Blog Comments Away

Well, my second group of students have all had their first taste of blogs. My seventh grade at G Wiz 7, my eighth grade at G Wiz 8. I wrote the post and they all wrote comments. Between district policies and the way Blogger2 works I haven't figured out a system where they can write the posts themselves. I'll work something out, but I wanted to get them started slowly. I'm hoping that as they read their comments and comments from others it will motivate them to get better at writing. I have had two students that have already rewritten what their comment contained after they looked at it online; now if I could just figure out how to delete a comment without deleting the blog post.
Its gone very well. I've tried to not censure them for their writing, but we have talked about do's and don'ts. Some of them don't really write a lot and it showed in what they wrote. Strangely enough some of the comments I'm happiest about are the worst ones; in grammar and length. Some of my students that never would write more than a one word answer to an essay question actually wrote sentences. The spelling may be wrong, but this is a big step in their performance. Writing for the Internet may have motivated them just enough to write, something they wouldn't do for me on paper.