What I think is amazing here is how far a concept such as pen pals has come. I remember being in elementary school and writing to some random student in another country and by the time I had gotten a response, I forgot what I had wrote and lost the interest in the whole thing anyway. Sherry shows us a very simple way to have almost immediate responses and keep a more realistic dialogue going. The idea of using the teddy bears is great because instead of having the students just list off things about themselves, they can now practice their story telling skills by describing the bears' journeys. By using the internet, students can also easily upload pictures. Now different skills can be practiced and displayed by having one of the blog posts be a pictorial story of where the bear went. I also really like the idea of allowing parents and other classmates to get involved and post comments. By doing this, it becomes more of a social activity and not a writing exercise. As a physical education teacher, I've found that students learn more, put forth more effort, and achieve more when they forget that they are learning and thing they are just playing a game and/or having fun.
Personally, this is my first experience blogging, so this article has already given me many ideas as what can be done with it. I am curious to see what else can be done that could be useful for my classes.
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