I did good.

I will try to be more consistent in my posting. New May's Resolution #1.

Trying to find info about how kids react to learning and writing using blogs instead of more traditional methods, but I'm not having much luck. So far, it seems like most of the stuff published has been basically like, "Look! It's called a blog! It does cool things!" and not much of theoretical substance.

Here's my not entirely empirical, but quite close, data:
Out of a class of 47 11th and 12th grade AP students, an end-of-blog unit evaluation recorded 16 negative or neutral responses and 96 positive responses to using blogs.

Most of the negative responses were about difficulties with the technology at the high school. The servers aren't set up to handle 30 kids on the same website at the same time.

The top things kids said they really liked about working on blogs:
1. They like reading the work of their classmates. 14 votes. Some liked it for touchy-feely, know their classmates better reasons, and some liked it because they want to compare their work with others (i.e. mostly competitive boys), and some because they felt inspired in their own writing by reading the work of their classmates.

2. They liked the helpful feedback they received via the comment function. 23 votes. Some not only liked the immediate gratification, they also felt like their editing and revision skills improved.

Two weeks after the unit ended, students are still posting their school writing on their blogs.

Comments

[James Farmer]

Hiya, incase trackback doesn't work I've made some comments here: http://radio.weblogs.com/0120501/2004/05/06.html#a655

Cheers, James

[James Farmer]

Where's your RSS feed?

[hipteacher]

Hey! I didn't even know I could have one until you asked. I turned on the RSS thingy, but I don't profess to understand how all that works quite yet. There's a link now on the left side bar to syndicate the site via XML. Is that all I have to do?

[Jeremy]

Yes, that thingie means that I can subscribe to your site using Bloglines, which lets me see which of the sites I like have posted something new. It's pretty slick, if a bit geeky.

One note: I'm not sure if you were hoping to remain semi-anonymous, but your full name appears as the author of the posts in your XML feed.

[Jeremy]

Sorry to geek out on you again, but one feature of Typepad sites that I love is when they have the "Recent Comments" option turned on -- makes it so much easier to follow what visitors are saying on your site. Not that definitely should...just thought it might be cool.

[hipteacher]

Thank you. I aspire to geekdom.

It was quite a good suggestion, and just over there (nodding my head to the left) you will find the new recent comment section.

The thing I think is strange is that usually there is a reply to comment button, but I haven't found one on typepad. Otherwise, I like it more. I like the free-dom of Blogger, but typepad makes it easily for it to look and work the way I want without a lot of initial knowledge.