Blogs as an instructional tool

As an English teacher, I feel blogs could be used by students in various writing activities. This would be a great strategy to use for on demand writing. I would use blogs to post a prompt and to provide students with the writing requirements for their assignment. Then students would submit their writing as a response or a comment to my original post.
Once they've submitted their writing, I would pair students up with one another, and they would be required to respond or comment on their partner's writing. I feel this activity would inspire creative writing and provide students with an audience beyond their English teacher. The students would have opportunities to collaborate with one another. They would be able to connect to their peers in a personal way, to offer comments on one another's writing, to ask questions, and to suggest possibilities for improvement in a positive and constructive manner. The next step would be for students to take a look at the comments made by their partners, and to make revisions to their first drafts. This would discourage students from skipping steps in the writing process and jumping straight to a "final draft" without bothering to make any revisions.