In early December, my student teacher & I introduced the RPC to Laura Lanik's Humanities classes as they began an assignment to complete an iMovie on a social issues topic. At the first session, I had the students register with their email. As they ended the semester, Mrs. Lanik had them write responses on their use of RPC for me. Out of 47 responses, only 14 students had actually used the RPC and about half of them seemed to appreciate the help. Most students already use a daily planner & felt that RPC just was a duplication of effort. In our school, all 9th & 10th graders are given a daily planner and many teachers use it a way of giving students passes, so I think in a school where that doesn't happen, I can see RPC used more.
My own impressions of RPC are somewhat lukewarm. One of the problems with it is that there is no way for a student to actually look at RPC without registering first. It would be nice if they could look at the system first to see if it could be useful to them. I really like the links attached to the reminder emails, but these students didn't seem to use them. The visuals in RPC could be updated as well. In the future, I think I would use it only for really long-term projects, like History Day. I can see it used more effectively for middle school students.
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