It happened to me in 2002, that moment when I knew my role as a teacher had to start moving away from a content expert to a connector. 

It was, of course, the moment when the Web was becoming a read AND write technology (Web 2.0). That six-year or so period between 1997 and 2003 that transitioned in the 21st Century also moved us into a whole new world of networks and connections that have since changed almost every aspect of our lives. We became creators, not just consumers of knowledge and information.

That moment in 2002 for me was profound. I had started my first blog in early 2000, and I immediately saw the potentials for blogs as writing tools in my high school English classes. At some point, I wondered if I could connect my students to writers and authors from outside the classroom. Since we were reading a brand new novel titled The Secret Life of Bees in my Modern American Literature class, I took a shot at asking the author, Sue Monk Kidd, to collaborate with my students in a book study blog to answer their questions and provide some backstory about the writing process.…