Why use blogs with your students?

There are many reasons why you may choose to use weblogs with students. One of the reasons is to provide a real audience for student writing. Usually, the teacher is the only person who reads student writing, but using blogs, students can find themselves writing for a real audience that, apart from the teacher, may include their peers, students from other classes, or even other countries, their parents or someone with access to the Internet.

Here are some other reasons for using blogs:

To provide extra reading practice for students.

his reading can be produced by the teacher, other students in the same class, or, in the case of comments posted to a blog, by people from all over the world.

To increase the sense of community in a class.

A class blog can help foster a feeling of community between the members of a class, especially if learners are sharing information about themselves and their interests, and are responding to what other students are writing.

To stimulate out-of-class discussion.

A    blog can be an ideal space for pre-class or post-class discussion. And what students write about in the blog can also be used to promote discussion in class.