I have been reading the discussion to date and thought I might be able to add some interesting information. Over the past couple of days I have handed back 120 reports to second year students (13 year olds). I took the opportunity to ask each student what they thought about the idea of a collaborative weblogging project along the lines we have been discussing. The response was very positive from students across the range of ability. I think we could get all of our students to partipate in the pilot project.

On a related theme we have been discussing the use of homework for first and second year students. The problem with traditional homework tasks is that they provide a ceiling for students. We would like to take the 'lid off' students potential by engaging in an XL project. The problem for many teachers is that they set homework just to fulfil the expectations of parents, students and senior management. Unfortunately the value of these homework tasks rarely matches the expectations of any of those involved. We are now exploring cross-curricular projects from which students could make selections.

This is proving a very exciting development and it's great to see students get fired up by the idea of undertaking work for its own sake.