Steve over at Pedablogy has been blogging for some time, to tremendous effect (certainly on me, though I’ve been hobbling along in my blog reading), on his own experiments with Web 2.0 in his classes. One of his students in last semester’s freshman seminar has continued to blog. Steve has continued to blog on the continued blogging. Now comes James Fadden, obviously struck by the way the spark has become a flame that shows signs of persisting, with a very trenchant analysis of Steve’s experiment and this result, ending with two very important questions James has logged as comments on his own post (I confess I like this autocommenting: it reminds me of Browne’s delightfully recursive prose and Oliver Sacks’ delightfully copious footnotes).

Steve pinged me about the Fadden trackback, and that’s jogged loose a little bit from me:

Extremely cool. James F. is all over these questions and you’ve obviously stimulated his thinking in a major way.

I think his subsequent questions are right on the money. I’ve been thinking (but not blogging, alas) a lot lately about greatness of mind in teachers as manifested in their ability to continue to prompt (or respond/prod/challenge) students in just this way. One outcome would be the continuous elaboration, throughout one’s life, of what Illich calls a “learning web,” by which he means a network of inspired and trusted minds, as I once put it a long time ago. A portfolio of intellectual companions who can be pressed or conjured into service as teachers as the need or desire arose.

The end (i.e., purpose) of teaching includes the delicious sensation of continuing to teach students who become empowered as trusted and inspiring minds who can teach in return. Not just in momentary flashes of insight–that’s delicious too and can happen at any time in any course of study, one of the reasons teaching is addictive–but in deep, rigorous, mature ways that can fully rock one’s world.

(I see that “rock one’s world” appears imprecise, but at this moment it feels accurate in part because of the register, not in spite of it.)