Why Blog? What I'm thinking

The conversation that I had with my Yr 7 students made me think about why I have been asking them to blog.
I think one of the things that I could do would be to provide them with some really powerful opportunities to see the way the web can make a difference to people in the world.
An example would be to show them Sarah McLaughlin's website and how she has created a video that simply shows what can be done with the $150,000 that would be normally be spent on making a video release for a new song.
Another would be to use the images that I came across on the reuters website which has a series of topical photo stories and images that you could use and maybe add a song to it to get more effect.
How powerful are images??? and the messages they can send. Can I help the students see this relationship and the power of being able to reach the world even though they are students who live in a small country town in the middle of Victoria.

Why Blog? What the kids think.

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of Year 7 students today who, when told that part of their lesson today would be to add to their blog commented, "We don't get why we have to blog." They wondered what was the point of blogging. Good question (as usual) and it made me think more about what I was actually asking the students to do.
In the immediacy of the lesson I quickly rethought what I had planned to do and decided that we would brainstorm all the Information and Communication technology that we use. And then I asked the kids to think about the one or two things that they couldn't 'live' without and to blog about that.
Seemed to solve the immediate problem but not the long term one.
Later in the day I caught up with the same kids and we talked a little more about what they might want to learn about.
I told them a little about Web2.0 and it's development on the web. How it's one of the reasons that I want to encourage them to blog. So that they, like so many other people in the world, have an opportunity to express their thoughts. To think about what is important to them.
They seemed more interested, especially when I suggested that they have more of a discussion about what they would like to learn about and that I would be happy to listen to them and see what we could come up with.
So that's where I left it for today but it did make me think and wonder about what I could do to encourage them to realise the power of the web and the way it can make a positive difference in people's lives.