From Dawn:

Pat Schulze and I met face to face in Milwaukee at the NCTE 2000 National convention. This first meeting was actually like seeing an old friend again because we'd been gabbing online through the NCTE list serv for over three years at that time. We would also meet at the Moo on occasional Fridays for a more relaxed conversation. As she began to develop her own Cyber English approach, it was natural for us to work together more and more.

This project is the result of us wanting to design a unit together using online communication exclusively. We had also both used multigenre projects with our classes. The extension into oral histories was Pat's idea. Creating the web site hub was mine. Our conversations about this project took place in our Blog, via email, and at the Moo.

I think this experience has shown me even more how the Internet facilitates long distance professional development among like-minded professionals who want to try something new. It is something anyone can do. And what's more, it is a lot of fun. Pat's a great colleague. She's got great ideas. She loves her students and she has their interests at heart more than anything.

Once this all got rolling, I realized it might make a great interdisciplinary project and my colleague Lee McGlade thought so, too. He added his P.A.S.T.E. system to the plans.

From Pat:

When I first started developing my Cyber English class and website, I turned to the people whom I consider the true gurus on the topic, Ted Nellen and Dawn Hogue.  In fact, in setting up my site I borrowed heavily from Dawn.  As Dawn mentioned, we had met long before we met face to face, and since our friendship had grown through the list serv and the MOO, it seemed only natural for us to collaborate on this project in the same way.  Not to mention that Wisconsin and South Dakota are a little far apart to get together over lunch to plan. 

The whole idea of the multigenre oral history web came to life one Friday night in the MOO when we were discussing collaborating on an article on Cyber English for the ACE online Journal, and expanded into actually putting together a unit we could use in our classes.  We started with email and our Blog, but we quickly realized we wanted more immediate feedback, and being long time MOOers immediately though of the NCTE MOO.  Once we conquered the recorder we were ready to go.  Dawn and I met in the MOO at 9:00 on Saturday or Sunday mornings to put together this project, brainstorm, assign each other jobs for the week, and then evaluate our progress. 

The whole experience has been incredible.  It has been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. Dawn was incredible, saw all the fine points that I sometimes tripped over, and kept us on track.  I loved collaborating with her and hope we can do it again on another project.