he web has become an important resource for teaching and learning (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2003). One reason the web is such a vital resource is that it allows almost anyone to contribute to its "holdings." Tools like HTML editors and FTP clients have made web publishing available to many teachers and students. However, the challenge of learning to use these tools has been a barrier to web publishing for many. Weblogs reduce the technical barriers to effective web publishing significantly. Defining a weblog (also known as a "blog") is somewhat of a challenge. The genre began to emerge around 1997, when a number ofwebsites appeared that were akin to travelogues, pointing users to new and interesting locations on the Internet. At that time the Internet was still largely non-commercial, and could be characterized as an uncharted frontier. These new travelogue websites consisted of links to and commentary on websites their authors found interesting. Barger was probably the first to suggest the term "web log" (Barger, 1999). Barger offered this definition of the term: A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a news page or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre~surfer) 'logs' all the other Web pages she finds interesting. The format is normally to add the newest entry at the top of the page, so that repeat visitors can catch up by simply reading down the page until they reach a link they saw on their last visit (Barger, 1999). Dave Winer, probably the most recognized pioneer of the blogging movement, offers this alternative definition: Weblogs are often-updated sites that point to articles elsewhere on the web, often with comments, and to on-site articles. A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide whom you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there's also camaraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs-they point to each other in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc. (Winer, 2002). A weblog is therefore a website with a certain collection of distinctive features. In 2005 these features generally include: 9 Automatic formatting of content in the form of "headlines;' followed by "entries" or "stories" 9 Time-and date-stamp of entries 9 Archiving of past entries 9 A search function to search through all entries 9 A "blogroll"-a list of other blogs read by the author(s) of the current blog

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