As weblogs approach their tenth birthday, these online publishing tools, commonly known as blogs, continue to generate conversation and controversy in diverse arenas from journalism to business to education. But a preliminary taxonomy of the types of weblogs shows a complicated picture. Blogs have morphed pretty dramatically from their original use for annotating the web. Politicians use them to raise money. Businesses use them to hawk products. Extroverts use them to share their lives. Communities use htem to organize. In fact, more than one blog commentator has suggested that they are so varied as to defy definition. They share a technology but trying to identify a specific genere called “blogging” is incrasingly impossible.
Educators have also embraced weblogs with English teacher Will Richardson leading the charge. His English students’ blog about The Secret Life of Bees shows off the different facets of weblogs software from posting to commenting to including multimedia, even using the blog to communicate with the author, Sue Monk Kidd.
