Kidblog.org was featured today in a story on social media in schools. Kidblog.org co-founder, Matt Hardy, was interviewed for the story. He related some of his personal stories introducing blogging to his classroom in 2007. 

“Students aren’t just writing on a piece of paper that gets handed to the teacher and maybe a smiley face or some comments get put on it,” he says. “Blogging was a way to get students into that mode where, ‘Hey, I’m writing this not just for an assignment, not just for a teacher, but my friend will see it and maybe even other people [will] stumble across it.’ So there’s power in that.”

Seventh grade teacher, Elizabeth Delmatoff, used social media in her classroom as a experiment in her Portland, OR. “For the first time in its history, the school met its adequate yearly progress goal for absenteeism.” Delmatoff does’t believe that the blogging is solely responsible for the increase, but it seemed to play a significant role in her class results.