So far in my high school life science classrooms I have not used blogs to enhance student course material. Instead, I have relied upon wikis exclusively. However, I am seeing now that blogs and wikis are both invaluable tools, but should be used for different purposes. In the past, I've assigned wikis to groups of students to post information and revise each other's work as part of research projects. An example of this is my first "wiki experience", a bioremediation project assigned to my 12th grade biotechnology students during my student-teaching (feel free to check it out).
While wikis are great for this type of group research assignment, blogs seem more suited for individual reflection of learning and for students to reflect and comment upon other students' thoughts and ideas. Honestly, I haven't even thought much about the value of "weblogs" until I read the information presented in the Richardson text, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. The first benefit that popped into my mind was that this could be very useful to incorporate literacy into my science classroom. This is something I focused on during a course I took on expanding students' literacy skills a few semesters ago.
The idea is to have students read non-fiction science novels (age-appropriate, of course, and hopefully not too dry as to not turn them off science) and complete reflections on their reading. However, it wasn't until I read Richardson that I realized the amazing benefits of having students post their reflections as blogs. First, now other students can read their reflections and post responses, not just me. Second, students can see all of their previous blogs (i.e. reflections) before they post their new ideas. And third, students are able to go back and comment on their own reflections as their ideas change as they move through the text.
Wikis are a great place for students to edit and expand upon each other's ideas and material, but blogs are useful for students to practice some reflection about the concepts they are learning. Using blogs, students can also post links to articles that relate to the concepts they are learning. They can also post reflections on how the content they are reading relates to content learned in class or from their own experiences.
