But you said "results"

Glad you were paying attention. 

The other conclusion I've come to is that I am going to continue this blogging assignment next year with my AP students, and I may re-visit the idea of blogs with this class of AP kids.

I asked my students to provide some feedback on their experience blogging. While there were a few who were not enamored with the blogging activity (great example of a litote if you feel like looking up a rhetorical device), on the whole students enjoyed the experience.

The biggest takeaways for me:

1.  Students appreciated having a say in what they read and, when they chose something they enjoyed reading, saw the blogging activity as more enjoyable than typical reading and writing assignments.

2.  Students felt that, for the most part, their analysis skills improved because they analyzing on their own.

3.  Students liked writing in "blog voice," rather than academic voice, and I really liked reading their academic casual style far more.

4.  Students had a voice; even if they are quiet in class, students communicated clearly in their blog posts, and it was wonderful to hear from them.

5. Some students are way better at blogging than I am. I was so impressed by what some of my students put together, both in terms of the style of their blogs and the content.

6. I loved having conversations about books to choose with the students. I love talking about books anyway, and some of them chose books that I've since added to my reading list.

7. I can let go of a bit of control and put the responsibility on the students. (More about this later)

Some suggestions for next time:

1. Interestingly, one of the number one suggestions was to have students read books in small groups, so other students were reading the same book and they would have someone to discuss the book with.
         I find this piece of feedback especially interesting because this was my original idea, as a totally independent reading experience is just that, independent.  It's nice to have people to talk to about books. 
        Also, it's really nice to feel like they need me! They recognized, through this experience, the benefit of having an "expert" to guide them far more than they would have had otherwise. Working in small groups would also create lots of little experts. 

2.  The comments:  many of the students felt the requirement to comment on different students' blog was frustrating, as they wanted to follow one particular blog.  However, I wanted to avoid, as much as possible, the friends following friends phenomenon that would happen if they could comment on anyone's blog they wanted to. Having small groups reading the same book might eliminate some of this problem. 

3.  Easing up on my control and responsibility for their work did not work for some students. Many rose to the challenge, but there were a few who took the looseness of some of the parameters as a bit of a break, focused on other classes, etc. and are paying the price now that the end of the project is nigh. Perhaps some checkpoint grades along the way would help, but certainly managing time and meeting deadlines set up a month ahead is an important skill that will help these high school seniors when they become college freshmen. 

4. Don't have blog posts due on Friday night because not only do I not really want to spend my Friday night blogging, but these are high school students. They don't want to do that either. Though of course, there's nothing that said they (or I) couldn't have posted last night, but procrastination?