How Can Blogging be Valuable in the Classroom?

Ok, so in lieu of our recent class and newfound inspirations and ideas on just WHAT to blog about, I have definitely been thinking...  How could blogging be a valuable resource in a classroom setting?  Well, I know the question must seem like an obvious one to ask, but the answers are not so obvious in the fact that there are SO many creative and valuable things that I believe can be done with using a blog in your classroom. 

I know there are the issues of students not being allowed to get on a teacher's blog from school, with the online safety issues, but I know for a FACT that if a teacher wants his/her students to view a site that is blocked by the district, all the teacher has to do is put in a request to the school's techie person and that person can approve it through downtown.  I've done it several times. 

With that said...I'd like to start answering the question that I started this post with.  As I sat in class, I was envisioning the following:

The class is reading a novel together, and students are reading their own books (most likely AR) at home each night.  When students come into the classroom in the morning, part of their morning work would be to go to a computer, log on to my blog and respond to a post I had written the night before or morning of.  The post would ask specific questions about reactions, comparisons, connections, etc about the class novel.  It may even ask a question about some hidden or hard to find information.  The students respond/comment on this post and are held accountable (probably not graded) in some way for responding.  Next, students must post some type of comment about the novel they are reading at home. 

This activity must be motivating enough that students are just itching to get on the computer and respond to my posts.  This motivation may stem from a funny or silly post made by me. 

My sister's Kindergarten teacher (I was in probably 5th grade when she was a kindergartener) had his own class telephone number (this was WAAAAAAYYYY before the days of websites), and his students (including me and other non-students) would call this number and encounter an answering message that had funny riddles, stories, questions, etc.  We would get such a kick out of this that we would call everyday and multiple times a day.  I would like to see my students doing the same thing with my blog :-).