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The article discusses the ways in which U.S. education and curricula are changing in order to personalize learning approaches in the face of increased common education standards. The author comments on New Jersey's Hunterdon Central Regional High School's use of inquiry-based teaching methods, as well as the use of educational technology such as blogs and other Web 2.0 technologies by teacher Anne Smith of Arapahoe High School in Colorado. Also discussed are the differences between personalized self-directed learning that is available in online networks and the personalized learning opportunities of students in schools.

This article focuses on the creation of a literary Weblog by English literature students at Hunterdon Central Regional High School (HCRHS) in Flemington, New Jersey. Blogs are gaining traction in education as an online forum for classroom discussion, and to develop students' critical thinking, writing and reading comprehension skills. At HCRHS, literature students created an online reader study guide for the book The Secret Life of Bees using the Weblog format. In two years, the site has had more than 2 million hits, including a 2,300-word response from the book's author, Sue Monk Kidd. The value of a Weblog can be measured by three factors: communication, collaboration, and construction. The flexibility of this online tool makes it well suited for K-12 implementations. Teachers can use blogs to post homework assignments, create links, pose questions, and generate discussion. Students can post homework, create a portfolio, and archive peer feedback, enabling a virtually paperless classroom. Weblogs are being hosted locally at HCRHS. The school licenses Manila, a content management system from Userland.com. Manila runs on a dedicated server configuration with an Intel Xeon processor, Windows 2000, and 260 gigabytes of hard drive space.