The (literary) weblog has gradually evolved from a peripheral into a legitimate genre of which the contours have largely been established. Due to its increasing popularity, a number of changes have imposed itself on literary communication and education, which by and large are characterized by an increased participation of the reader. Changes, which reading promotion and teacher training can no longer ignore. Although a lot of teacher trainers have already experimented with weblogs in their training classes, there has been little systematic research to the educational potentials of using blogs in teacher training. Partly to meet this gap and under the authority of the Flemish government, we designed a research project at Ghent University which was centered around two research questions: 1. what functions can weblogs have in education? 2. how can teacher training programs benefit from the educational functions of blogs? The research project fits in with the larger debate over the dangers and opportunities of new media (see e.g. Lovink 2008; Keen 2008), with the increasing attention for the possibilities of using digital media in educational settings (see e.g. Mottart, Soetaert & Verdoodt 2003) and with the – relatively new – discussion about the potentials of blogs for education (see e.g. Williams & Jacobs 2004; Bresia & Miller 2006).

From a methodological perspective, the research project is based on ethnographical research, in which the participants – in this case: teachers-in-training – reflect upon their own actions. In the project, 10 formal classes (in which teachers-in-training have to be physically present in a classroom) were replaced by 10 digital classes in which teachers-in-training were taught teaching subjects through a weblog. During the project, the teachers-in-training were asked to share their experiences with this kind of teaching and were invited to discuss with peers (focus group research) about their confrontation with weblogs in teacher training on an online discussion forum. After the project, they wrote a critical paper about using weblogs in education in general and in teacher training in particular. Their online reactions and papers were analyzed by means of discourse analysis (Potter & Wetherell 1987).

The analysis of the entries on the discussion forum and the reactions in the papers often revealed contradictory experiences and interpretations, some of which led certain students to change their initial views on the use of blogs in education and in teacher training. We learned that discussing the educational possibilities of blogs deepened our students’ understanding of blogs. Moreover, students seemed to really care about how subject matter is taught, as was proven by the willingness to share their personal narratives about the confrontation with blogs and the ample suggestions on how our teaching project could be improved. But most importantly, uniting the different opinions about blogs in teacher training caused a very instructive discussion about the meaning and their educational possibilities.