Well, school has started, and I have tried hard to set the tone and expectations in my class right from the beginning. On day one I had my eleventh graders joining and posting their summer reading essays to www.librarything.com. I created a group (Mrs. Clark Evans Am Lit Readers) for them to join, and I graded their papers online from their libraries. I was most surprised that they didn't explore this much on their own. They created accounts and pretty much figured out how to post their reviews without much guidance, but they didn't seem to be spending any time looking around on the site at all that it has to offer. Of course, this is hard to assess, but since no one even left a reply to my initial group topic, I decided that they weren't being very exploratory. I was also surprised that they didn't upload more books into their libraries other than the required one.
I did give them time in class to "play around" on the site, and they had fun exploring the areas that I pointed out to them, like the comment feature, how to look at their classmates' work, and the Zeitgeist. I hope that as they see more of the site, and with reminders from me, they will feel less overwhelmed by all of the features and try to use it on their own.
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