A Little Behind But Ready to Roll

I think I am ready. I have blogged a few times before on a personal website but now it is time to get serious. For only being an avid facebooker, my master's class, Emerging Instructional Technologies, is definitely getting me to explore other options more!! So far so good. Already I am getting into the habit of reading the blogs of not only my classmates but of others and I am getting interested. Is this the reading of the future?? Right now at our school, we are doing Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) and take 30 minutes a day to free read. (Here is an article from Education World about SSR: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr038.shtml.) The students and teachers get a book and then we read. We do short book talks at the end. Instead of books, could I let the students read a blog they are interested in? Would reading a blog for 30 minutes improve their reading just as much as reading a book? Would this especially be beneficial for those students who don't like to read books but like to spend a lot of time on the computer??