/ only connect - progress - cmc - STUDENT/STUDENT \

Students made use of both e-mail and live chat a great deal throughout the project. While an amount of this activity was to do with the work, the vast bulk of it was purely social. Due to that fact that I felt their personal/social channels should be un-monitored and private, there is no direct documentary evidence of what went on.

That said, it was clear early on that that the students were making huge use of the AOL instant message (IM) and chat room creation system. The end-of-project interview confirmed that most of them were signing on daily to chat from 30 minutes to two hours - a fact interestingly at odds with the several claims not to have done work because they had not logged on to receive it.

Certainly the students spent a long time on line according to their AOL logs - though it differed wildly from averages of 20 minutes a day to several hours; an issue that any LEA paying for the line time will have to address. According to the interviews the chat was about exactly what I might expect teenagers to chat about. One thing they apparently enjoyed was all watching the same soap and discussing it on line as they watched.

The final interviews made it clear that the social aspect of the project was a success for the students. Two of them arranged to meet socially and all said that chat had reduced their sense of isolation by one degree or another; a result backed up by the parents. This is the evidence available and, in my view, it's the evidence that counts. Social experience is personal and, while examination of actual conversations might inform us of the nature of the chat, it's the outcome - a sense of belonging - that is successful. It will be important to stress this to other agencies who might feel that increasing workload and higher SAT scores are all that count.