blogging learning community; powerful story

Konrad Glogowski, on his teachandlearn blog has begun writing about his class of 14 year old students??? recent blogging experiences. It’s a great story, as he describes… ” My community of grade eight student bloggers became so big and so engaging that I spent every spare moment reading and writing within this community. My class community suddenly blossomed and I started seeing myself as an important part of the classroom community and no longer as a teacher who peddles content. I became a participant in a series of dialogues. I witnessed the emergence of a semantic network, one where all links, all interactions were based on meaning.”

This blog entry and his related writing makes great reading - Konrad makes connections to Stephen Downe’s community as networks of semantic relations, Vygotsky’s emphasis on the central role of social learning, and also for me there are important links to Scardamalia and Bereiter???s socially constructed meaning. It would be great to know more about the story; hopefully he will write more fully about his experiences with this group.

Will Richardson has also reflected on the story ... ” Is it strange that I get butterflies when I read things as powerful as what Konrad writes? That I can???t wait to make sense of it through blogging, to figure out what about it resonates? That I can???t wait to point others to it? Konrad is writing about his students here, but I think this could easily describe what we as edbloggers do as well...”