Will Richardson is a blogging pioneer. He writes in "Blogging and RSS" that blogging is engaging for students who are otherwise not inclined to participate in school activities. Blogs a fluid, meaning they are constantly updated (hopefully), and there is room for comments and interactions between bloggers (students, teachers, and possibly parents or readers from around the world!). Blogs encourage students to write for an audience, pay attention to voice and grammar, as well as collaborate with other people. Teachers are using blogs as a home for homework assignments, student reflections, audioblogs, and also digital dropboxes for files.
The most influential change in blogging seems to be RSS (Real Simple Syndication). It's a way for readers of blogs to keep up with new updates from numerous blogs. Instead of going to 15 blogs and looking for new posts, the new posts automatically come to you. Google Reader is a good aggregator for adding your favorite blogs. To use this featured app from Google, sign in with your username, click Reader at the top of the screen and start "subscribing" to all of the feeds you enjoy following. As soon as new posts are added, Google Reader will let you know. So there you go--all of the new blog posts you want to read, all in one place. This is an awesome feature for teacher who want to keep up with their students' posts and not have to go to each site to look for updates.
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