Riffing off of Anne's Keynote presentation from the K12 Online conference here's how spam became a good thing in one of my classes ... I didn't really do anything myself ... it was serendipity. ;-)

We've all had the experience of getting hit with spammers who leave a positive comment about our blogs but include a link to ... stuff we'd rather not have our blog linked to. A while back the chat boxes on my class blogs started getting hit with lots of this type of spam. By changing a setting on the chatboxes (disallowing the posters name to include a link) the spammers were no longer able to pollute my class blogs with their links and most of them went away. Recently they've come back. Not realizing the links aren't making it through, they've been populating my class blog chatboxes with positive comments ... which I've left ...

< ... from the Pre-Cal 40S (Fall '06) blog ... >

Oktavin
5:56 PM Oct 31, 2006 IP 68:95
Convenient and colourful site!!!

oliverB.
8:37 PM Oct 31, 2006 IP 76:95
grr .. the last questions are troubling me ..

Radislav
4:32 PM Nov 1, 2006 IP 68:95
hi all. good site. thanks.

Cap
9:50 PM Nov 1, 2006 IP 68:95
Excellent site!!! Useful!

Vlastilina
11:41 PM Nov 2, 2006 IP 68:95
Greeting... The Convenient site, the sated site!

Quella
9:56 PM Nov 6, 2006 IP 68:95
Convenient and colourful site!!!

chilly
10:56 PM Nov 6, 2006 IP 78:177
after that speech with mr. K i went into over drive and did my homework and posts some site on my del.icio.us

< ... here's the kicker ... >

Jefferson
2:12 PM Nov 7, 2006 IP 79:77
look at all these other ppl viewing our blog! glad to be of help :D

< ... from the AP Calculus AB (2006-07) blog ... >

Oktavin
5:56 PM Oct 31, 2006 IP 68:95
Convenient and colourful site!!!

Radislav
4:31 PM Nov 1, 2006 IP 68:95
hi all. good site. thanks.

Cap
9:49 PM Nov 1, 2006 IP 68:95
Excellent site!!! Useful!

< ... different class, different kid, same reaction ... >

lindsay
8:51 PM Nov 2, 2006 IP 79:191
wow, =) i'm glad that people from other places find our blog useful! hi everybody!

These spammers, by creating a sense of global audience, are having a positive effect on some of my students; actually encouraging them to greater heights because they underscore the sense of audience on the class blog.

I never thought I'd say this ... Hurray for spam!! ;-)

Update
It occurs to me that maybe this isn't really such a good thing. Some students can't distinguish between spam and genuine comments! There are implications for teaching kids to be discriminating consumers of information in all this. I guess I'll come clean with them in class tomorrow ... they've got to learn this stuff somewhere.

So what's the incidental learning going on in my classes now ... math? or information literacy?