Steve over at Teach42 has posed some really, really interesting questions.  He writes/asks:

It’s a fascinating topic. Blog the noun, vs. blogging the verb. They
are very different things. Thinking about blogging as the set of ’21st
Century Skills’ that students must know to create and maintain a blog
puts a very different spin on it. The reality is that this really needs
to be considered closely, as these skills should probalby be included
into curriculum standards. Blogs are one way to teach these skills,
they aren’t the only way. But they do need to be represented and built
into the curriculum.

Hrrrm… Methinks this requires more
thought. What are the important skills for a student to know in order
to be an effective, quality blogger? What skills does a student need to
know when they graduate lower school, middle school or secondary
school? Finally, what is the intersection of those two sets?

One
last question to mull over: Do blogs offer up a new way to teach the
same skills we’ve already been targeting, or do they represent a new
skill set that we need to be incorporating?

        And I responded:

        Wow. You ask a huge question at the end of your post here, Steve. My
gut answer is yes and no — Blogging as I am beginning to understand it
asks a writer to take ideas and weave them together — a little of this,
a little of that, add some critical analysis and you’ve got a good
piece of writing. That’s no different than any other writing that I ask
my students to do. I want them to think critically.

But blogging,
because it involves hypertext and the entire Internet to draw from,
adds a layer. Students linking and cross linking can get, well,
complicated. as you say, a blog can help to make clear a “conversation
occurring in slow motion,” which is precisely what a good piece of
writing is — it speaks to the pieces that came before and it hints at
those to come.

    There’s lots here that I, like you, have to think about.

        But I don’t like what I said there — yet.   
        I failed to mention that the physical act of linking is an essential skill.  To be able to connect multiple texts, to show where one idea was born and merged into another idea — that is a fantastic skill that I do not believe is possible without the blog.  The hypertext here is essential.  A student making these same connections with sticky notes or string or highlighters on a paper text  just doesn’t make sense to me.  But I don’t know.  It’s late, and I’ve been thinking too hard lately.   
        My answer is a work in progress.  Like me.
         I want to think more about Steve’s questions and get back to them, so I’m reserving the right to do so.  In the meanwhile, why don’t you take a stab at them?  Tell us what you discover.