Walking into a computer lab in St. Louis Park’s Susan Lindgren or Peter Hobart elementary schools, you’d be forgiven for thinking that kids from a couple of classrooms seem to be blogging about their schoolwork. The tool they're using bears a passing resemblance to Blogger or other online content management systems, and students frequently post digitized copies of worksheets, book reports and other assignments online. It may walk like a blog and quack like one, too, but its developers and two St. Louis Park teachers who’re piloting its use in elementary schools say it’s helping students get …

Mike Farrell's fifth grade class at Susan Lindgren is about to go to recess and it shows.  Kids fidget, and ripples of whispered chatter spread around the room, despite the big, bold letters of Rule #1 (zero noise) projected on the classroom wall. Farrell sternly repeats himself to individual chatterboxes as he and student volunteers pass out his classroom newsletter containing next week's homework, waiting until everyone is quiet and listening.   For Farrell, running a successful classroom is all an exercise in patience. And despite being a high school teacher, the same issue resonates with …