The Dangers and the Benefits of Using Blogs in Schools

Using a PMI Chart I am going to objectively analyse the dangers and the benefits of using blogs as learning tools in schools. My initial thoughts are that blogs are a great idea if they are used in the correct way.
PMI Chart
PLUS:

• Gives students the opportunity to express their point of view with the rest of the world
• Meta-cognition occurs when the students reflect on their learning and use the outcomes of this to learn more
• Blogs might motivate the students to write more
• Offers a support tool to promote reflective analysis which is higher order thinking
• Gives the teacher a written log of everything the students are communicating allowing them to effectively monitor the directions the students take and how they do it
• In some contexts students become a part of the event or subject
• Can make class house-cleaning tasks a lot simpler
• Blogs are a great way to share resources
• Encourages rich in-class discussion
• Gives all the students a similar voice. The quiet student down the back of the class has the same writing space as the loud opinionated student at the front of the class
• Students don't need to worry about HTML syntax, essentially what you see is what you get
• Opens up communication to go beyond that of the student/teacher relationship
• Encourages collaboration and peer interaction

Minus:

• Students end up mainly writing on-line rather than with a traditional pen and paper. On-line writing is a new skill to be learnt but does it come at the cost of valuable and traditional writing skills
• Most blogs are only written in a conversational style, does this lead to questions about the credibility of the author?
• Students need to be very aware of breaching copyright laws and posting protected information. Blogging takes students outside the safety of the classroom walls and they need to be aware of the world-wide audience
• It is very time consuming running a blog
• Blogging is about conversation and for it to work there can't be any restrictions. When students are aware they are being assessed, posts can become very staged

Implications:

• Students may not be blogging in the true sense that blogging was designed. They are censoring their content to either fit the criteria and get a good assessment mark or altering their content to fit in with the schools policy on blogging
• Unless students are creating a rich conversation that they can see true benefit in then they may be wondering 'why am I bothering?'
• When using blogs in an educational context students are not really using the blogs in the way that they were originally intended. The original purpose is to post links and post comments on each others pages to create an engaging conversation. It is very difficult to begin this 'conversation'. How do people find your blog to comment on it? In the end students end up creating a blog for blogs sake and focus on getting a good mark for assessment and not on communicating with others. In essence the point is missed. 

The conclusions that I can draw from my own PMI on the topic is that Blogs have the potential to be amazing, engaging tools. When they become staged or not followed by anyone, they become pointless and students end up blogging for the wrong reasons. I would take careful consideration before considering using a blog in my classroom and make sure there is motivation and purpose in the task before assigning a blog as the most effective ICT to engage the students in learning.