When sixth-grade teacher Rachel Yurk created a blog for her classroom this year, she began the online learning experiment with a simple, engaging question: "What's your favorite book and why?" By that night, Yurk's e-mail had exploded with about 200 messages - each one notifying her that another comment had been posted to the online discussion. Safely nested in Virtual Office, a secure system that New Berlin Public Schools is piloting and plans to take districtwide by next year, Yurk's classroom blog engages students in a common discussion tool without exposing them to uncensored activity in the real-world blogosphere.

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