Blog reading is engaging  and interesting because of the different perspectives you receive from the visitor comments.  The comments often take a different look at or add information to the post.  This makes blog reading more appealing and informative than other forms of reading.  As a teacher I found the student comments especially enlightening.  It was heartening to read how encouraging students are to each other.  In the blog Extreme Biology: Imagine Turning On the Faucet and Nothing Coming Out numerous students thanked Emily for starting a discussion about wasting water during a drought. 

I loved the idea of the scribe in the blog “Scribe Post” and definitely see how having a scribe in the class could facilitate learning.  It is an excellent way of seeing the student’s perspective of what is taught.  It could be a form of assessment that might by more fun than the usual paper and pencil test.  Also,  it could be a quick way of discovering where students are struggling.             

But…..blog reading does take a lot of time.  I tried scanning some of the articles, but I was afraid of missing content.  I found myself jumping around in my reading and going to different articles that were mentioned in the posts.  For example, while reading Pair-a-Dimes (David Truss): Students, Information and Schools I opened a post about rote memorization.  This made blog reading interesting but very time consuming.  This is not the way I usually read. 

The writing in most of the blogs and in the comments was informal.  This made the blogs engaging to read, but it was also distracting.  I wanted to remind the authors to proofread their work.  There is also incorrect information in some of the blogs, which is disturbing to me.  For example in the post Boeum’s Scribe for December 4th the student has numerous mathematical mistakes in her summary.