Blogging in Education

In the humble opinion of this writer, our writing skills are completely deteriorating. Blogging answers a great number of problems. I have used blogs in the classroom for several years. I started out using a Blogger site (for both my Advanced Placement U.S. History and my Honors Tenth Grade U.S. History classes). Granted, I had to go through the ritual of getting the sites approved by the Mobile County technology gurus (which they did quite promptly). However, the "experiment" was a complete success. I would post a short essay or quote and each of the kids would then have to respond. The students were encouraged to respond to each other in order to get some "intellectual" conversation going. Like I said earlier, it was an immediate success. This past year, I utilized the "Moodle" site and used their "Forum" resource and accomplished the same thing. It will now become a permanent part of my classroom for the foreseeable future.