Since this was to be a year-long focus of study for our class (something I had never tried before), I decided to post a request on several listservs and see if we could get a few people to be our research assistants online throughout the year. I wrote what I hoped was a clear and polite statement of what we needed from people so we could do this experiment. Reading comments on kidsphere from other teachers, I also decided to try to find a few teachers who wanted to "talk shop" with me: about how we do things, and especially how we change things. I wondered if I could find other teachers who were exploring having their students take more responsibility for their own learning, and how these teachers were going about having this happen. I posted requests for bird research e-pals and teacher collaboration on likely listservs, including rec.birds and several on kidsphere.

Friendly, enthusiastic responses started to come back right away. I hadn't realized that, by sheer luck, I had chosen a topic (birds) which seems to attract kind, patient, intelligent people who love sharing their interest and information. We began with a list of about 15 people from all over the United States (I had hoped for other countries but that didn't happen).

I introduced the idea to my students by telling them that there were people all over the United States who were eager to help answer any of their questions about birds. We had a detailed U.S. map which I had the children help me locate all our respondents on: small paper labels with each person's name and qualifications written out were taped on, as students told me where each state we named was. These included a 6th grader, teachers (retired, high school, and college), hobbyists and a rehabilitator of injured birds, and 2 graduate students. Somehow, they were all willing and eager to take the time to answer our questions. I shared my delight with their generosity when I introduced them on paper to my students.