Blog to students, why?

Dear Students in both courses, vertebrate and ecology, 

Tomorrow marks the first day of the second semester at the Hashemite University (hereafter HU). Despite the lightning short vacation between the two semesters, I was busy thinking of a way to encourage students to be more engaged and more interested.

I admit that the first semester was like a marathon for me, running from one thing to the other.  however, I have noticed several things that I would like to change:

1. Students are not serious about showing up to lectures. 
2. Students are hesitant in asking for clarification, or just showing that they or I missed a point in the lecture.
3. Students hardly take any notes.
4. Students are very good in procrastination.
5. With my schedule, I used to forget some important announcements. 

The lecture is too short for open discussion, or to say the least, not quite enough. As annoying as it was the first few weeks when I noticed that most students are tech-savvy and that cell-phones, tablets, or laptop-sized-cellphones do not leave their sight for few seconds, I decided to use some of this time for a good use. Not saying that you guys do not use your time wisely on the net, but just to add using it in introducing, learning, and discussing academic materials. 
 
At first, I thought of using Moodle system, but I know that most of you hardly open the system, and most importantly, the system seems to fail very often. Therefore, I thought of using blogger-sphere.

The idea is to use this open space to update students on lectures activities, field trips (for ecology students), discussion, and any announcement that I would like to share with you all. 

Happy new year and happy semester 

I pray to Allah that this will be beneficial for all of us...