Blogs in the Classroom

I believe that blogs can be very effective in the classroom at any level of teaching. I feel that blogs may be more useful for students in high school, but elementary students still may be able to use the blog effectively. In high school, teachers could really cut down on the paper use by having the students answer blogs as their homework. This will allow the teacher to simple go online and look at all of the responses instead of having to worry about carrying around all of the written responses. The responses in blogs would also make it easy for the teacher to share with the class. The teacher could put the blogs up on the smartboard and discuss the blogs with the whole class. In elementary school the teacher could use blogs in the same since as high school students but the teacher needs to guide their children a little more because they may not be as technologically inclined as high school students. The teacher in elementary school could use blogs to respond and have discussions on readings they had during the day, or have the students perform a search on someone and share their findings in the blog. There are so many possibilities of lessons that teachers could perform with the help of blogs. The only disadvantage that I see is the fact that you are taking away from the discussion in the class. Students do not learn how to share their thoughts orally and may not learn how to take criticism on their work. Other than that blogs can be very helpfully for classrooms.