Weblogs and Their Effects on Writing Skills
Case study of blogs used with fifth graders to improve writing skills. In both classes reviewed, blogs improved "both rich content and author's craft" but not grammar and spelling.
Collaborative Blogging as a Means to Develop Elementary Expository Writing Skills
Study on collaborative blogging with third graders that resulted in improved attitudes towards writing, improved quality of writing, and a number of unintended benefits
Using threaded comments to build a writing community in your classroom | Reflections on Teaching
A 6th grade teacher talks about the advantage of threaded blog comments for building a writing community. This encourages much more of students talking to each other and makes it easier to follow blog conversations.
One of those is threaded comments. This is rapidly bringing my blogs to the level I had always hoped to acheive–one where the students are talking to each other and not just talking to me.
Blogging and Reading Comprehension Strategies « Classroom Tech Tips
Applying reading comprehension strategies (questioning, making connections, inferring, etc.) and tips for students to improve blog conversations. One of the suggestions is to have a class focus together on one strategy in their comments to each other. I can see how the sentence frames would be very helpful, especially for younger writers.
Top News - Blogging helps encourage teen writing
Survey results about teens and writing, showing that students who blog write more for personal reasons and are more likely to think writing skills are essential. Most students think their writing would improve if they could use more technology to practice writing for school.
Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs. Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life; 53 percent of non-bloggers say the same thing.
Most students (82 percent) believe that additional instruction and focus on writing in school would help improve their writing even further--and more than three-quarters of those surveyed (78 percent) think it would help their writing if their teachers used computer-based writing tools such as games, multimedia, or writing software programs or web sites during class.