Blogs, Wikis, and Nings

Blogs, wikis, and Nings are very common in these modern times of technology. All of these modes of technology will be helpful in the classroom. These three elements will help in the communication between students, parents, and educators.
Blogs are ways of communicating emotions, ideas, or any other personal information that one choose to share with other people. It is pretty much a journal that many different individuals can read. It might be useful in a classroom because the students can make a blog and are given new prompts to write about every week, like we are doing this course.
From what I understand a wiki is similar to a blog in that you express different facts and information, but someone else can go into your wiki and edit the information posted. This is not the case with a blog, the only author and editor is the person writing the blog. It might be an interesting idea to have students use a sight like Wikipedia, create information and have the students edit it.
A Ning is a little more private then a blog and wiki, you can get to choose who you want to read it. It is a social network that can be created by anyone but the members all have a common interest. This would be helpful in the classroom because the educators and students can post information that will only be seen by the members of the classroom.