Jeff Utecht on using Blogs in Classrooms

http://www.techlearning.com/article/blogs-are-not-the-enemy/44263

So why do we blog?  Jeff Utecht answers this by stating that educators first need to learn how to use blogs effectively in a classroom first.  Educators need to understand how to use this tool so students can benefit fully from the experience and engage in their learning process.  A blog is basically a journal.  Someone writes and someone reads its.  The blog allows collaboration between multiple people and conversations can be extended.  Jeff argues that blogs are not about the writing, it's all about the conversation that evolves from an entry.  Jeff also argues that after students use blogs to converse with each other, those conversations need to be brought back into the classroom for further discussion.  Don't just create and assignment and ignore it.

Jeff also argues that comments are the most important part of blogs.  I agree, when we blog we put out our thoughts.  We are looking for feedback, if we weren't we would have just created a webpage instead.  With the comments we can understand our audience a bit better, sometimes they might even get us to think secondly on our entry and topic.