If we might delve a little deeper though, you said:

“In a traditional classroom setting cross-talk is often discouraged because it is viewed as disruptive to the primary discussion or lecture.”

Indeed so, and that touches on what is I think the crux of the matter. Silencing learner-learner interaction in favour of teacher-centred discussion, lecturing or the website that just delivers content only makes sense if one holds a certain view of what constitutes worthwhile knowledge, teaching and learning: that is, discovering worthwhile knowledge is the exclusive domain of the expert, teaching involves transmission of that body of knowledge and learning is equated with its memorization, comprehension and (with luck) application.

I oversimplify but not hugely. The point is, the value of blogs (or any teaching-learning medium come to that) and the way one deploys them depends on how one understands those three things - even if one has never explicitly articulated or examined that understanding.

A teacher who sees learners as passive recipients of the knowledge they dispense - the old tabula rasa idea - will use blogs very differently from one operating out of a constructivist or generative model, who sees learning as a process of active construction or selection, to which reflection, exploration, discussion, debate, exchange of ideas and so on are central. Or consider the difference between a teacher who sees student discussion primarily as a means to assess how far they have assimilated the information dispensed versus one who expects the learners to not only bring in worthwhile information of their own but even to generate new insights, individually or collectively, that none of the participants including the teacher had initially.

I’m in the generative camp myself. I’m also very strongly of the opinion that effective e-learning design has to be driven by learning theory then supported by appropriate technology, not vice versa.

And thank you for provoking this enjoyable discussion