Why blog?
There are a lot of great reasons why teachers need to have a blog or wikispace but it was brought home to me this week of the most basic reason of why even the least internet savy needs to have a blog or wikispace.
Children need a generic place from which go to web spaces for learning without typing an impossibly long web address.
Imagine trying to have people to go to this web address without it being hyperlinked somewhere
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kPbcdRYAoIBiiLbetoRWNu3eHDdfm6Ebeto2zPArwZw/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CITYyqkK
I would defy anyone to type that and get it right. You could use a URL shortner like http://goo.gl/ or http://tinyurl.com/ but even then typing http://goo.gl/S80J3 and getting it right first time will be problematic for kids.
So here is a scenario! 
A teacher has been told about a great website that they want to direct their class to like Spelling List Five of Spell-Write. The teacher has entered the spelling words into the website and saved the list.
The web address (URL) for it is http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=1914671
How are the children going to get there? The teacher could shorten it with http://goo.gl/xXOyP but typing even that will be time consuming with possibilities of typing it incorrectly and ending up somewhere where you didn’t want to go or having to start all over again.
If the teacher has a web presence that is the Home Page on the computer in their classroom all the children have to do is open up their web browser and there is the named link on the blog or wikispace. Even if you are out and about you can still find your resource if it is linked to the blog.
For a couple of examples look down the side bar of our class blog http://moturoa.blogspot.com/ for reading and maths links.
If you want to know how to do this in Blogger here is a ‘how to’ on how to do it.
http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/adding-links-to-your-blog.html
And this time I’ll hyperlink it so you can see how easier it is to find with a hyperlink.
http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/adding-links-to-your-blog.html