Blogs vs. journals

I just received my May/June edition of Tech Trends in the mail. (Boy is it late!) Other than the great article by Dr. An in there on Designing Digital Game-based learning environments (sucking-up royally), the article that really caught my eye was "Blogs in Higher Education: Implementation and Issues" by Liping Deng and Allan H.K. Yen. Not to go all into the article, you can all read it for yourself if your interested, I just want to expound on one point they made which was to reiterate that blogs are actually just the electronic format of reflection journals that learners have been creating forever. The difference is that those journals (in blog format) can now be shared, contain links, references, be used for collaborative efforts and can help someone else understand a subject matter through peer-to-peer teaching. I never really thought of the blog as just a reflection paper. I have mostly been getting hung up with it being a collaborative discussion tool than just a reflection method. I guess everything has dual purposes doesn't it? And the light bulb comes on!