Pluses and Minuses of Blogs in the Classroom

For my reflection on this blog post I read Samantha Mason's Blog. Samantha is in my EDM class and we worked together on our podcast project. Our blogs are similar and her experiences seem to be the same as mine were. I believe that blogs in the classroom are a wonderful idea. This semester I have had to either respond to or create three different blogs. It has been an educational experience. I had never used blogs before this semester. Blogs are an interesting media as I have learned through the blogs of others and my own three.
One of the pluses of blogs in the classroom are a greater connectivity between students in the class and the class material. Students can learn lessons in class and then if they don't understand homework or have questions they can log onto the blog and ask their peers or the teacher. Another plus is that the information from class is in an easily accessible place. Students are always on the computer so why not put the material in an place where they can find it and respond to it!? Blogs are also a great place to put classroom homework assignments!
A minus to having classroom blogs is the threat of bullying. If students are putting their work and questions out on a blog for all to read it is always possible that some of the others might bully or respond too critically to some. Another minus is that there isn't as much accountability to the students. Blogs are more of a abstract area and some students may never use it. It would also be hard to keep track of all of the complexities of dealing with the bullies and the solutions that could be employed to stop the bullying.
Blogs are complex especially when you have a group of people all on the same blog. All in all though I think I would like to give it a try in one of my future classes tough!