Blogs in K-12 Classrooms

I found a Mr. Langhorst of South Valley Junior High School in Liberty, Missouri using a website in very interesting ways. Mr Langhorst teaches eighth grade history. His website includes things such as "This week in class" which highlights what is covered in class each week. He even divides the week in color coded days to let the students focus on different areas of study on blue days and others on white days. Mr. Langhorst includes on his website the usual class pictures, units of study, contact information and the like but what I found interesting and unique was his podcasts or "studycasts" as he calls them. These studycasts are short podcasts on units of study such as "Our Constitution" and "The Revolutionary War." I wish I had these type of resources when I was in school.

Finding actual teachers with this sort of website was difficult at best but finding technology and software to facilitate this sort of learning/teaching was not difficult at all. This is a great segue to the information I received when I visited my school for my technology trifold brochure. The feeling was that the technology is there but limited is the money to purchase said products and teachers who are willing to learn a new way in addition to all of the paperwork they now have to have to prove they are doing their job.
I am not in the teaching field as of yet so making an educated comment on where the problem lies would be completely theory. I do however hate to see such a productive tool go virtually unused except by the seasoned few.