Learning how to learn is power

- Sir Francis Bacon

Currently education is the focus of much attention. Teachers are taking the brunt of criticism. Chris Gallagher addresses this very point in his March, 2000 KAPPAN article, "A Seat at the Table," where he asserts how teachers not only need to be at the table of reform and assessment, but that they must be active in gaining that seat. "I think it is dangerous to be sanguine about the prospects for reforming the assessment community and disrupting the commonsense script for education reform, in which schools are cast as damsels in distress, remote experts are cast as heroic saviors, and teachers are written out of the production altogether." (Gallagher, p 503)

The silent partner, in educational reform, is the teacher. The power is transmitted through the teacher. The teacher is intregal in tapping power of the net for hir students. The teacher is practicing hir theory and is theorizing on hir practice every day. We know the power of the net and how it provides access to information, access to physically unreachable places, access to resources, family connections, creates COMMUNITY, but an added power is that it reaches back in too. It is interactive. "Power works from the outside in, but authority works from the inside out." (Palmer, 32) Herein lies the essence of the Internet, it helps the user gain identity, authority of self.

Students in Lori's classroom sharing responses to their work.

For the learner this is the power to learn, it is PERSONAL. It is internal. It doesn't matter how much external force is exerted or how much information we can access from the outside, for learning to happen. Not until the internal voice acts and responds to the input and becomes actively engaged in the learning process, learning will not happen. The trick is listening when that internal voice says something. When it falls on deaf ears, the voice stops speaking. This is part of the power of the cyber room. As each student is writing and publishing on the net, sending and receiving email, at some point the internal voice speaks and it is heard and it is responded to. Students develop a good, strong attitude about their own learning. Since the Internet is synchronous and asynchronous and is 24/7, that voice will be heard and that voice will be responded to.

The power of the Internet is that it is interactive. Interactivity changes the whole educational landscape. Instead of one teacher being responsible for, in a NYC public high school English class, five classes of 34 students each, a cyber teacher can access the Internet for telementors. Mentors have always been integral to learning, and the Internet provides a great abundance of mentors and the capability of facilitating telementoring programs throughout the digital community. Steven Clift writes: The potential to design compelling online content, interaction, and tools that make the Internet a communities network by nature exists but it is quickly slipping away.

As models of learning, teachers must always be in a learning mode themselves, they must do their SCHOLARSHIP, too. Our experience as learners helps us speak about learning and to guide students through the process so our students learn how to learn. We should be promoting good practices by DOING the projects too. This elemental form of interacting sets up the larger Internet interactivity.

The way we as teachers can model or practice our theory is if we create our own websites. Make those websites useful in your teaching. Lori and Ted have each developed their own websites in different ways. Ted has his Cyber English page and Lori has hers. As we transferred our previous lessons from the non cyber room to the cyber room, our lessons changed or morphed to adapt to the cyber environment. A key difference is the use of hypertext.

	Students gain power as they work with the media and play with ideas and discover what they know.

Hypertext is the technology that allows the learner to lay hir hands on information, NOW. The hypertext links in documents is power. Consider that in print media, I can see the references but I can't access them NOW, unless I'm in a library which contains those references. So as the access to information translates into power, the Internet provides greater accees to information and ultimately to the disbursement of power. For example when teaching a lesson on Haiku, we as a teacher in the non cyber room will select what and how that information will be delivered. It is linear and any questions from a student about the hiaku may get the answer, "we will get to that later," doesn't satisfy the student at the time and may miss its impact later or be forgotten. In the hypertext lesson, the learner can ask the question and immediately seek out the answer. In the hypertext lesson the learner selects what and how the information will be delivered. In the hypertext lesson, the learner takes ownership of learning and that is valuable. It is similiar to how, as a reader, we select from a table of contents which articles in a magazine we will read and in which order. The tables of contents does not dictate reading order. This is true of Ted's hypertext haiku project. This lesson appears chaotic at first but the information and links are presented in a typical information page with embedded links. The reader will make all choices of which link to follow. Not all learners will follow the links in the same order. So that student that asks the question can have immediate feedback and that may lead to more questions and inquiry. The power is that as the teacher I select the content and links and the learner's power is s/he has choice. This distributes the power.

Examples of just what this power is can be seen when one visits Ted's scholars and s/he reads some of their power and authority essays. The power the students gain is being able to work through the essay over time. Readings are constantly added and the essay constantly grows and changes as the writer addresses different issues. Watching them wrestle with this notion of power and authority this year has been exciting and rewarding. They have examined some literature and some newspaper articles for DIVERSE perspectives on power. In addition they reflect on power in their PERSONAL relationships around them everyday. And of course, Dewey has something to say on power and makes references to diversity, community, scholarship, and of course doing or as he says: "totality."

It is our firm belief that an AUTHENTIC learning environment promotes authentic learning, a place for authentic assessment and actually put the power of learning back into the community via the technology and the Internet. DiPardo relates how the use of HYPERCARD puts the power back in the hands of the teacher and utilizes democracy and diversity to promote better learning. This is a great example of just how the technology is harnessed in a powerful way and for the good of learning.