences of using mixwit and choosing the appropriate songs.

The point here is that what they were encouraged to do was not based on an abstract assignment description. I had entered the classroom with evidence of my own meaningful personal engagement with the diary, not just a typed handout explaining what they had to do.

This exercise led to a number of meaningful conversations with my students about Anne Frank, her writing, and our interpretations of her personality and her work. The fact that they all needed to justify their musical choices ensured that the conversations we had focused not just on the music but also, perhaps primarily, on the text. I had many one-on-one conversations with my students in which they talked about specific aspects of Anne’s personality and shared their knowledge of popular music with me. They read and listened to the lyrics carefully because they realized that the choices had to be justified and couldn’t be in any way offensive to the sanctity of the text written by a girl their age who perished in the Holocaust. This wasn’t just about listening to music, it was about making connections, and they all realized that, in order to make them, they had to become very familiar with both the songs and the text - I had encouraged them to become experts.

I was also pleased that this activity gave all of us an opportunity to engage with the diary in a new and unique way. The students still studied the text, they still had to think about Anne as a person and a writer, but they had to do it in a context that rarely enters our classrooms, one that certainly is never present when we discuss literary texts.

I learned that entering the community as a participant allowed me to have conversations with my students that they did not perceive as instructional. Yes, they were talking to Mr.Glogowski about their songs and their reasons for picking them, but it did not feel like school talk.

Here are some examples of what they created:

… and, of course, the best thing about this was that there was no rubric or evaluation sheet. Why? Because when you listen to student soundtracks for The Diary of a Young Girl and the music works, the music fits, you just know the students did a great job … and they do too - not because they received a rubric with a high mark, but because their work emerged from meaningful conversations with each other and the teacher.

What I am really concerned about, however, is my own voice. For the past three years, my three successive grade eight classes enjoyed blogging and created successful and engaging blogging communities. Most of the time, this development took place without me. While I certainly encouraged my bloggers, discussed their work in class, and posted comments to involve my students in instructional conversations, I have always been absent as a person. This year, I want things to be different.

This year, I want my personal voice to be present in the community. I will, of course, continue to be present as Mr.Glogowski, the grade eight Language Arts teacher. I will be present in my didactic and supportive role of an educator, of a classroom teacher who guides and explains. At the same time, I want to be present as Konrad Glogowski, the human being who has his own interests and views. I want to be present as an individual, not an individual reduced to one role.

In other words, I want the students to see me as yet another blogger in their community, as someone whose reason for being there is not only to support and instruct but also to learn. To learn from and with my students.

My own blog in our class blogosphere has always been used to post updates, assignments, commentary on student work, and words of encouragement. For years, it was called “The Language Arts Blog,” or “Mr. Glogowski’s Blog” or something equally official and unimaginative. The name of my blog has always reflected my one-dimensional presence in the community - the voice of a teacher. I don’t think my students ever perceived it as a blog - a place where the author shares his thoughts, ideas, or experiences and engages in meaning-making. It was a place that my students would visit regularly to read their latest assignment or download a rubric. I don’t think they ever learned anything from my own blog. They learned from the instructional conversations that I engaged with them on their own blogs, but certainly not from my own blog in the class blogosphere. It has always been an uninspiring place, a kind of online bulletin board.

Last year, I started experimenting by posting entries that reflected my own interests. However, I always made sure that they also related to the curriculum. When we read and discussed Animal Farm, for example, I posted some links to articles on totalitarian leaders or on the fragile nature of democracy in developing nations. There needed to be, it seemed to me, a clear link between what we were reading in class and what the students saw on my blog. Everything that I posted on my blog was designed to cultivate an adopted persona and to fit within the confines of the curriculum.

This year, I want to move beyond blogging only about course-related topics. I want my students to see what I am interested in, what makes me mad, what fascinates me, what I write like when I write as someone other than Mr.Glogowski, the Language Arts teacher. In short, I want to be myself and am beginning to take small steps towards this goal.

I started by giving my blog a different name. The titles I used before were too official, too limiting, too school-like. They were institutional and impersonal. This year, the title of my blog is “…looking at things for a long time.” It comes from a quote by Vincent Van Gogh, which, in its entirety, reads: “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.” I chose it because I feel that it represents who I am as a person and a teacher. I chose it because I believe that the habit Van Gogh recommends in this quote is something that I want my students to develop as well. I want them to be critical, attentive readers and thinkers. I want them to take the time to achieve that “deeper understanding.”

I also chose an avatar. I chose the picture of the fern globe suspended above the Civic Square in Wellington, New Zealand that I took last year (almost exactly a year ago) while participating in the FLNW unconference. It represents one of the most inspiring experiences in my life as an educator and researcher. It also, as a globe, represents unity and peace - values that are important to me as a human being and educator.

In addition to using an avatar, I also used the “About Me” feature of my blog to post a paragraph that explains my reasons for choosing the title and the avatar. My students need to know the reasons behind these decisions - they will provide them with an important glimpse into my personality. They will help them see me as more than just their Language Arts teacher.

The “About Me” page of my blog also contains two quotes that represent my views on writing:

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
- Thomas Mann

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.”
- John Ruskin

I also uploaded my own background image to further personalize my blog. It is no longer just a virtual class bulletin board. It’s becoming a place that reflects the values and interests of its owner:

Of course, these visual changes, while important, are not sufficient to transform my blog into a personal online space. Blogs, after all, are defined by writing, and not merely their appearance. So, this morning, I posted my first personal entry. I wrote about an article on the recent protests in Myanmar and commented on the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. I also linked to a call to action video recorded by Jim Carrey. The post has little to do with what we are currently studying in class. I wrote about it because it moved me as a human being. I posted it on my personal blog in the class blogosphere because I want my students to understand who I am as a human being. Why? Mostly because that human being will walk into their classroom tomorrow. If we are to be a community of learners, we need to know each other as individuals, not people who, for six hours every day, play assigned roles.

In other words, I don’t believe teachers should engage in self-censorship. If we do, then our students end up interacting with an automaton, an actor performing a role. Our schools, administrators, and classrooms cannot demand that the richness that makes us human be stripped down because the students are only fourteen, for example, and should not read about human rights abuses, or because time in class should be used only to study the curriculum.

Tomorrow, I will post an entry about a book I started reading last week. It is entitled 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa. It does not relate to our grade eight curriculum. It does, however, reflect my interest in social justice and I will blog about it every time I finish a chapter or two because that is how I learn, that is how I interact with things that I find important. So, I’m beginning to use my blog to define myself as more than a classroom teacher. Mr. Glogowski, the teacher, is an important part of my life, but it should not exclude other aspects of what makes me who I am.

So, fairly soon, my students will see that I am more than my role as a Language Arts teacher suggests. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in social justice, foreign affairs, and human rights. They will see that I am a teacher who is also interested in photography and who collects old books and maps. They will get many glimpses into my life. I hope that they will understand that what makes a community is a network of human beings who have the freedom to be who they truly are and whose richness enhances the value of the community they inhabit.

If education is essentially a social process, then the teacher needs to be part of the learning community, not only as its facilitator but also as one of its members. When students are part of a learning community, a blog titled “Mr.Glogowski’s Blog” will stick out and suggest that the community is really a school-sanctioned place where Mr. Glogowski presides because he has already learned all there is to know about his subject. I do not know all there is to know. I use Web 2.0 to expand my knowledge and to engage in meaning-making. I want to be connected to the class community as a learner. I want my students to see how I engage in negotiating meaning.

I have taken the steps I described above because I believe that a teacher’s blog needs to be a personal space. It needs to be a place where I become visible as an individual and where my experiences - joys, disappointments, struggles, successes, moments of inspiration and epiphany - are shared with the community. It needs to be a place of authentic personal attempts at meaning-making, a place where I engage as Konrad Glogowski and not only as Mr.Glogowski, the content expert.

In her preface to Teaching Community, bell hooks argues that her book “offers practical wisdom about what we do and can continue to do to make the classroom a place that is life-sustaining and mind-expanding, a place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work in partnership.” There can be no true partnership in a classroom where the teacher can hide behind an adopted persona while students are encouraged to be individual learners and bloggers. We cannot expect students to engage as individuals, to blog as human beings, to share their experiences, passions, interests, and struggles if, as teachers, we are not willing to do the same.

And so, my inspiration for the coming weeks comes from Teaching to Transgress where bell hooks states:

When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging others to take risks. Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive. In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share. When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, linking confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our understanding of academic material. But most professors must practice being vulnerable in the classroom, being wholly present in mind, body, and spirit.

The title of my presentation comes from a concept devised by an American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg. My research on his work led me to an organization called Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating public spaces and communities. Their diagram of the key attributes of great public spaces inspired me to try to relate their work to my experiences online.

Over the years, I have noticed that the online community that I build with my grade eight students every year often resembles a third place. I decided to investigate what contributes to this recurring development. I discovered that starting with the right foundations, ensuring that certain features and freedoms are in place before learning begins, can have a strong impact on the development of a classroom community and its potential movement away from what Oldenburg calls “second place” (a place of work) and towards a third place - an informal meeting place that can facilitate and support creative interaction.

This presentation is my attempt to explain how the right foundations can contribute to the emergence of a community that displays at least some characteristics of a third place.

(If you’re interested in the concept of third places, I highly recommend Teemu Arina’s presentation, Serendipity 2.0: Missing Third Places of Learning.)

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.

• The sheer amount of data that I’m working with is overwhelming.
• The way I organized the chapter is not very effective.
• There are some truly important aspects of the research that deserve to be more prominently discussed.

I have been struggling with this chapter for months mostly because I find it very difficult to exclude data and narrow the chapter down to a more manageable size. The reason why it’s so difficult is because I was involved in my study as a teacher-researcher, as both a researcher and a participant. As a result, I find myself emotionally attached to a lot of work that my students wrote during the course of the study. Being selective is therefore very difficult.

One of the things that my thesis committee observed about the chapter is that it focuses on three different aspects of the study: writing, reading, and community-building. These three strands, they suggested, need to be more prominently highlighted in the chapter. Together, we decided that I should address each one of these strands separately.

So, this morning, I sat down and, using three different markers, highlighted chunks of the chapter that relate to writing, reading, and community-building. It quickly became clear that an online blogosphere that I created with my students for the purposes of my study is a place where writing and reading are closely intertwined. In fact, the study shows that reading leads to better writing (more expressive, narrative, and personal) and, gradually, to an increasing sense of belonging and community. My students created their own networks by interacting with their peers, by reading and commenting on their work. The ones who benefited most from being part of the class blogosphere were the ones whose posts were based on reading - on specific texts (online articles, own research, other blogs, other comments).

Of course, I knew about this before I sat down this morning to try to re-organize my chapter. But it was the experience of having to separate writing and reading that really made me understand how closely related the two strands are. When we think of blogging, we think primarily of writing. That’s why I am sure that there are now many classrooms all over the world where student blogs are reduced to mere writing journals.

While our online environment was based (seemingly) on writing, its development as a community depended to a large extent on reading. The community began to develop only when the students (and I) started to read and thoughtfully comment on each other’s work or other texts that they had read.

So, how do I present this in a coherent, linear fashion that is expected from a doctoral thesis? I am tempted to suggest a kind of trajectory which shows that community-building was based on text-based interactions or - to use a simpler term - conversations. The best writers were not those who practiced their craft in solitude but those who engaged with their peers and other texts in the class blogosphere and beyond. This kind of informal learning, a series of ever-expanding informal interactions, was at the centre of their activity in my classroom and led to the development of solid writing skills. Their writing became connective because it was based upon thoughtful and critical interactions with texts. The students became what David Warlick recently referred to as “amplifiers” of each other’s ideas. Their interactions with and about each other’s work added value to individual contributions and blogs.

All writing was therefore dialogical in the sense that it emerged from a multitude of texts, a choir of voices. As Bakhtin claims, “No utterance in general can be attributed to the speaker exclusively.” Every blog entry, every text, was “the product of the whole complex social situation in which it has occurred” (qtd. in Todorov, 1984, 30). Most of the examples of great writing within the blogosphere resulted from interactions with other texts and other bloggers. Conversations fueled writing, and writing, in turn, fueled more conversations until all entries became intertextual and, as Bakhtin claims, there was “nothing individual in what the individual expresses” (qtd. in Todorov, 1984, 43). In other words, blogs, as Jeff Utecht explains, are not really about writing. They’re about conversations: “the power of blogs is not in the writing, it is in the thoughts, the comments, and the conversation that they can start, sustain, and take into a million different directions.” (I’ve written about this before: here and here).

How do I discuss writing, reading, and community-building as three separate strands? For the sake of clarity and organization, I need to address them separately. I want to. The chapter needs to coherently and succinctly convey what occurred in the class blogosphere. The challenge, of course, is that I am attempting to discuss and analyze in a linear fashion the kind of environment and process that does not lend itself to a linear view. Our class blogosphere, like any online environment, was a many-dimensional sphere of connections and correspondences. Presenting this “complex social situation” on paper as if it were a simple timeline is challenging to say the least.

_______________________
Notes:

Todorov, T., (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

- John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938.

“Can a Student Get Up and Leave?”

In September 2006, I found myself, along with a group of inspiring educators on Waiheke Island, just north of Auckland, New Zealand. One morning, after a breakfast on a sun-drenched patio of the Hekerua Lodge, we started discussing what is now often referred to as School 2.0. We talked about the use of cell phones and video games. We talked about giving every student the freedom to learn with any tool or technology that he or she is most comfortable with.

I played the devil’s advocate and argued that we cannot have classrooms filled with individuals who learn in any way they please. What about students who need structure?, I asked. What about those with ADHD? How can such an environment be conducive to learning? Is it responsible to give nine-year-olds, for example, the freedom to play video games? Isn’t it my responsibility as a teacher to engage learners in learning? If we’re at school, then those video games or cellphones are likely to be disruptive, aren’t they? A classroom is a community, I argued, we need rules.

Sean, Leigh, and Alex argued that in our existing classrooms, teachers often present themselves as authoritarian guides and experts, often limiting the use of tools, such as games or cellphones, that have the potential to help our students learn. Today’s classrooms, in other words, are too restrictive and the role of the teacher is based on control, regardless of how passionate and engaging that teacher is.

It was at precisely that moment that Stephen asked,

“In your classroom, can a student get up and leave?”

Of course, he knew the answer. I did too. We all did.

The recent discussion about School 2.0 reminded me of Stephen’s question. The point here is that in a traditional classroom, the student cannot leave, at least not without facing pretty grim consequences. Whenever I think of School 2.0, I think of what it would feel like to know that every one of my students, regardless of their age, had the freedom to get up and leave. No consequences.

“A Positive and Constructive Development of Purposes”

I enjoy reading the School 2.0 manifestos. They offer a glimpse into a world where teachers are free to be passionate and engaging, where students really want to learn, and where the restrictive policies of our current world do not exist. Initially, I also wanted to add my thoughts to the School 2.0 Wiki. I decided not to because manifestos alone are not going to help me transform my professional practice so that it is better suited to help today’s young learners. I have a lot of respect for all the educators who posted their thoughts, but I also know that this approach is not going to work for me.

I prefer to avoid slogans. They are often mere reactionary measures aimed against the status quo. Overtime, they tend to lose substance. I’m afraid the slogans of School 2.0 will only reinforce yet another “ism” or be perceived as yet another panacea for our contemporary educational woes. Many educators will become convinced of its supposed innate value, but most will be unable to explain how to effectively use this new “2.0″ approach in the classroom. Instead, we will continue to hear and read simplistic slogans that trivialize the complexity and challenge of teaching in our new electronically reconfigured environment. Remember what happens to Old Major’s beautiful utopian ideals that he explains with such passion and conviction at the beginning of Orwell’s Animal Farm? Yes, they become reduced to “Four legs good, two legs bad” - a slogan repeated mindlessly by the dim-witted sheep on the farm. It reminds me of a time not long ago when, walking down a hallway at an educational conference, I overheard one attendee instruct her colleague: “Well, you really need a wiki for your class!” Is this what our complex and challenging times are being reduced to? A wiki for every classroom?

John Dewey reminds us in his preface to Experience and Education that:

any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.

and

the problems are not even recognized, to say nothing of being solved, when it is assumed that it suffices to reject the ideas and practices of the old education and then go to the opposite extreme (Dewey, 1998).

I’m not really interested in stating how my classroom today should be different from the classroom where I was taught twenty-five years ago. I liked that classroom. I liked many of my teachers. They were strict and told me to ask for permission every time I wanted to leave my seat, even if it was only to sharpen my pencil. At the same time, they taught me many valuable and important skills that I used later on to pursue my goals in life. They did not have wikis, or podcasts, or blogs and yet they still managed to help me get to where I wanted to be. The teachers I liked, respected, and learned from possessed one important skill: they knew how to talk to me as an individual.

So, I am not interested in defining myself in contrast to School 1.0. What I’m really interested in is what I am going to do tomorrow, in class. What are the needs that I’m facing - my own and those of my students. Here and now. What are the problems? Finally, what are the possibilities? It’s nice to talk about passion, participation, openness, and inquiry, for example, but what if you’re told to teach Macbeth to a group of thirty sixteen-year-olds? What do all these slogans mean then, in practice? What, in other words, am I going to do to make myself relevant in the lives of my students? How can I assist them in learning more and getting closer to where they want to go? We need some tangible ideas and modes of practice based on a solid understanding of how and why our students want to access learning. So, let’s not proceed by “reaction against what has been current in education” and adopt instead “a positive and constructive development of purposes, methods, and subject-matter on the foundation of a theory of experience and its educational potentialities” (Dewey, 1998).

“To Make Learning Available”

In order to adopt Stephen’s proposed approach, which is “to make learning available, in whatever form is desired and appropriate, to assist students as they do what they choose to do,” we need to start thinking about ourselves, our presence in our schools and our classrooms. What if our students had the freedom to get up and leave? Would openness, participation, and inquiry keep them in our classrooms? Would a wiki or a podcast? Only if it was their own wiki or their own podcast.

That’s why, I believe that education today needs a renewed approach to professional development and a closer look at how we can address “the powers and purposes” of our students. Twenty-five years ago, my teachers knew how to help me succeed. Based on what the world was like back then, they had developed their own practice. Based on what the world is like now, I need to develop my own. I’m not going to fantasize about schools without classrooms, schedules, or carefully compartmentalized subjects. I would love to see that in my lifetime, but I’m choosing to be realistic. Chances are, those things will remain firmly entrenched in our societies for a very long time. What I need now is an understanding of what I need to do tomorrow to ensure that my students can access learning in whatever form and whatever way they find most relevant.

“Passion-Based Conversations”

When I wrote about passion-based learning, I wanted to show that teachers need to redefine themselves as individuals and not automatons that focus on outcomes and expectations. I am passionate about human rights. I spend a lot of my own time reading about human rights and human rights abuses around the world. What I do in my classroom, how I do it, and who I am as a teacher is based to a large extent on my passion for social justice.

So what?

Well, if I have a student in my class who is passionate about Medieval Europe, for example, he will not be too happy in my classroom. My ability to sustain a conversation with him about that topic would be rather limited. But what’s stopping me from helping him connect with a teacher and a classroom in Leeds where the topics he cares about are studied and where the teacher is just as passionate about Medieval Europe as I am about human rights? What’s stopping that teacher in Leeds from telling some of her students “Get in touch with this teacher in Ontario. You can have a great conversation about Darfur”? What’s stopping us? Most teachers would say: assessment and evaluation, state-defined curriculum expectations, reporting, etc.. But let’s keep in mind that just because some of our students are building their own networks by communicating with experts from around the world does not mean that in our classrooms we cannot assist them in becoming stronger writers, or help them improve their reading comprehension or research skills. We can still have meaningful conversations about their work. These students can even use their own networks and their conversations with content experts located elsewhere to immeasurably enrich their own classrooms.

We need to start offering what James Shimabukuro calls “flexible schedules and virtual learning opportunities that defy time and space constraints.” These opportunities “will be defined by function, purpose, and membership rather than temporal, physical, or geographical boundaries.” They will allow us to become advisers “skilled in working with students and motivating them to discover the learning styles and goals that are best suited to their interests.” In other words, we need to give students the freedom to access learning. Then, we need to listen and assist.

So, what do I do tomorrow, in my classroom, to assist my students? I think we all need to learn how to have conversations with people who want to learn. How do we effectively assist students in learning and not thrust that learning upon them? I admit that this may sound simplistic to those of us who have been using web 2.0 technologies in our classrooms for some time, but I think we still need to address the fact that many of us are really not engaged in conversations with our students. Many of us are proud of the fact that we create blogging communities, use wikis, or help students connect with their peers from around the world. We are proud that our students seem engaged by these environments. Let’s not forget, however, that quite often the students participate because participate they must - they are at school, after all, in somebody’s class.

We need to learn how to sustain conversations that are initiated by the students themselves, not conversations that emerge from the official Ministry documents or our own interests and beliefs. I think that passion-based learning will help, but I also know that there is much more that I can do. It seems to me that this new approach will require that we revisit Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. Perhaps we could refine the notion of “instructional conversation” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991) where the teacher is involved in “assisted performance.” This approach is not perfect but I think it gives us a good place to start: “To truly teach, one must converse; to truly converse is to teach” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991).

And yet, I really don’t see that passion around me. My colleagues seem to be concerned with outcomes and expectations, not the passion that they can awaken in their students. Many K-12 students also seem to be going through the motions and “playing school.” Yes - I know - there are teachers who engage students by giving them opportunities to make podcasts or use their blogs to connect with peers from all around the globe. I’m one of those teachers. However, I think it’s time to acknowledge that just because students make podcasts or contribute to blogs does not mean that they have become passionate about the topic they’re researching. If a teacher says, “I’d like you to create a podcast to share your work,” students will do it. In fact, they will even show a lot of enthusiasm because the project takes them out of their seats and often even out of their classroom. Are they really working on something that they are passionate about? Rarely.

So, what interests me is how educators can help young people (or anyone, for that matter) find and pursue their passion?

It certainly isn’t a new question. Good educators have always been able to ignite that spark in their students. Today, however, we tend to think that using online tools that appeal to young people will automatically ensure their engagement. Genuine passion cannot be ignited with a podcast or a blog. Instead, we need to give our students the freedom to learn and engage with ideas that they find relevant and important. I think it begins with stepping out of what Will today referred to as the “Comfort Zone of Content.” It begins, it seems to me, when the teacher becomes a learner and replaces the static curriculum documents with inquiry, conversation, knowledge-building, and personal networks.

In order to make my students passionate about their classroom work, I need to accept the fact that not everyone will become passionate about the course content that I have so meticulously prepared. Not everyone cares about Macbeth, World War II, or Animal Farm. I can spend inordinate amounts of time trying to make that content appeal to my students. I can try to make it interesting. Will they enjoy making a podcast on the life of William Shakespeare? Of course they will. Will they enjoy putting their own thoughts on Lady Macbeth on their own blog where they can receive comments and exchange views with other classmates? Yes, they will. The very nature of these activities makes them appealing. The very fact that they allow students to get out of their seats and traditional roles will make students enthusiastic and engaged. But what happens after the marks have been assigned? What happens after they graduate or move on to take yet another carefully compartmentalized course on literature or European history? Will they continue to produce podcasts? Will they continue to post blog entries?

Maybe I’m oversimplifying things here but, let’s face it, if all the theory and technology that we have at our disposal amount, in practical terms, to having students record an mp3 file, blog for a couple of weeks, or connect with other students to exchange ideas about a fictional character or their home province, then sooner or later these new tools and approaches will acquire the status of mere classroom work. They will become as uninviting as “chalk and talk” is today. It seems to me that we are often focusing on technology for the sake of focusing on technology. Are we helping students find ideas that they are passionate about? Is producing a podcast with my classmates going to make me care about whatever it is that we’re working on? It will certainly engage me. The novelty will be appealing. But not for long.

If I am really serious about helping my students find ideas and topics they are passionate about, I need to forget about my course content and step outside that “comfort zone of content.” What I have prepared, what I deem pedagogically sound, may be wonderful but, to my students, it will always be mere course content, something one learns in order to “do well” - a hoop that every student needs to jump through and certainly not something that one wants to come back to and keep exploring.

As an educator, I need to step outside my “comfort zone of content” by sharing my own self: things that I myself am passionate about. I need to stop peddling content and show that I am a learner too.

So, in April, when we begin our unit on The Diary of Anne Frank, I am going to start by explaining my own personal reasons for choosing that book. Instead of inundating my students with biographies, historical facts, and supplemental readings, I will tell them my own story and explain why I am passionate about this topic.

• I will tell them how and why I became passionate about the Holocaust, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and social justice.
• I will tell them that it has a lot to do with my background and a month-long trip to Japan where my wife and I decided to travel to Hiroshima and then Nagasaki.
• I will tell them and show them what we saw.
• I will share notes from my journal and the books I bought at the museums.
• I will tell them that my grandfather fought in the Polish resistance during World War II.
• I will tell them that, after the war, the communist regime didn’t always make his life easy.
• I will show them Soviet-approved history textbooks that I studied from in grade six, in a Polish classroom.
• I will explain what I had to unlearn.
• I will tell them about the promise that I made to myself to teach young people about the atrocities of war and the importance of protecting human rights.
• I will tell them that my contribution to our class will be in the form of one text, The Diary of Anne Frank, and that I encourage them to bring in and create their own texts.
• I will ask them to look for a topic that they care about.
• I will show them my texts (print and electronic) on human rights that I’ve collected over the years.
• I will show them my RSS feeds and Google Alerts.
• I will show them my delicious bookmarks.
• I will show them my flickr account.
• I will show them a resource that I’m creating for teachers and students to help them learn more about human rights.
• I will show them the various tools that I will use to expand my own knowledge.
• I will show them that knowledge is an active process.
• I will show them my network.
• I will tell them that I am not an expert and that there are many things that I still need to learn.
• I will tell them that we can create an environment where learning can be deeply personal.
• I will invite them to create their own texts and build their own networks.
• I will encourage them to find experts and make them part of their networks.
• I will tell them that our texts will be interconnected not just because they will all be online but because those who are passionate about their ideas understand the importance of sharing their thoughts and discoveries.
• I will tell my students that I hope to learn from and with them.

Right after I explained how they can register and create their own usernames and passwords, I was asked the following:

Does that mean that anybody can register?

Can people find our poems on Google?

Can you stop people from creating accounts?

When I mentioned that we will also film poetry discussions, post them on a wiki, and have students recite their poems to create podcasts, the questions, once again, were primarily about privacy:

Can other people find this?

What if someone puts it on YouTube?

Can people find out who we are and where the school is?

They seemed very relieved when I explained that, due to the school’s privacy policies, the site is password protected and that no outsiders will be able to access their work.

Then, while driving home, I thought: “How sad! This would be a great opportunity for all of them to share their talents with the rest of the world (well, anyone who would be willing to read or listen) and, instead, they see it as a potential threat and are very happy with what I consider to be a very restrictive privacy policy! Why?”

I want to emphasize that they are all very excited about this project. They couldn’t wait to create their accounts and start posting their work and comments. I know that I will see many constructive discussions online about writing and about poetry. Yet, I keep thinking about their initial response to putting their work online. What caused it? Why are they so preoccupied with privacy? Where are all these questions coming from?

My guess is that a lot of it has filtered down to them from the media or from their parents. After all, they have probably heard many stories about people their age being targeted by online predators. I also think that the reason they are concerned about privacy is because they will be posting their creative work, some of which at least is likely to be quite personal.

Their insistence on privacy, while surprising, is not likely to have any effect on our online community, at least not initially. After all, they do not need to have their writing available to the whole wide world in order to develop into a community and become stronger, more confident writers. However, having used blogging communities with middle school students for the past three years, I know that these grade seven students will eventually want to venture outside their community. I know that they will want to start creating their own networks - a task which can be accomplished only if their online presence is not part of some walled garden, regardless of how nurturing that garden is. I’m beginning to think that walled gardens are not a bad strategy in elementary schools and that, at least initially, young learners do need a safe place in which to share their ideas and interact with texts. However, as students begin to exhibit more and more interest in creating their own connections and in building networks, we need to have the flexibility to remove the walls and encourage students to set up their own places outside of officially sanctioned school blogs or wikis.

So, while the official school policy on privacy is not a problem now, it is likely to be an obstacle in the future. I cannot continue to confine the students to our walled garden because, regardless of how supportive and effective it is now, it will eventually become stifling. Right now, the sense of privacy that the community affords seems to be something that the students really want. However, I’m pretty sure that within a year or so, most of them will be ready to share their work online and will not want to limit themselves to our classroom community.

I am hoping that the current project, with an acclaimed writer and a group of grade nine students, will foster a sense of community, a sense of belonging. I hope that once the students get used to this they will want to share their work, no matter how personal and intimate. They will have learned that sharing their voice leads to empowerment, and that privacy, the way the media and many adults understand it, is the equivalent of staying at home and reading one’s poetry out loud in an empty room. The interactions they will experience online in our walled garden community will lead them to experience connective knowledge. After that, they will become interested in forming their own networks. What they see now, it seems to me, is a chaotic, intimidating online world. They have not yet had a chance to assert themselves in it. They have not yet experienced the joy that comes from making connections. I hope that the current experience will help them see how to form their own order from the seemingly disparate sources. They will inevitably form bonds with some of their classmates and remain fairly indifferent to others. They will learn that they can pick and choose their own path through the community. Soon after, they will understand that meaning can emerge from the chaos of voices. That is when they will begin to look for voices outside of their walled garden and that is when the walls will have to collapse. Otherwise, they will continue to stifle what Clarence Fisher recently called “the potential for network formation” which allows students to develop as learners and active citizens:

People who are willing to open the potential for network formation up, will find that students will grow and mature in their information access, organization, and comprehension skills. Certainly unintended consequences will arise, but they will very, very rarely be negative. These consequences are the ones which will allow students to grow and flourish as information prosumers and to become active citizens.

The walls in our community will need to be, as Clarence says, gradually thinned out as “students learn to push out and work with others while still retaining the safety of a local group.”

In other words, they need the freedom to define their own online spaces. The conversations they engage in should not tie them to a specific, school sanctioned place. George Siemens is right:

The separation of space from dialogue allows each individual to form the connections they find of interest. The formation of their network results in the creation of their own space - a space not held or controlled by others. I fully expect that we will start to see a much more pronounced demarcation between the “come talk us in our space” mindset and the “I’m here talking in my own space” mindset.

What my students need right now is modeling, coaching, and scaffolding. Currently, privacy is a support mechanism that, for whatever reason, the students find comforting and reassuring. Gradually, the need for it will be replaced by the need to have the freedom to create their own networks. Gradually, their conversations, their interest in creating their own networks will outgrow the space that the school provides for them now. When that happens, the walls will need to come tumbling down. As their individual voices and their sense of empowerment and independence continue to grow, the walls around them need to gradually disappear. If they don’t, the students will view their online community with the same indifference that they now feel towards traditional classrooms where they are expected to sit and listen.

All five of these students were integral parts of our class blogging community last year, and I am not surprised that they chose to start their own blogs. Some of them started their own blogs even before they finished grade eight. I’m glad that writing continues to play an important role in their lives. Some of them post poetry, some post quick observations, some write short creative pieces. In other words, they are all experimenting with words. I hope that they will continue to blog all throughout high school. Their work inspires me to keep learning and challenging myself to create a classroom that empowers students and helps them see themselves as writers.

However, while I’m glad that they have a place where they can continue to engage with language, I also lament the fact that this activity is not taking place inside my current grade eight community. The current grade eight blogging community does not contain any of the work done by my former students last year. This is because, when my former students graduated in June, I deleted all of their blogs. It seemed to me that this year’s class needed its own space, unencumbered by the work of the graduating class. Now I realize that their voices are gone and my current students are writing in a community that has no history.

Against Fragmentation

Imagine how much my current grade eight students would benefit from having some of my former students and the content they produced last year inside the same class community. Imagine how much they would benefit by writing and reading in an online place already populated by the work of last year’s grade eights. Imagine the conversations that would develop, especially if last year’s students were still part of the community, even though they’ve moved on to high school.

I used to think that when a new class begins to form its own community, the students should be given an empty space where they can be free to write themselves into existence, develop their own space in a way that reflects their own interests, talents, and personalities. Now, having used blogging with three different groups over the past three years, I’m beginning to understand that every September my new grade eight students enter a space that is empty and uninspiring. What’s worse, when they finally manage to grow as a community, when they manage to define themselves as individual writers functioning within a larger classroom discourse, when the texts they produce begin to form a history of meaningful engagement with ideas, June comes along, the students graduate and the community ceases to exist. They all move on and I happily purge our online space of all their work.

I have been using blogging communities in my grade eight Language Arts classes for the past three years and only now am beginning to realize how important it is for a community to continue to grow, despite the segmentation into grades, timetables, or subjects imposed by the education system.

When students enter a community that has been in existence for a year or more, they can still make it their own and write in a way that is true to who they are. In addition to having that freedom, they also enter a context, a stream of conversations that they can write themselves into. They have texts and ideas that they can interact with. In fact, it is the presence of that sense of history, or “historical sense” as T.S. Eliot used to call it, that makes them aware of the timeless and the temporal, of the context that they’re entering and the world which they presently occupy. So, while they can use their own blog to assert their views and explore various topics, they also have to acknowledge the presence of other voices which already inhabit their community. They can benefit from “the thinking, decision making, and filtering habits of others” - not just those who presently occupy the space with them but also former students who may or may not be still present in the community. Students writing about social injustice in Canada, for example, would be able to study not just the topic itself but also how that topic was addressed by grade eight students last year. What’s more, if the students from last year remain within the community, they can keep learning and writing together, exchanging ideas and commenting on each other’s work. As T.S. Eliot argues in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.”

Fragmented and Temporary

However, I was never able to experience this sense of growing community because, like most teachers, I have been programmed to divide learning into yearly or monthly episodes. The blogging community begins in September, it grows until June, and then gets deleted because September will bring another batch of students and another community. Unfortunately, this is how institutions and teachers structure learning. Math between 9:00 and 10:00, grade eight from September till June. Students log on, interact with texts and each other, develop as writers, contribute to the growth of their community and then, once the school year is over, their work gets deleted and reduced to a single grade. We all know the story. Perhaps there are teachers out there somewhere who understand that communities of learners need to be perennial gardens, teachers who make it possible for their graduates to stick around and keep contributing even after they graduate or finish their course. I have not been very good at sustaining learning communities over time and have given in to the fragmentation of learning that currently pervades education. The exciting thing is that the technology we now have at our disposal can help us change the grim fragmented reality of schooling and transform it into an inspiring, ongoing process of lifelong learning. Online communities do not have to be governed by school timetables and annual graduation cycles. They can persist as ecosystems where participants, by reading and discussing certain texts while ignoring others, provide the necessary and natural conditions for their survival.

Last June, ten of my former students asked to remain part of the community. They had grown so attached to their class blogging community that they asked me not to shut it down and to give them access to the new community that they knew I would be building with my new grade eights in September. I was thrilled that they wanted to remain in the community. I knew that as grade nine students, having already gone through the grade eight programme, they would greatly enhance the experience for their younger friends.

And yet, I chose to shut down the community and restrict access to the new one. For the past three years, in fact, I have been creating communities only to dismantle them every June. Yes, I have been blindly following the annual cycle of fragmented learning, but my decision was also dictated by institutional constraints. Since my students participated in my doctoral research study, I was obligated to follow the restrictions imposed upon me by the University of Toronto’s Research Ethics Committee. I was not allowed to make the blogging communities or anything contained therein available to the general public, not even to former student participants. Yes, former students, according to the Ethics Committee, are outsiders.

A Sense of History

I wish I had ignored all those policies. My current class could use some additional motivation from my former students. I now believe, having blogged with three different groups of students, that communities need a sense of history. That’s why the best stuff that happens in the communities I build every year with my grade eight students happens in April and May. It is only after months of writing and reading together that the sense of community becomes tangible and begins to have an impact on its participants. That’s why, last year, my students said to me at the end of June that they did not want to leave the community. They wanted their community to persist despite the fact that they themselves were graduating. They were leaving the school, leaving the building, but saw their community as a place that did not need to be abandoned just because they were moving on to high school. In fact, the community had acquired meaning because it contained work that they had been contributing all year. It contained some of their best work, some of the best discussions that they ever engaged in. When they asked to remain part of the grade eight blogosphere they were telling me that true online communities cannot be limited by the duration of the course. They need to grow beyond those artificial limitations.

Towards a Perennial Garden

Limited by institutional restrictions and convinced that every class needs to start with a blank slate, I chose not to allow my former students to continue as members of the online community even though their presence would have given my new students a community with a sense of history. So, my new grade eight students are now building a new community. I know that, much like all the grade eight students that preceded them, they will develop their own history. This time, however, when the students graduate in June, the community, for the first time in years, will not be purged. Even if the students do not show any interest in staying online, I will leave the content that they will have generated for the next group to see and interact with. I want that next group to enter a community that is already pervaded by voices. I do not want them to enter an empty online space that they will have to define from scratch. Instead, they will enter a space that has a deep sense of history. It will have a strong impact on their own sense of community and their attempts to continue to build that community for themselves. I know that instead of being intimidated by what had gone on before, they will be influenced and inspired by the work of their predecessors.

I feel that like an architect or an engineer, I have been too preoccupied with the act of building communities and have not paid as much attention to sustaining them and giving them the nourishment they need to grow. Clay Shirky says that “To create an environment conducive to real community, you will have to operate more like a gardener than an architect.” I have been an architect for too long. Now, I will be a gardener.

]]> http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2007/01/03/i-will-be-a-gardener/feed/ http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2006/11/22/students-reflect-on-group-work/ http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2006/11/22/students-reflect-on-group-work/#comments Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:22:32 +0000 Konrad Glogowski http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2006/11/22/students-reflect-on-group-work/ When I posted my two entries on group work some time ago, I had no idea that this issue would follow me around for such a long time. It seems that wherever I turn, someone or something reminds me of advantages or disadvantages of group work. I’m not complaining - these are excellent opportunities for further reflection.

A couple of days ago, for example, I received a memo issued by administration at my school in order to “make sure that everyone is on the same page” and ensure that there is consistency on some key curriculum and administrative matters. The memo addresses study hall, homework, student absenteeism, and group work. In short, some pretty mundane and uninspiring issues. The section on group work, however, caught my attention:

Please remember to assign and vary the partners in group work. Through speaking with parents and children, we have found that partner and group work is a very sensitive issue. To use their words, some students feel that they are “left out,” “stuck with,” or “looked past” during group work. Many of these kids have other social stresses to deal with. Can we all please make every effort to alleviate this stress during class time?

Wait. There’s more. Last week, I received an e-mail from Jessica, my former student. She graduated in June and is now attending high school. Jessica was one of the participants in my doctoral research study. She found this blog a couple of months ago and has been visiting it regularly. In her e-mail, she offered her own response to my recent entry on groups:

Hey Mr. G!

[...] I am reading Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden right now. GREAT book, by the way.

I was thinking, yesterday, about what you wrote on Sunday about groups in class. Right now, I am working on a project with three of my classmates in English. we are reading a short story, analyzing it and making a presentation to the class about that the themes are and things like that. I have found so far, that the kids I am working with are, to be frank, taking over, but total slackers, if that makes sense. The three of them tell each other what to do and how to do it, but none of them want to take charge and do the work - they just want to tell people what to do. So yesterday, I said to them that they should take some responsibility and do some work themselves and not end up dumping it all on me. I got, to my surprise, a very understanding answer. They agreed that it was unfair to argue with each other and end up giving me the work, and that they will go home this weekend and finish their different parts of the presentation. This is exactly what you said in They Begin To Build Bridges. In some cases, there are kids who are dominant, but not necessarily more competent than the others who take control and demand that they have it their way. Other times, it’s the kids who are dominant AND more competent than the others who messes it up for the whole group. It ends up being that one person who does the project and the others get credit for it, but I know teacher;s aren’t stupid. You even said yourself last year that you can tell when it’s just one person’s work.

[...]

Jessica

In addition, Eric MacKnight e-mailed me some time ago to tell me that he had discussed my entry on group work with his students and encouraged them to respond. I read all their entries and was impressed by how well they articulated their thoughts. Their responses show a wide range of opinions. Some argue that group work has a very positive impact on all group members. Others contend that working in groups is alienating and ineffective.

All of these texts once again led me to a realization that I prefer communities where everyone can contribute while retaining their own sense of individuality and independence. In such communities or networks, individual learners can still link up if they choose to and can achieve the goal of what Gordon Wells and Mari Haneda (.pdf) call “purposefully knowing together.”

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