By: Matt Sreca

 Teachers can give students rubrics of what is expected in the blog that they will post. This helps the student understand what is needed in the blog.  A rubric can help a student indentify what areas are very significant to the post.  A teacher that uses a rubric to assess a blog can simply read the post and check off what areas were met and which were not.

 Blogs are great peer evaluations tools. Students have the capability to reply to other students posts. Teacher can use this feature to have students evaluate each others postings.  Students can learn a lot from each other, and they will pick up on things that other did not.

 Blogs can be an effective tool for students to write short essays that the teacher has assigned for a given topic. Students can take their time to elaborate on the topic.  A teacher can read the postings, and then comment on what he/she thinks of the essay that the student wrote.

 Blogs can be used as a working journal throughout the year. Teachers can keep track of the entries that students post, and comment on each blog.  Students can see how to improve their journal entries by reading the suggestions that the teacher has made on each blog.