blogging in academia

I wonder how much the buzz in this article will affect academia's view of blogging. "blogging and blugging" can work for graduate students who want a forum for their ideas without having to go through a major publisher; news feeds list prominent blogs in addition to the regular opinion writers, and many of those have switched their methodology to blogging. Yet this really great tool still seems to be on the outskirts when it comes to teaching.
The Ed Techie says:

At this stage, it is more about the social networking than establishing a profile around ideas. The relative importance of a blog may depend on who you are and where you are in your career.

He's saying that the people moving 'beyond' blogging are the ones already established within their field of expertise, perhaps why they feel more comfortable moving to a more plastic flow of information on Twitter or FriendFeed.

I agree with his view that blogs are not just archives . Technology hasn't moved quite that fast. The relative slowness of blog comments and feedback (compared to instant messaging or other networking sites) are part of what make blogs a really great space to think out ideas and interact with other minds. Face to face and real time mediated conversations are great, but there is a definite difference in dialogue when there isn't the immediate pressure to sound 'smart' in your response, when you can read the posted ideas and go away and process your thoughts and eventual response.

I know that when I was an undergraduate I enjoyed listservs and class forums, but there was a problem with members of the class not participating. Blogs however, are definitely more open to being injected with one's personality. There's room to add pictures, font choices, which blogging service you use, etc... With the removal of the university as supplier, one of the layers between the student and posting goes away. It feels like less of a chore set up by the institution (with the university's logo ever present) and more like an demonstration of one's personal intellect. This is not to say that new tools like Twitter wouldn't help with such an exercise, but there is too much unexplored potential in blogging at the undergraduate level to move forward quite yet.