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When I first started blogging, I thought the posts would be the primary focus of the blog. I quickly realized that the comment section was where the blog came to life.

Many parents work but would love to volunteer in some way. Last year, I asked parents to become “virtual volunteers” for our blogs. A virtual volunteer is a person who supports the blog by commenting back to students. This type of interaction helps strengthen the home-school connection and makes the comment sections more engaging.

With classroom time at a premium, I look for meaningful ways to integrate curriculum; the blog has been the perfect venue. When my class read “The Great Kapok Tree” by Lynne Cherry for language arts, the students followed up their reading by researching a rain forest animal that was mentioned in the story. Each student composed a comment for the blog from the point of view of that animal.

I do think it's incredibly important to engage this question of whether or not Khan Academy constitutes a revolution in math education, because it's a powerful case for asking one of the fundamental questions in education today: should we be using technology to do old things more efficiently, or to do new things? A lot of the fawning media coverage of Khan Academy doesn't necessarily advance this discussion