The past decade has witnessed the exponential rise of weblogs, or blogs, as popular and influential online publishing devices. Accompanying the advent of blogs is a growing interest in their pedagogical potential in diverse educational settings, and, while still at the initial stage, both theoretical discussions and empirical evidence of educational blogging have begun to accumulate. Blogs are claimed to be versatile tools that, at least potentially, allow for improvements in various skills ranging from individual reflection to collaborative learning. In addition, blogs are readily available and easy to use, which seems especially appealing to teaching staff in institutions of higher education. With such a wide range of opportunities to promote learning comes a special challenge of how to operationalize educational blogging. In this article, the authors review recent research on the use of blogs in the context of higher education and highlight the implementation issues involved. The authors' primary concern is to help teachers avoid the pitfalls involved in implementing blogging in their classrooms and to design meaningful and purposeful blog activities. The first part of this article outlines the pedagogical benefits of blogs as reflective as well as interactive devices; the second part details, in the light of Moore's theory of transactional distance, three dimensions of implementation issues: structure, dialogue and learner autonomy. Special attention is given to the characteristics of blogs and the challenges as well as the issues involved when implementing educational blogs.