Gavin has been looking at constructive environments, that are low tech, low barrier to entry, and curious.
His class is about contemporary issues in design and tech, he looked at blogs initially as another method of just writing essays. His students previously had marked each others work, so blogs seemed natural.
Interesting he did not prescribe a tool he gave students 3 factors:-
1. Support multiple users
2. Must have RSS
3. Could support comments, optional
Most used WordPress, on the faculty web server.
As part of the class they had to read, via RSS, he coupled this with sessions on using the university library. An interesting approach as RSS is just another for of information analysis and searching.
Feedback in 2004 from students was mixed, however peer review was seen as good. Engaged students did better, performance was not directly related to previous experience. Increase use of casual language, and web sources, many entries also posted on personal items, such as life a uni.
Now using blogs as a support platform to collaboration not as a specific assessment, to support small team. This has been a major benefit within the course of the use of blogs, should this be surprising?
Students are now starting to post discussions with tutors and is now providing Gavin a new insight into what is going on in the tutorials, a novel idea. The students are posting to keep others “in the loop” if other miss out.
Michael Specht 
We have been using Wikis with our computer science students to great effect.
Great to hear Satish, over the last couple of days there has been lots of coverage of using blogs and wikis within the educational context. Great to hear this is taking place in India.
One area Gavin certainly has learnt from the experience is that blogs and wikis are best used to support the collaboration education process, not just replace existing educational outcomes.