Does and Will Blogging Actually Assist in Students Literacy Levels?

Although blogging does allow for three elements of learning:
- promotes verbal and visual literacy through storytelling
- allows for collaborative learning
- equitable access for all learners and developmental stages of learners

However is this really the case? Or does blogging really only allow for a casual form of communication? If students are continually blogging do they lose all their ability to write in a formal way, if this is the case what will happen when students seek higher education? Will it result in lower marks and literacy levels of students? One university lecturer has commented that despite those students who receive the highest UAI marks they continually
commence uni with both poor spelling and grammatical errors - would this not only be exacerbated with an increase in the use of blogging within the educational environment? Or would it consequently mean that becuase students work was eligible for many people to access would it make students proof read their work more?

Kennedy 2003 has noted that blogging within the classroom has made a marked improvement in students literacy levels, blogging helps students to become more aware of their writing, as well as their audience....

Thus just maybe my first hypothesis was incorrect. In a changing world I feel that it would only be appropriate to change the medium in which we teach.

Kennedy, K (2003) Writing with Web Logs

Huffaker, D (2005) Let them Blog: Using Web blogs to enhance literacy in the K-12 Classroom