Another intriguing idea

A middle school teacher is apparently using a twitter account to have his (and other!) students collaboratively write a story. I have to wonder what the purpose is, of course; is it simply collaboration for the sake of collaboration, or is it a lesson on the Aristotelean story arc? ("Sure, you can have a woman and baby run screaming--as long as you do something with it.") My friends and I used to play a story called "and then," which is similar in concept; I promise you, though, our stories were incredibly silly. That this teacher thinks he can corral something worthwhile out of this may overly optimistic. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

It's fascinating, though. Dig deeper into mrmayo.org (the teacher's blog/projects page) and you see a lot of internet-based learning. They're doing digital childrens' books. They're using Skype to talk to people like Susan Linn, head of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood--a conversation I'm pretty sure led to the class's current reading: Animal Farm. He's got his students blogging as opposed to keeping reading journals. They've got a book on Lulu. Digital integration into the classroom? That's crazy talk. I think a lot of teachers on all level (including the collegiate) could learn from him.