Taking a Stand in Cyberspace

Using the example of Taking a Stand in Cyberspace, we articulate issues confronting school, community, and higher education groups as they create online discussions geared to deepen the level of student discourse about literature. Through a collaboration between the Vermont Center for the Book, the WEB Project, and six Vermont schools, students read and discussed three books while teachers maintained an online discussion about the student conversations and the degree to which the student discussions showed evidence of reaching selected learning goals. The experiences resulting from Taking a Stand, along with earlier initiatives, indicate that an evaluation of the opportunity to use and exhibit critical reading skills is as crucial to the improvement of student learning as an assessment of an individual student’s attainment.