This post on Jim Groom's blog gives a number of examples and helpful links to institutions who are supporting blogging for both staff and students. Some examples include the University Mary Washington, Calgary and Penn State.
eXe is an open source content authoring tool which works on both PCs and Macs. It has been developed in New Zealand and is free to download. It's reasonably straight forward to use and there are some helpful screencasts on the site which give you an overview of how to use the tool.