Bonnie and I attended the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference last week-end, and this photo shows WillR and me at the pre-conference dinner. I was really impressed with the variety of attendees and the work everyone was doing. Many of the bloggers are sponsored at ScienceBlogs, which I’ve been perusing since the conference, but so far it’s been hard to separate the science from the commentary.
Nonetheless, there was a lot of great content at the conference. Each session had a good bit of audience participation, and I thought the following observation from a middle school teacher was enlightening: students work harder when they know their reports will be posted on a school website for others students to see. Apparently, they’re more interested in impressing other students than their teachers. Or at least, more embarrassed at the prospect of publishing shoddy work to classmates.