Blogs in Primary Schools

I'd like to explore my thoughts further on some of the issues raised in today's lesson about how Blogs can be used in Primary Schools. It was suggested that they can be a good ICT tool for children and can be used in a variety of ways. Children can be encouraged to create 'Class' blogs, 'Sports' blogs, 'News' blogs or 'Outing' blogs, for example. And in doing so, the pupils become responsible for their own blogs, and in turn, developing their own learning in ICT and the relevant cross curricular subjects. However, so early on in my learning and understanding of blogs, there are aspects of this that I find problematic; the main one being, that what gets posted on a blog is 'out there' for anyone to access. Although, in the case of a school, the target audience of such blogs would be parents, peers, teachers and friends, there is still the danger that people you don't want accessing the information, can. As a newly qualified teacher in my first school, I would have reservations about using this technology with my children without seeking a better understanding of the privacy and child protection laws that exist. Or, alternatively, I would look to use the media in a safe environment that was password protected or within a secure firewall.