When I was in elementary school teachers were not using blogs, so it was surprising to me how many benefits blogs can have for students.  I particularly liked the idea that students have a real audience for their writing when they are writing on a blog, rather than only writing for their teacher.  I also thought that it was a really neat way for teachers to get information out to students and to encourage students to actually read the information.  Having it in this format encourages students to participate more so than just sending them home with a sheet of paper.  Lastly, I think it is really neat that students can become more proficient in typing through blog-use.  This is a skill that many students struggle with, and extra practice is always good!

One blog in particular that stood out to me can be found here: http://birdsofsalem.wordpress.com/ This blog stood out to me because of how reader-friendly it was.  It included a lot of pictures and the information was organized in a way that made it easy to understand, and was the same for any bird.  I thought the addition of the “Bird-sighting Submission Form” is a neat idea to make the blog more fun.