In my mind blogs are very personal and we can put as much or as little effort into them as we want. Do I really believe that blogs are a valuable tool in the teachers little bag of teaching tricks and materieals? Not really. For elementary students the idea of creating a blog is out of the question mostly because they don't have the technology skills to build one in a reasonable amount of time. Also, their computer time at home and in the classroom would be very limited. Blogs are more plausible for the junior high and high school grades mostly because by then they will likly have extensive experience with computers and perhaps even with blogs. I think my biggest issues with blogs as a teaching resource is that students would have to have both the time and computer access both in class and at home, and even today there will be some students without computer or internet access.
On the other hand, for the purpose of this blog post, I have recently looked at a website which lists several ways in which blogs can be utilized in the classroom. Some of the more interesting ideas for using blogs in the classroom include: keeping an online journal, continueing class disscusions, creating a class archive, writing book reports, and collaborating on projects with other classes. I found these suggestions interesting because I don't know if I would ever have thought of them based apon my disbelief in blogs as a viable teaching resource. I think that setting up one blog would be more plausible, however, for the secondary grades it would be more valuable for the student to set up their own blog. I just don't know if it would be an efficient and beneficial use of time.
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