Currents in Electronic Literacy Spring 2000(3), 
 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spr00/slatin.html> 

Directions: Where Do We Go From Here?

38. Responses to TX2K like those of Ann DeBolt and others leave me convinced that TX2K represents a move in the right direction.  The project affords a basis for engaging students in coming to know and understand their communities while developing both the subject-matter knowledge and the learning competencies they need.  At the same time it gives teachers a flexible framework within which to tailor learning activities to the specific interests of their students and the specific circumstances that obtain in their classrooms.  I am equally certain, however, that we can do more to facilitate the process of integrating TX2K and other technology-enhanced, collaborative, project-based, pedagogical applications.  Elsewhere in this essay I borrowed the vocabulary of Etienne Wenger's Communities of Practice to describe how TX2K's activities propose scenarios in which students mutually engage in the joint enterprise of creating an exhibit, in the process developing a shared repertoire of skills, concepts, information, tools, and artifacts.  A more systematic and rigorous application of what Wenger calls a "learning architecture" will, I am convinced, lead to significant improvements in the design and implementation of our projects.  Discussion of what such a systematic application would involve is beyond the scope of this essay, and indeed it is beyond the scope of my knowledge at this point.  For we are still coming to terms with the full significance of Wenger’s insight that "placing the focus on participation has broad implications for what it takes to understand and support learning (p. 8)."

Return to the Index for this Article