Blogging for the Classroom

After sitting through our fantastic department meeting this morning, I have decided that I would like to have my students blogging on a consistent basis for my class (thank you Fleur!) I don't know if I can get this together before we begin Romeo & Juliet since I still have A LOT to learn, so ideally I would love to set it up over the summer and have my classes begin with it in the fall of 2009.

Some concerns that immediately come to mind: how much time will I need to devote to the computer lab to get the students up and running with Google accounts; how long will they need to learn the ins and outs of navigating through their Google account; setting up an accountability system to track who is actually doing the work; making sure that the resources are available and accessible for students; will this make me a lazy teacher?

Blogging and engaging students in the tools available on the Internet may prove to be a successful way to bridge the "technology gap" between my generation and the generation that I am teaching (I don't think it's much of a gap, for the record) and since the Internet is not going to go away, I may as well embrace its presence. Perhaps if I meet the students halfway with moving online, they may be more motivated to meet me halfway in reading the assigned text and responding.