After reading Christine's two articles and searching the internet for ideas about math, I have come up with some ideas. Unfortunately, I think they block Blogger.com and any other type of forum such as this at our school (I know Google-groups was blocked for a long time till we petitioned to have it unlocked for the Robot club). This makes it more difficult since children who do not have internet access at home cannot do the assignment (cannot use school equipment at lunch or before or after school) (but I could try to use Google-groups instead)
First, I would have an easy, access assignment, say a multiple choice quiz that the students could download (word doc) from my blog page and answer and then submit by emailing me at my special, email address for their class. There would be questions like;

Name_________
True or false: Mr. Clark is the handsomest teacher you have ever seen?
True or false: You love math?
True or false: Mr. Clark’s nose is very small?
A, B, C, D, E, F: Circle the grade you think you will get in the class

Furthermore, I also would have them check out and play some online puzzles and games (show them I am cool and introduce them to some math web sites)

1) http://www.k111.k12.il.us/King/math.htm#Beginning
2) http://www.aplusmath.com/
3) http://www.coolmath.com/

Second: I used to have the students write daily in a diary about today’s lesson (90 minute class), but this does not work well with my 55 minutes classes. So I would have them keep a daily dairy about what they learned in class that day at home on their blogger page. They could look at their class notes to help. I would keep a daily dairy too. My English teacher used to say,” Writing clarifies thought”. This works for math as well.

Third: I found a cool web site, www.HippoCampus.com that actually has an online class for Algebra 1 aligned to our math book! Two or three times a week I would assign as homework the corresponding tutorial from hippocampus as part of the homework. In their diary I expect a summary of the tutorial with details like,”There was a word problem with two students named Buford and Maria who were counting votes”. This way I could know that they at least went and viewed the tutorial.
I would grade their blog pages once or twice a week.