I think one of the most important thing to take fromthe readings is that so many different groups of people are using blogs. Families use them to keep relatives updated on events and family activities, businesses use them, organizations use them for advocacy projects, people use them for social bookmarking (mine for crane articles - have slacked a bit lately), and students use them to show off their work (mine for a course some time ago). They are being used for so many different reasons and by so many different people because they can be quite easy to use. There is no HTML code to learn and it is as simple as WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get! A lot of information can be accessed byindividuals who subscribe to a blog. Those users do not even have to revisit the blog to get updates; they can simply have the updates e-mailed to their inbox. I see blogs being used in education also for many different reasons. A classroom could create one to share inforamton with parents or among the students. They could post information and have others comment on what was posted. It is kind of like a running discussion on a topic.

A good book that discusses uses for blogs (and other web 2.0 tools) is: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson