At the beginning of my first year of teaching in September 1984, I read Ann E. Berthoff's five-paragraph "Facets" in the English Journal. The "dialectical or double-entry notebook" that she describes became an important tool in my classroom that year, and it has has remained so since, especially in the last few years as blogging has become central to my curriculum. In her short essay, Berthoff describes a writing process in which "students and teachers alike... are discovering that journals need not be limited to personal or 'expressive' writing but that they can be used to record that inner dialogue which is thought." Over twenty years later many teachers and students have begun to use blogging the way we've been using the dialogue journal.

Berthoff describes dialectical note taking like this:

On one side of an open notebook, writers take notes, copy texts, record observations; on the facing page, they respond to those responses, taking notes on their notes and commenting on their comments, observing their observations and thinking about their thinking.

Berthoff could have been talking about what happens when teachers blog when she writes about the impact of double-entry notebooks: "Teachers become reflective writers and thereby more imaginative, freed at last from the compulsion to find an assignment to follow the one on how to tie-dye tee-shirts or on what to do about skunks under the porch." I'm not sure about those examples, but many of us who have put personal blogging at the center of our writing practice have felt the freedom that Berthoff speaks of here. Blogging allows us to put the student firmly in the center of his or her own inquiry over time.

Just like double-entry notebooks, blogging "can teach everybody the value and usefulness of looking--and looking again."

• My students at East Side Community High School, NYC: Jennifer, Felix, John (podcast listener)
• Susan's students at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC: Robyn, Mercedes, Christina
• Chris's students at Judge Memorial High School, Salt Lake City, Utah: Ameera, Eric's China post, Emerson's myspace

1. Students will use Google Reader to collect and read online sources about self-directed inquiries.
2. Students will include voices from the sources they collect in Google Reader when they post on their blogs.

• Students will begin to use common "texts" with students in their niche group of friends or "elgg communities" using the Google Reader Share function.
• Students will assess their own reading habits, using the Google Reader Trends function.
• Students will understand the differences between blogs, news sources, articles, peer-reviewed journals, videos, and podcasts.
• Students will distinguish between the RSS-resources (listed above) from web sites, Wikipedia and other online encyclopedias and information sources.