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Over 6 weeks, Mr. Long challenged 57 students to analyze Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — via their copies of The Annotated Alice — by publishing their questions & reflections in real-time on a very global scale.  All student progress was transparently shared with anyone who visited project blogs.

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While Mr. Long was available for one-on-one/small group consultation upon student request, he did not formally lecture or analyze the text in class.

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The goal was for the students’ learning/discovery experience to conceptually mirror Alice ‘finding her way’ through Wonderland.  Instead of directing the curriculum in a traditional manner, Mr. Long shifted to the role of ‘publisher.’  All entries and comments were moderated by Mr. Long, but students were expected to take responsibility for co-editing each each others work to ensure quality submissions.   ‘Audience’ & ‘voice’ was always a central focus.

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Each student joined a team of 3-4 peers to co-publish a team blog, sharing responsibilities as ‘editors’ and ‘authors’ both in and out of class.  Each student was challenged to publish a minimum of 12+ individual blog entries (of two 7+ sentence paragraphs) and to comment at least 15+ times on the other 12 student blogs in order to be guaranteed a “gentleman’s C” at the end of the project.  Additionally, each team was challenged to explore various web 2.0 tools (Prezi, CoverItLive, VoiceThread, etc) to showcase various ideas and conversations, as well as to re-design the team website thematically.

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Finally, each student had access to his/her own wireless laptop, allowing the classroom to become a fully dedicated writing lab and publishing studio.

Across the land, students in science class diligently memorize human cell components like DNA, mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum. They learn to rigidly order the natural world, from kingdom down to species.

And — most disturbingly, say a growing number of scientists — they learn to hate science.

Advocates cite many problems with science education, such as teachers lacking a science background. But perhaps the most critical issue, they say, is standardized testing that forces students to memorize and regurgitate.

“Students don’t need to know what an endoplasmic reticulum is,” said Bruce Alberts, editor of the journal Science and former president of the National Academies of Science, who has called for a “revolution” in science education.

“Bad tests are forcing a trivialization of science education and drive most students away from science. Real science is exciting. It’s completely different from these textbooks.”

Yet change may be afoot in Texas, with some legislators calling for a re-evaluation of the influence of TAKS testing. And some science educators see opportunities to change science class from a dull exercise in memorization to inquiry-based learning.

There’s no shortage of smart people tackling the issue, like Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, who argues that children should be taught physics first in high school in order to grasp the broad outlines of the natural world.

“I’ve been working at it for a long time,” he said. “We’re not doing well. Meaningless testing is a bad thing. If we want scientific literacy, then we want teachers to teach the beauty of science, the fun in it, the humor in it, and to bring examples of modern science into the classroom.”