Webblogs in Classrooms

I was reading Brother West's blog today and was intrigued by the examples of classroom blogging. When I was reading the examples I was thinking about ways that I might use webblogs in my own classes in the future. Some of my ideas include:

1. Groups: At the beginning of the semester I would assign the class into blogging groups (similar to what we did in class) and have them share thoughts and study tips throughout the semester. The requirements would be they had to set up their own blogs, they have to blog once a week, and they have to comment on each other's blogs once a week. They can talk about class discussions, upcoming assignments and tests, or anything else they want to.

2. Blogging on the net: This is where they would have an assignment of looking at other people's blogs outside of our classroom and evaluating/reporting on what they found. I think that this will show them the good aspects of blogging and let them see other people and their interests. The students might even find information for reports or projects that could be useful.

3. Connecting to Internet resources: If the class is doing a research paper they can look on my blog and discover resources that I think are appropriate that I found on the net. If they look at my blog they will have an upper hand in the research project.

4. Communicating with the teacher outside of class. I think that blogging is the most effective way to express concerns with the class and allow other students to comment on the same concerns. That way I won't have twenty students asking me about the same situation.

These are just a few ideas, and I'm sure that there are lots of other ways. If anyone has other ideas I would love to hear them if they want to comment on this post.