A letter to my students

I am taking a course this semester in which one of the assignments is to write "a letter to your students."  This letter should explain to my future students why they need to know what I teach and why the subject is important -- even essential -- for them to learn.

I am grateful for this opportunity. When I first started teaching in Texas almost 20 years ago, I wrote an introductory letter to my 9th and 10th grade English students. In those early letters, I seem to recall focusing on what we were going to study and learn, kind of like a "friendly" syllabus. 

My orientation to teaching and learning has radically shifted in the last several years. I now spend more time thinking about how we teach and learn in the language arts, and I wanted this open letter to my future students to convey that message. 

For starters, I decided to publish my letter as a blog post and as a podcast (embedded below), with the hope of stretching readers' (my future students') conceptions of reading and writing in the 21st century.

(I was partly inspired by the work of Leigh A. Hall around reader/writer identities in a secondary school context.  Hall's commentary on this subject appears in the February 2012 edition of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.)

Dear Students,

I look forward to working with you this year, and I expect to learn a lot from you.

I also expect you to learn a lot.

My goal is to enable you along a path toward becoming "truly literate." What does this mean? Does it mean knowing how to read and how to write? Yes, and no. It's reading and writing, and much, much more. Being truly literate means being engaged with reading, comfortable with numerous ways and purposes of writing, and able to hold your own in an intelligent debate with your teacher and peers. 

I expect you to learn more than basic reading and writing skills. In our classroom, you will participate in practices of "high literacy": reading and responding to a variety of texts familiar and new, writing and publishing original texts, discussing in large and small groups, applying knowledge and skills to new situations, and demonstrating mastery of knowledge and skills through a variety of tasks. 

Perhaps most of all, I expect you to identify yourselves as readers and writers, and to recognize the many ways in which you are readers and writers both inside and outside of school. We will work together to define for ourselves what it means to read and to write.

For example, this letter is not printed on paper. It is located in a blog. You may access this letter online, and, if you choose, you may listen to it as a podcast or watch it as a multimedia presentation.  

Is any of this reading? 

To create this letter, I picked up neither pencil nor pen.  No paper was wasted in the production of this letter! Instead, I composed at a keyboard using word processing software to revise, edit, and format my words on a computer screen.  I used built-in tools such as a spelling and grammar checker as well as an online dictionary. 

Is this writing?

Then, I cut and pasted my words into my blog, where I performed additional formatting changes, added hyperlinks, and inserted pictures and graphics. Then, I clicked a button and published my letter. Now, anyone in the world with an Internet connection and browser may read this letter. Even more interesting, anyone in the world reading this letter on a personal computer or mobile device now has the ability to duplicate, disseminate, and share it with others.  The audience -- and that means you -- may react to this letter by publishing comments below. 

But is this really publishing?

There is an old expression: The medium is the message. It means how we communicate our words is as important as, or sometimes more important than, the words themselves. In the case of this letter, the medium is definitely part of my message. I am trying to make a point that the reading and writing processes are greatly improved when we allow them to occur as interactive, collaborative, and social activities. 

You don't need a computer to experience the social aspects of reading and writing, but mobile and digital technologies give us more opportunities to create, collaborate, and communicate quickly, easily, and cheaply. Some people will argue that you -- today's youth -- already use enough digital technologies, and you do so irresponsibly, unethically, and ineffectively.  Thus, we shouldn't have these technologies in school.  

But I can think of no better place than school to stretch the boundaries, while modeling and practicing safe, responsible, and ethical use.

Above all, my goal is for you to take up reading and writing as a set of tools for creating and imagining social spaces where everyone has a voice. When you find and unlock your voice, you can take your place among the ranks of literate citizens and enjoy lifelong engagement with language, words, and ideas.

So, let's get started! Now it's your turn to compose a letter to me and to your classmates.  Choose your favorite communication tool and tell us about what you are reading and writing at home and at school. What kind of reader and writer are you?  What kind of reader and writer do you want to become?

A letter to my students

Reflection on web conferencing and Green Eggs and Ham

I came home from class last night to one sick kid and another kid who wanted Green Eggs and Ham read to her. Luckily, I have a domestic partner (who usually has both kids tucked away in bed asleep when I get home). He took on the tummy ache, while I tackled the umpteenth reading of Dr. Seuss' book.

from ManyEyes

I'm spending too much time with this EP604 stuff because, as I was reading the story aloud, I couldn't help but relate issues of digital tools, collaborative research methods, and alternative forms of representation to Sam's persistent and steadfast pursuit of that curmudgeonly "other" guy. 

Just, "Try them! Try them!"

Thing is, sometimes I am Sam, and sometimes I am that other guy.    

In the days leading up to our demo session in Centra, which was last night, I was feeling a little like the "other." For reasons I hope I made clear in the second paragraph of this post, staying home in my jammies plugged into a router for four hours was not entirely feasible.  So, I packed up and headed off to my lonely, gray, ice-cold cubicle at the College of Education. Fun.

Online, collaborative workspaces scare me a bit. So many things can go wrong. And sure enough, over the course of the evening, my audio seemed not to work, my Internet connection failed, and my ears literally ached under my headset.  I was so tense after four hours of being plugged in, powered up, and logged in.

Minor constraints, I suppose, considering all that we accomplished in the virtual classroom: class surveys with instantaneous feedback, Internet "safaris," break-out and whole group discussion sessions that were nearly -- if not completely -- as effective as face-to-face.  

But the single greatest affordance of web conferencing I observed last night was how it can dissolve geographic and cost barriers that frequently prevent cross-disciplinary interaction and access to outside field experts.  Our guest speaker joined us from hundreds of miles away to provide a visual demonstration of her research process.  She also contributed insights and elaborated on her past experience in transforming research findings into a performative text.  I am pleased the Centra session was recorded because I hope to access it and listen to it again in the near future.  And that's another affordance.

The whole experience last night was a good example of teaching about and through digital tools in a safe, non-threatening way that stretched my thinking and pushed me out of my comfort zone (quite literally). 

The same theme carried over into the readings and examples provided on artistic and visual representations of research findings. To quote Woo (2008), "...[W]e should go ahead and challenge our own parameters to create possibilities that might not have been previously imagined" (p. 327). I realize she is speaking specifically here about winning over "traditionalists" who resist arts-based research, but her sentiment brought me full circle back to the broad mandates posed by authors of earlier articles we've read in EP604. As a student, teacher, and novice researcher I must acknowledge the implications of living and working in a digitally mediated society (Brown, 2002; Garcia, 2009).

Reflection on web conferencing and Green Eggs and Ham

Reflection on transcription in early literacy contexts

Photo by arztsamui at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last night's hands-on work with Transana combined with my recent, background research about transcription have me wondering about my next big project with digital tools: using transcription software to prepare audio data from a Kindergarten literacy study.

  

Per my EP604 instructor's request, I have been doing some reading and reviewing of the literature on transcription, looking for methodological and theoretical insights that might inform my process. How should I approach this transcription job considering the context of the study?

The study in question is designed to assess young children’s incidental literacy learning as a result of exposure to and participation with moving picture books for children, aka "eBooks." Three examiners performed pre- and post-interviews with Kindergartners in which the students' interactions with traditional, print-based picture books were audio recorded. 

The design for this study is modeled after earlier studies performed by Sulzby (1985) and de Jong & Bus (2002, 2004).  So, I began my inquiry by taking a closer look at the methods sections within these articles. I am finding scant theoretical or procedural information provided about transcription, just as Lapadat & Lindsay (1999) asserted.

de Jong & Bus (2002) make no mention of how their transcripts were derived, saying only that they made use of "verbatim transcripts" during coding (p. 148).  However, it is clear from their description of data analysis that the transcripts included children's verbal and nonverbal cues for attending to text (for example, sounding out words as well as finger-point reading). In their 2004 study, the authors simply indicate that "verbatim transcripts" were analyzed (p. 387).  

In both studies, de Jong & Bus videotaped all book-reading sessions with the children.  I can only assume that the videos (and perhaps heavy fieldnotes) were tremendously helpful for fleshing out the transcripts. To me, this suggests broad implications and limitations for the current study in which I am involved, where no video data were collected due to significant IRB hassles.

Next, I checked out the 1985 article in which Sulzby describes findings from two studies that demonstrate a developmental pattern of children's emergent pre-reading skills.  She gives a fairly concrete description of her transcription procedure, even listing the symbols used to code the transcripts to indicate such things as finger-point reading, rise and fall of intonation, and phonetic spellings of attempted words.

Sulzby worked first from audio, then expanded the transcripts based on video and fieldnotes to include "descriptions of non-verbal behaviors coded to book pages and activities" (p. 476). According to Sulzby, the examiners who conducted and recorded the emergent readings were responsible for transcribing the tapes for each session. Each transcript was then checked by two other examiners.

That sounds like an ideal context in which to apply Transana software. Had Sulzby performed her study today, I imagine she and her research assistants would have found the multi-user version of Transana to be very helpful, given their commitment to the use of video and their collaborative process in which the transcripts were "continually checked during various analyses" (p. 476).

As I have no video to work from and very poor fieldnotes, I am continuing with my initial choice of Inqscribe software for purposes of transcribing the Kindergarten eBooks study.

However, I am curious about making more deliberate use of conventional transcription symbols (in addition to the slashes [ // ] I am already using to indicate the children's phonetic pronunciations).  One distinct advantage that Transana offers over Inqscribe is the integration of some basic symbol buttons in the text editor. I should make more concerted effort toward delineating pauses, changes in tone, and other vocal noises. According to Bloom (1993), "Studying language in context, and studying the development of language in the context of other developments in the child, require that we preserve far more than just the spoken word in the record we make of the data we collect" (p. 164).

For that reason alone, I wonder if Transana would not be an overall better choice for any project involving children's voices, regardless of the mode of data collection.

References (I am trying out the drag-and-drop function of Zotero and Mendeley!):

Bloom, L. (1993). Transcription and coding for child language research. In J. A. Edwards & M. D. Lampert (Eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research, 149-166. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

De Jong, M. T., & Bus, A. G. (2002). Quality of book-reading matters for emergent readers: An experiment with the same book in a regular or electronic format. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(1), 145. American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/94/1/145/

De Jong, M. T., & Bus, A. G. (2004). The efficacy of electronic books in fostering kindergarten children’s emergent story understanding. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(4), 378–393. International Reading Association. Retrieved from http://www.reading.org/Library/Retrieve.cfm?D=10.1598/RRQ.39.4.2&F=RRQ-39-4-de_Jong.html

Lapadat, J. C., & Lindsey, A. C. (1999). Transcription in research and practice: From standardization of technique to interpretive positions. Qualitative Inquiry, 5(1), 64-86.

Sulzby, E. (1985). Children’s emergent reading of favorite storybooks: A developmental study. Reading Research Quarterly, 20(4), 458–481. International Reading Association. Retrieved from http://www.reading.org/Library/Retrieve.cfm?D=10.1598/RRQ.20.4.4&F=RRQ-20-4-Sulzby.html

Reflection on transcription in early literacy contexts

More reflections on CAQDAS

A few years ago while working on my master's in Instructional Technology, I was searching for creative uses of the ubiquitous PowerPoint and stumbled upon a column by artist/musician David Byrne in which he described his first encounter with the presentation software.  Byrne hated the application, calling it "limiting, inflexible, and biased." Despite this, Byrne decided to take up the medium anyway, in order to satirize it.

Then something strange happened.

Byrne realized he could make PowerPoint function as a "metaprogram" in which he could organize all his multimedia content into something "beautiful." He wrote, "I could bend the program to my own whim and use it as an artistic agent.... I could make works that were 'about' something, something beyond themselves, and that they could even have emotional resonance."

Guided by his curiosity and artistic vision, Byrne successfully and effectively co-opted an evil business software and turned it into a creative platform.  This idea really appealed to me at the time because we classroom teachers have been doing that sort of thing for a long time (gradebooks in Excel spreadsheets, writing workshops in MsWord).  

I was reminded of Byrne's artwork this week as I completed the EP604 course readings on CAQDAS, several of which made mention of the historical distrust of computers among some qualitative researchers. In their 1996 paper Qualitative Data Analysis: Technologies and Representations, which, interestingly, was published in what had to have been one of the very first digital journals of social science research, Coffey, Holbrook and Atkinson describe a tension between the increasingly diverse methods of contemporary ethnographic research and a trend towards homogeneity imposed by the "computing moment."

A section of Seale's chapter in Doing Qualitative Research poses this question: "Do computers impose a narrowly exclusive approach to the analysis of qualitative data?" (p. 257)

Following this week's readings and then last night's class discussion, I am convinced the answer is "no." The early fears about "orthodoxy" and "homogeneity" are unfounded. It seems that the qualitative researcher, confident of and consistent in her own methodology, can leverage the power of these seemingly positivist tools to do some powerful meaning making (Friese, 2011; Seale, 2010).

As a former public school teacher, I know a little about oppressive orthodoxies. There is an insidious strain of orthodoxy that pervades K-12 education, and it goes by the innocuous name of "best practice." It's actually very odd. Teachers are told, on the one hand, to implement research-based best practices, while, on the other hand, most progressive education reforms focus on making instruction individualized and learner-centered, not scripted and standardized. In other words, what's "best" for one child may not be "best" for another.  The only "best" practice is what works at a given time, in a given context, with a given student.

Now, as a novice qualitative researcher, I am visiting my classmates' blogs, attending software webinars, participating in EP604 class discussions, and thinking about "best practices" again, this time in light of "digital convergence" (Brown). The digital tools, by their very design, are exploding the notion. Rather than impose a singular and "right" way, the tools are to be explored, evaluated, and adapted to fit our epistemological and methodological needs (Brown; Friese; Seale).

For example:

• Last night we were provided an overview of two CAQDAS tools, QDAMiner and Transana. Both programs imposed an a priori approach to coding, but our instructor suggested a trick to bypass that: simply create a generic code such as "quotes" or "clips" to use during the first cycle of coding.
• In her article Using Atlas.ti for Analyzing the Financial Crisis Data, Friese describes in detail how, feeling the grounded theory approach to be inadequate, she devised her own idiosyncratic analytic procedures, which slowly evolved into what she calls "computer-assisted NCT analysis."  In her conclusion, Friese asserts that her coding and analysis process would be the same regardless of the software package she chose.
• In an earlier post I shared what I was learning about Mendeley which performs double-duty as both a citation manager and a collaborative platform for scholarly research. According to its developers, Mendeley is highly individualized to fit the "idiosyncratic processes of researchers." I wondered about Mendeley as a place for self-publishing.Could it be it is the very embodiment of Brown's "scenario," in which the "massification" of "combined technologies could...provide the opportunity for the proliferation and democratization of the production and dissemination of qualitative research knowledge"? 

Mendeley as a "scholarly Facebook"? Probably not. But I like to think about the possibilities. Even Coffey, Holbrook and Atkinson (1996) concluded that the contemporary ethnographer should give the proliferation of digital tools "serious and systematic" attention or risk becoming a "dreadful anachronism."

P.S. Just for fun, here is a PowerPoint animation set to a remix of Canon in D.  Nothing anachronistic here.

More reflections on CAQDAS

Reflection on Atlas.ti

Last night in class, we practiced performing data analysis with Atlas.ti, and the exercise confirmed a nagging suspicion: I have grossly underutilized the functions of this CAQDAS tool. There are so many features and options inside the Atlas.ti environment, and, to quote our instructor, "at least 12 different ways" to perform each function. As we gathered up our things to go home, one of my classmates remarked that she felt like she had "run a marathon."

I've run a few laps already with Atlas.ti, using it to code data for two small projects within the past year.  Yet, even I was mentally and physically wasted after last night's workout.

Maybe "triathlon" is a better way to describe what it's like to work in the flexible and multifaceted environment of Atlas.ti. Konopasek (2008) referred to the "sophisticated interface" of CAQDAS tools in general and then specifically described Atlas.ti's "visualisation" capabilities, in which the researcher's "thoughts or mental operations can easily be stored, recollected, classified, linked, filtered out in great numbers...and made meaningful in sum."

Some rights reserved by hmcotterill

Is this why the Atlas.ti developers named their product after the mighty hero of Greek myth, the one who bore the weight of the world on his shoulders?

Something else strikes me as powerful about Atlas.ti and the other digital tools we are exploring. Again and again in the EP604 course readings, I've noticed the suggestion that technology is blurring the lines between the strict, paradigmatic camps -- quantitative vs. qualitative, positivist vs. constructivist.

Seale (2010) tells us that the "counting" capabilities of CAQDAS software "is a reminder that the days of a great divide between qualitative and quantitative research work have now largely passed" (p. 255). And I am intrigued by Konopasek's comparison of Atlas.ti to a "textual laboratory." The metaphor literally co-opts the venue most commonly associated with scientific and positivist inquiry.

I am no statistician, but I like the way Atlas.ti enables the qualitative researcher to perform quantitative functions such as frequency counts and the "Word Cruncher," not as an end-all-be-all of analysis, but as a jumping off point for deeper exploration of connections, patterns, and new meanings.

For example, the first time I used the software, I ran a frequency count for a particular phrase in my transcripts just to confirm a hunch before I started coding.  I realize I could have used the "find" and "comment" tools in MSWord to perform these simple operations, but it was what I was able to do after coding that sets Atlas.ti apart from a word processor. I began looking for the co-occurrence of three specific a priori codes based on the TPACK framework (technology, pedagogy, and content).  Turns out, that didn't happen much in my transcripts, but Atlas.ti did help me to see more than twenty intersections between the "technology" and "pedagogy" codes.  This sent me down an altogether different and fruitful path of inquiry.

These previous experiences with Atlas.ti are the equivalent to running sprints. Now, after having received some guided, hands-on instruction, I have a clearer vision of how Atlas.ti. can function as an all-inclusive research notebook, containing fieldnotes, comments, memos, codes, and a seeming infinite variety of visual, textual, and statistical outputs generated by the researcher. I am ready to go the distance.

Reflection on Atlas.ti

More thoughts on blogs as research tools

I am beginning to wrap my brain around the idea of "Internet research."  I am also refining and clarifying my vision for this blog as "research tool," a process I started to explore in an earlier post.

What is Internet research? It could mean two things. There is a distinction between gathering data through the Internet (email, videoconferencing, discussion groups) versus gathering data about the Internet (crowd sourcing, marketing analytics, "trending," and so on).

In other words, the Internet functions as both a method and object of study. As diverse approaches for studying the Internet flourish (Dominguez et al. 2007), the Internet gives rise to new approaches for studying the offline world as well.  Dominguez et al. claim this diversity is the result of "the way in which the Internet is conceptualized as both culture and context for social interaction."

Of course, in a very Marshall McLuhan sort of way, there is no clear distinction. I may choose a face-to-face, "real world" research context, but with the constant proliferation of digital tools in contemporary society being what it is, it would be foolish to ignore "the current blending of offline and online worlds" (Garcia et al., 2009, p. 53).  As such, I must remain consistently reflexive of the influence of digital technologies on my everyday practices as a student and novice researcher, regardless of my research context.

It's time to review "The Machine is Us/ing Us."

To take this one step further, I was struck by Dr. Paulus' comment in class last night that researchers tend "to put the practice first, then choose the tool." The same can be said about educators. For a long time, the conventional wisdom in K-12 education was that content and pedagogy should drive teachers' decision making around the integration of technology. But what if the pedagogy and the theory stagnates or fails to keep pace with the technology? We are prevented from envisioning and leveraging new pedagogies -- and new research practices -- that never would have been possible without the new tools.

Thus, the traditional lecture format is "transformed" by presentation and slide software, with the phenomenon of death by PowerPoint following soon after. Similarly, O'Connor (2008) claims a similar lack of inspiration exists among online researchers, who "have done little more than transfer traditional, and in some cases outdated, approaches to a new arena" (p. 281).

People across all sectors of society, public and private, are beginning to rethink common, everyday practices in light of Web 2.0 tools.  In a recent online column Daniel Pink called it flip-thinking, in which digital technology "melts calcified thinking and leads to solutions that are simple to envision and to implement."  Pink described the work of U.S. educator Karl Fisch, who assigns YouTube lectures as homework. The Kahn Academy is another example.

I am curious about how "the tools are enabling new research practices," as Dr. Paulus said. I would like to continue to explore this idea, particularly as it relates to the blog as a writing repository documenting the research process and as a venue of reflexive practice for the researcher.

Specifically, I want to learn more about:

• The blog as a "methodological strategy for research" (Wakeford & Cohen, 2008, p. 311)
• Sharing research with participants--But how to get them to read it??
• Using a blog to expose the process of doing research 
• "Compensating for the relative isolation of graduate work" (p. 312) 
• Better organization of ("tagging") fieldnotes, possibly using Richardson's typology in the 1994 version of her essay "Writing: A Method of Inquiry" (if I can get my hands on it!!!)
• Gregg's (2006) idea of blogs as "conversational scholarship"

More thoughts on blogs as research tools

Re-purposing this blog as a reflective research journal

from OpenClipArt

Over the last several months I have struggled with writing my final representation of fieldwork for a year-long ethnography course that ended in May 2011. At my instructor’s behest, I am rewriting sections of my findings to include “more of me.” It’s uncomfortable, unfamiliar territory, and navigating it would have been so much easier had I had the discipline and foresight to keep a daily -- or, at least weekly -- reflective journal, such as the one described by Watt (2007).

Lesson learned.

Soon, I will embark on a new research journey, a pilot study of literacy teachers learning “new” digital literacies such as podcasting and digital storytelling as alternative formats for case study representation. Pending IRB approval, the study will begin in fall 2011.

The journal begins today.

I am dusting off this old blog and re-purposing it as a reflexive research journal. I am not sure of all the implications of this, especially since I have not yet fully formed my research design or invited participants to the study. But I am excited at the prospect of breathing new life into this blog. Even if I only use it to document "tasks, events, and actions," as LaBanca did (2011, p. 1164), it will be worth it. After my most recent academic writing experience, I am invigorated by the thought of having a "permanent record" and "memory prompt" (Watt, p. 83).

I started this blog in 2007 as a master's student in Instructional Technology. At the time, it was a place to document and reflect on what I was learning about web-based technologies and social media and how it all related back to my interests in language arts instruction, adolescent literacy, and 21st century classrooms.

Periodically, I have returned to the blog, mostly to model reflective practice and to engage with students in the technology course I sometimes teach.

Sadly, I have not used the blog at all in relation to my work as a PhD student in reading education. This was not a conscious choice or decision, just the result of the rigors and cognitive mayhem imposed by a graduate-level workload and a full and happy home life. I couldn't figure out how to fit it in. I'm still not sure how it's going to fit, excepting for the fact that I am required to post at least twice a week in connection with a course I am currently taking this summer titled "Digital tools for qualitative research."

Over the last four years, this blog has had three different names, two different hosts, and more different themes, templates, and header designs than I can count, but my core interests and passions have remained unchanged. Despite the long periods of inactivity, I am excited to keep past, present, and future posts together under one digital "roof," a document of my growth and development as a teacher/learner (and, now, "researcher").

Over the next several weeks in connection with coursework in EP 604, I hope to sort out some of my questions about using a blog as a reflexive research journal.

Primarily, I am wondering about audience and feedback, once peer and instructor support of EP 604 goes away. Perhaps it doesn't matter; I will surely benefit, as did Watt, from the "generative nature of this practice" (p. 83) regardless of readership. But then why choose an open and accessible medium -- a blog -- to begin with? Why not use a word processor and create a digital journal right on my computer desktop? And, assuming I secure the permission of participants for my hoped-for pilot study, what impact will my online, reflective writing have on them? More importantly, how do I encourage them to join me? How do I build a community of practice around this blog?

Re-purposing this blog as a reflective research journal

Featured student blog: meet Ann

Cross-posted at Fireside Learning and Classroom 2.0.

Many teachers shy away from contemporary music. Why? It could be because their own teachers did the same.

That quote comes from Ann, an aspiring music educator at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She and 14 other pre-service teachers are enrolled in a section of IT486, Intro to Instructional Computing, that I am teaching this summer. The course examines how to use technology to support teaching and learning and is designed to prepare novice teachers to integrate a variety of computer-based technologies.

One aspect of the course design that I really enjoy and value is the blog for reflective journaling. This is a required component. During the first week of the course, each student signed up for a blog at Google's Blogger. They were given a certain amount of license in the look and feel of the blog, but the overarching rationale for the pre-service teacher blog is the same: to develop and practice the reflective process. (More on that later.)

But why blend an introspective mode of writing such as journal writing with a public medium such as blogs?

As Christopher Sessums maintains:

Collaborative weblogs promote the idea of learners as creators of knowledge, not merely consumers of information. A collaborative environment like the one I'm suggesting can allow peers to be seen as valuable sources of knowledge and ideas; a connection that participants can rely on beyond any formal classroom structure, i.e., collaboration leading to a community of interest.

So to that end, I have been making readerly comments on each pre-service teacher's blog, and I am encouraging the class to follow, read, and comment on each others' blogs.

And now, to go a step further, I seek to shine a spotlight (or, in the case of our music major, "sound a trumpet") on some provocative posts in hopes of inducting our novice edubloggers into some of the wonderfully generous and nurturing networks of teacher/learners that have supported me in the past -- communities such as Fireside Learning and Classroom 2.0.

Ann's commentary on the state of music education strikes a chord because she describes a phenomenon that transcends content area and grade level: teachers tend to teach in the manner in which they were taught. Why is this so? How do we press forward into new realms of teaching and learning and resist falling back on tired and familiar practices that have outlived their effectiveness for today's learners?

What do you think? I invite you to visit Ann's blog and share your thoughts and feedback with her.

technorati tags: collaboration communication teacher/learner teachers edublogs blogs reflection mentoring uTenn

Featured student blog: meet Ann