Hi Sue and welcome to classroom2.0 from a fellow Australian (Victoria). You have some very pertinent points in your introduction. Enjoy this site as there is a lot to share with web2.0 tools etc.

Hi Sue I started blogging and have found the boys were just as keen as the girls, especially when they found that they could personalize their blogs with widgets etc. The girls, on average, blog voluntarily more but if you can share blogging with students from other countries, that keeps both genders going as there is an authentic audience for them.

Hi Sue, with blogging, it allows for all literacies and multimedia. So the boys who might be reluctant writers can add pocasts, links to digital stories cartoons, wordles and all manner of things that they do actually like doing. However, if you give them an audience that really inspires them, so I worked hard on getting a scoial network established and if students from elsewhere comment they are up and away.