Hi Troy,
Thank you very much for your excellent ideas. Your experience sounds truly motivating and the examples you give are very good. If I have the chance, I'll try to use some of your tips.
From the students I had only two of them used their blog consistently. I'm particularly happy with the blog of one student because it turned out to be her e-portfolio in the end.
One lesson I learned about using blogs with students who never used blogs before is that you should start with a class blog instead of individual blogs. Later, students may wish to set up their own blog themselves. What do you think about this?