OK, I'm starting to catch on to blogs. This week's assignment and readings helped quite a bit. In some situations, like Kevin's example of ESL students, I can see where practice writing to a larger audience would be great practice, and the feedback/comments would be encouraging and motivating for the student.
As always, the pedagogy drives the technology used in teaching/learning situations, and not the other way around. As much as I enjoy "playing" with the new tech tools, software, etc., I'm cautious about introducing it into a classroom (or virtual classroom), until I'm sure it will be worth the time invested for students to learn the technology. My content areas (nursing theory, history, etc) are my main focus, and I'm concerned that students get so caught up in learning the tool ( a blog, video-conferencing, even the learning platform is confusing to some students), that it distracts from the learning objectives. Is anyone else feeling conflicted about this? I'm thinking that just because we can, doesn't mean we should... any thoughts?