Using Blogs in Class

So.

Another person started following me on creepy, creepy academia.edu.

I was curious about who he was, so I looked at his profile. And lo and behold, he seems to use blogs as a tool in his teaching. It's something I hadn't really thought about doing (although I do know that people do such things) but for some reason, this got me to considering it. Perhaps it was just enough of a reminder that it's an option to kick me into gear now that I'm paying more attention to the electronic underbelly of academia. I'm not quite sure how I'll implement it or for which course, but I'm thinking I might give it a shot once I'm back from leave. One thought that occurs to me immediately is that, at least the way we have it structured now, students in the intro course do presentations most weeks during recitation that include introduction of new material that they have read in texts beyond what their classmates have written as well as leading discussion about the required readings; perhaps it would be useful to have the presentation groups post beforehand to a group blog with discussion questions and other presentation materials so that the other students can come to class more ready to engage with those in the hot seat that week? I'm not sure what the effect would be of doing something else, namely having students blog weekly reading responses and comment on each others' posts. Maybe blogging would be a useful way of scaffolding small assignments for a research paper — or, no, for a digi-hum final project?

Anybody out there used blogging as a component of a semester's assignments? How did it work out, and what would you do differently (or the same) next time?

To be continued.