Blogging Ideas

As I was walking to Lago from the Library last night, I was thinking about blogging. I'm not quite sure why, but an idea just popped into my head.

Use blogs for book reviews.

Students often read books because they are recommended by their friends. Now, traditional book talks or book reviews are great, but what about blogging book reviews?

I tend to think of things in +/- format, so as I was walking I thought of all the pros of blogging book reviews.

+ Students take ownership, because they know that their friends are going to read this
+ Writing practice--students have to WRITE instead of orally speak their book review, again, knowing that is going to published to the web, and read by their peers
+ Typing skills-- students are TYPING their ideas about books---AUTHENTIC typing!
+ Motivation--students will be motivated to read their book, understand it, and review it
+ Ease of Use--how much easier would it be for a teacher to read their blogs and respond in that way rather than responding to a written journal or using a checklist
+ User Interaction-- to me, this is the biggest one. Students can not only READ what other students have WRITTEN, but they can actually comment on it! And their comments can be seen by peers and the teacher. They can ask questions, comment on a book they've also read, discuss opinions, brainstorm solutions, etc.
+ Multimedia-- students could insert audio, video or pictures of/about their book. They could be as creative as they wanted, or simply type the review.

There are just so many options that I see with using blogs for book reviews, that I don't even want to list my negatives, but I'll be fair:

- Security--gotta make the blogs safe for students
- Time to teach--this is barely a negative, because taking time at the beginning of the process to model and teach how to do the blog will end up saving loads of time in the long run.

Good try negatives, but positives win. I am eager to try this someday!