Blogging as an Educational Tool

I am glad that we are getting to try out blogging. As an educational tool, I think there are real possibilities for blogs. Research shows that students will put more effort into a writing assignment if it is going to be published where their peers can read it. My school is piloting a "reflection" component next year in which the students will spend 10-12 minutes a day reflecting on their learning for that day. I think it would be awesome to keep those reflections on a blog.

On the other hand, blogging has been used as a means of harassing other students in ways that hadn't even been thought of when I was in public school. Coupled with photographs taken in the gym locker room with cell phone cameras, blogs have been used to humiliate classmates to the point that they do not want to come back to school. How can we use legitimate blogs in schools and manage to block the less educational blogs? Should we block blogs at all? I don't have the answers, but I think the educational community will have to come to terms with this aspect of technology