The potential of Blogs in the teaching context

Strengths

• gives students the opportunity to reflect on their own work or collaborative work and perhaps see where to better their understanding.
• gain more knowledge from viewing different points of view.
• allows connections to be made between students.
• constructive comments can be left from teacher/students.
• allows for non-confident students to publish their thoughts without sharing verbally.

Weaknesses

• not all students would feel comfortable about making public their thoughts.
• non-verbal students may not advance their speaking skills if only reflect via blog.

Opportunities

• links can be made to connect to other students work, eg. e-books, wikis etc.
• teacher could have a blog of their weeks reflections ("had a great week discovering ......") with links for students to access Learning Place activities or examples.
• can edit blog at a later date to change knowledge and information once more is gained or perception changed.

Threats

• students would have to remain on task with teacher constantly checking blogs as some students might abuse the tool and leave non-appropriate dialogue.

I'm sure I'll be adding to this once my mind opens a bit more!