"Collaborative Literacy" gives many good ideas of how blogs can be used in the classroom. One is the 3rd grade project about endangered species and teasing. This helps kids because they can connect with others online and see other viewpoints. Blogs have also been used by teacher/librarians and students to post book reviews and attract people to the media center website. These benefits exist only when online activities are done safely.
The downfall of blogging is that people that students are visiting on the internet could be made up. Writers of blogs may say they are any age, any gender from anywhere in the world. This Fake ID potentially dangerous to students, who can be stalked or taken advantage of.
Media specialists and other teachers need to follow district or school policies about filters and restrict access to students within the school and/or students from a specific class, as in the Talkback Project. It is necessary to keep kids safe while making learning fun.
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Once again, you too have a valid point regarding the internet and blogging. I always have my students sign an internet agreement form. I also have them take a tech savvy survey and review with proper protocol and situational analagies. There are several sites that teach students about bogus sites and as far as wikipedia.com, well, anyone can post, so the reliablility is questionable. I refer my students to .org or .edu or govt sites and I also give them a list of legitimate sites on my online classroom. We can teach our students how to navigate safely and monitor their progress. Blogging is a useful tool, but like all internet use, it must be used with caution.
Important to consider the safety. Having an Internet agreement form is a very good idea.
Also filters are in schools to protect students, but they could pose problems for blogging. Best to double check that angle to see if blogs are allowed at your school before you decide on any blog assignment.
You are so right about the safety issue when allowing students to use the internet. Keeping to students' privacy should be very important to any teacher or administrator with a program like this in their school. Restricting access is a good way to do this, as is basic instruction on internet safety. Things like not giving away your real name, location, or other things that can reveal where they are.
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