Why we should use blogs in our classrooms!

Well I have only been in this class for 2 weeks but I am beginning to see the great effect technology can have on your students. I am starting to see how you can use blogs in the classroom as a useful teaching strategy. A teacher miss Kathy Cassisy using blogs in her grade 1/2 class. The students are able to create their own blogs which then are connected to the teacher's blog. Students post stories, assignments they have done, and then each student can comment each others blogs. I think it is amazing that grade 1/2's are being taught how to this on their own. In a time text book and paper materials will use be gone, it's great to teach students at an early age these skills.
After reading the article and thinking about what I could do in my own class I discovered that blogs could be use in any grade and would be useful for the not only the student but also the parents. I taught grade five and even then the problems with communication between the teacher and the parent was becoming minimal. Many of times the parents was unknown of the homework assignments and therefore was not able to help with studying, causing poor grades. After reading the article I thought about possible creating a blog that would open the lines of communication between the teacher and parent, while still allowing the child to learn responsibility. By creating a blog that all parents could access, showing homework, dates for exams, school events and programs i believe there would be excuse for the parent or the student to say they didn't not know. I also would use this blog to post students assignments as Kathy Cassisdy did. We are told that putting students works around the classroom in very motivating for the students well not post it on the web where the whole world could see. what kind of impact do you think this will have on students?
One of the coolest thing that I thought would be very beneficial for students would be to post comments on authors blogs and develop a corresponding blog between the students and the author. Many times when doing an author study the author may appear to be unreal, by creating a method to communicate with the students the author becomes real and the students are more able to relate to it. Another idea I would love to to use in my classroom is to set up blogging system between a school in another country and my classroom. Students some times forget about the world around them. By setting up a blog between another school and there's students can see how they live and compare it to how they live in Canada.
Therefore blogging is more than a journal on line it is a text book of information, a resource, a tool to help us communicate with each other. I look forward to seeing how my blog will process over the semester. See you for now and have a great weekend!
Lets go out and explore our World!!