Reflections on Blogging

Okay, so basically, this is cool. That's the bottom line. The summary. The end. But does it actually benefit the students? Is there a negative effect on the schoolwork or the mentality of the students if their class is focused solely on blogging? I beleive there is.
I think that blogging is a good way to try different techniques to get our creative juices flowing. I enjoy typing a lot more than writing because I type faster, so I can keep up with my thoughts. Also, there is so much more students can accomplish from writing on a blog on the internet than from writing in a journal. For example, Mr. Watson gave the example that if someone posts something on or blogs, lots of people can see our post. Therefore, more people can comment and/or give feedback to the work posted on the blog. If we write in our journals, our work is shared with a much smaller group, maybe only Mr. Watson. Bummers. Also, it is so much easier to copy and paste an article you found fascinating to use as a prompt than to either print it out and paste it in the journal, or copy it by hand. That takes so much time! Students get a lot of their information from websites now, so most of the information we would ever need could be found on the internet. If we are able to bring our writing to our resources, I believe our writing and our work could become much better, due to better ability to compare the original information to our interpretations of the text.
Although I am a fan of the blog, I also see a downside. I like the feeling of a small group of people able to discuss a certain topic in the comforts of a classroom. It seems to bring the class together, and they share that class and grow closer from their experiences in that class setting. If our class was based on the internet or on a blog, there is just so much going on that the students would no longer be focused on the same thing at the same time, and they would not form that closeness of a class in the classroom setting. Each student would get something different from the class, but not in a good way. Some people would focus on posting, some on commenting, and some on some other thing on the bog. But it would not be an experience that they would really share in common. I don't know, that's just my opinion though.