Hit the Ground Running

We read about the use of blogs in our text book and I thought I would touch on how I could start using that right now. At the moment I have a weekly assignment that is a response editorial to an online newspaper article. Essentially, I have been asking the students to submit a weekly blog but they don't think of it in that way.
The thought I've been having is, Why not open it up? Essentially, I could give the assignment a swift kick in the relevance by having it viewable by their classmates in our Moodle classroom so that each individual would know that others were trolling their opinions and reading the same articles. This would allow others to see excellent examples of the assignment done right and it would make it easier for me to point to credible attempts. Further those who as of yet have been doing a substandard job might find themselves shamed into doing better since they will be aware of the bright white heat of the audience.