Blog reflection

I think the class blog was a fantastic idea, and I probably could have done a better job taking advantage of it. My favorite posts were the stand-alone posts where a lot of latitude was given--such as the song analysis, or the ethics of writing post. The organizational posts for the issues paper were easy enough to do, but not as interesting. If you have to do assignments like that, though, the blog was a good way to do it.

I didn't feel any different writing in a group setting--I always assume at least someone is going to read what I write--but it may have encouraged me to be more concise. I don't see any real disadvantages to blog assignments for a class like this. Some assignments felt like busy work, but that's inevitable I think, and has more to do with the subjective curriculum of an English class than with blogging.

YEEEEEHAAAAAAAA!!!!

Well to be completely honest... I very much dislike English, and at the start of class when we were doing the blogging stuff I was annoyed by the technicality of the class.... BUT I have had a change of heart! I must admit that I enjoyed the blogging a lot. I agree with others, that it does have its negatives like when some of the post were merely brainstorming ideas... it was easy and we would end up throwing down whatever came to our minds, but even though they were SUPER easy post, I found them to be VERY helpful with the comments back from peers on ways I could tweak an idea to make it better, or by simply reading others ideas, it helped me find some of my own and for me enhanced me writing on those bigger projects.

So I would have to say that I found the blog post to be very great in that they were well rounded! The post where we analyzed something like a picture or a unacceptable claim, they made me learn to think about things in a manner where I personally had never really done before. The post where we would put down parts of our papers and assignments were great because of the feed back we were able to get back from peers. And as I stated before even the easy brainstorming post I found to be very helpful! Over all I found the blogging to be a great tool for us students to collaborate a help one another. If the blogs were to become more complex in terms of difficulty of assignment, I think that it would loose much of what it offers.

Last One...

So this is weird. This is the last (official) blog post for this class. Overall my experience with this class blog has been great. Throughout the semester I have been able to post thoughts, ideas and opinions and have people actually read them and comment on them. I like that people actually read my posts because sometimes I feel like I rant, so I feel like it's uninteresting; however, we all have to read each other's posts so we have no choice not to (well we do, but none of us want to have our grade docked for not commenting on posts). I think that the peer review of my writing has drastically helped me grow in my writing ability. I believe that blogging is a good way to write, to express myself and get my words and thoughts flowing in a creative and semi-organized way.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Overall, I would have to rate my experience with the blog as well, interesting. There were times when I found it to be fun, while other times it felt useless and boring. I most enjoyed the collaboration that blogs allowed. Perhaps the biggest help to me was the ability to post parts of my assignments for the class to analyze and critique. This helped me see the strengths and weaknesses of my arguments and assignments and gave me ideas about how fix them. I also really enjoyed analyzing the images and seeing just what everybody else came up with.

But, as I said earlier, blogging was not all kitty cats and roses. I may just be a sucker for self-punishment but I absolutely love long writing assignments. I love researching a question and forming a solution to it. I love having ten or more pages to adequately answer the question with my argument. I do not feel like blogging helped me in that manner. I recognize that new media is becoming more acceptable in scholarly settings but I do not think that blogging personally helped me to be a better scholar. I sometimes felt restricted; like the blogs did not help me to seriously think about something but merely type out the first thing that came to mind. As others have mentioned, I did not enjoy most of the blogs that required us to go out searching for claims, sites, or whatever else to examine their claims.

I do not mean to demean blogging or those who have learned from them. That's great if it has helped people. I just know personally that because of my writing style and preferences, blogging did not help me very much.

That's all folks

I am so happy that i switched out of my previous class. the blog is a lot more versatile and interesting then doing daily writing assignments. I liked the blog posts that were more general, ones where we had to interpret something, like the image analysis or the initially unacceptable claim. i did not like writing the ones were we had to brainstorm ideas. It was way too easy to just through down a brainless post because it was completely open to interpretation.

I loved being able to comment on post. In my mind that is what makes the blog posts so effective. Also the separation of comments on the blog into comments and comments responses. i think that helped prevent repeating comments without any originality.

my favorite was when i was able to copy Ty's post about plagiarism and post it before him. Making it look he plagiarized me. i got a kick out of that.

Godzilla was a libertarian.

Blog writing has been a mildly pleasant experience, however I can't feel too good about endorsing assigned writing topics. It's just something I've never particularly enjoyed. However, there were a few topics that I was able to convert into something I was thinking about lately. I enjoyed the song analysis, sentence style, cool writings, and the power of the image blog posts. These all had very open topics. I did not enjoy the ones with specific writing instruction, like finding to persuasive websites, the initially unacceptable claim, and this blog reflection. I felt restricted, unoriginal, and commenting was painful because everyone's post looked almost exactly the same.

Mandatory commenting: understandably necessary in a classroom setting, but the product ends up forced, insincere, and useless to the author. If there was a specific post that I enjoyed, I commented on meaningfully without first thinking, "ok, now only one left."

Despite my annoyances, the format itself is 1000 times more useful to me than a traditional assignment. I like people to read what I write.

The End.

Using a blog this semester was an interesting experience for me. At first I really hated the fact that everyone else was reading what I wrote. After a few posts though, I got used to the fact that my peers were going to read my writing. This is definitely a positive aspect of using blogs in English classrooms, it forces students to read the work of their peers and to be comfortable with their peers reading what they have written. But even with these positive benefits, my overall feeling about the blog was ehhhh...okay. Since blogging for class is such a new concept for me, I would often forget that I had an assignment due and then end up rushing to write something down. Writing my actual posts was not enjoyable for me, but I did enjoy reading what others had written. Basically, I don't enjoy writing in any form, whether it be blogging or on paper. In some cases, I think I would have preferred to just do traditional writing assignments, but blogging required my classmates to give feedback on my writing which was beneficial in the end.

Title exploitation time - "Starman" by David Bowie. Listen to it. Do it now.

I did enjoy the blogging that we had to do, even if only to fulfill my craving to feel at least somewhat productive sometimes. I'm a sucker for instant gratification, and along with fast food and Mine Sweeper, blogging provides just that: work that doesn't come with ridiculous length requirements or too much brain straining. Even so, I often found myself to be better off having written and read blogs on this website than not - like Mikhaela said, the post about the outline in particular was very useful. I probably wouldn't have spent so much thought on it (or perhaps more truthfully, even bothered with it) if left to my own devices, which most likely would have come back to haunt me. The commenting aspect of this experience was an interesting touch, but in my opinion, was just a tad lacking. On one hand, it served to really connect me with the rest of the class - I was more conscientious of my content (hopefully, none of my opinions or little sparks of insight seemed drab or laughable)than if I didn't have to worry about someone calling me out on my potential lameness. That said, the sheer lack of "calling out" proved to be slightly more disappointing than one would imagine. Comments in general generally turn out as genial agreements more often than they do actual criticism (yes, I'm guilty of this as well), and that's based on the assumption that one even gets any. Sometimes posts go without any comments, essentially depriving the writer of possible thoughts or criticism of his or her work. Overall however, my experience with the class blog has been a positive one. I enjoyed working with you all through it. (And as for my highly irrelevant title - I already know he was calling himself "Ziggy Stardust" at the time. How dare you try to correct me, future corrector. How dare.)

here comes goodbye

Wow, my final blog post! It is crazy how fast this semester has gone by. I can still remember our first blog posts where we blogged about issues in our lives! Ah the memories. But seriously the blog posts have been an annoying requirement that does help our writing. It is said you cannot become a good write unless you write. And our blogs gave us that chance. They also gave us almost daily peer evaluation and help for our topics and papers. Good ideas praised and not so good ones honestly criticized. Also the fun posts let you get to know your classmates better and who doesn't want more friends? I really didn't like having to fnd websites and articles to analyze, but instead liked the ones where we could vent and share our writing and ideas. But really most of the comments and the posts themselves were done, just to get a good grade. If you notice with my trend of posts, most of them happen late at night or early in the morning, but at least I got them done. (like this one for instance) I think that overall the blog posts helped our writing and gave us somewhere to vent and run new ideas past our peers, despite their tendency to get annoying.

thanks class for a great semester!

Farewell Post

My overall experience with blogs has been rather good. I have enjoyed writing everyday or some days to help with my writing. I have enjoyed analyzing things like the songs or things like that. I enjoy picking things apart like that. I really didn't have a problem with any of the blog post. None of them were required to be excessively long or time consuming which makes them all enjoyable. The posts that involved moving our papers along were pretty helpful. The outline for example, I wouldn't have made such a detailed one on my own. I feel that peers only give some valuable insights. Knowing that they will read it shortly does make a huge difference though. I feel that it makes a difference using a blog versus traditional assignments. It fosters new writing styles. It allows for different ideas to be explored and we still get the benefit of academic papers from other papers. I really enjoyed the blogging.

The fat lady is singing....yay for last blog! :)

This year has been a good experience with using the blog. I think that the use of the blog can be really beneficial in many ways. It is easy and does not seem as overwhelming as a traditional assignment because the internet is something with which most students are comfortable. It has been useful to see other's comments and to read the blogs of others to get ideas and to learn. Also it was helpful to know that there were people there that could help you improve your writing with their suggestions. Yet the thing I didn't like about comments was how they seemed pointless sometimes. I mean it was a good way to get us to read what others wrote, but sometimes I felt that I didn't have much constructive criticism. Nothing useful needed to be said I felt. Quite a few times I would laugh to myself because there wasn't much to respond to from other's comments either. We just put stuff to get the grade. It was frustrating when we were required to respond to comments on our blog and no one had written anything. I don't blame them, it was just hard because then you could not do that part of the assignment....although I don't think we were eventually penalized for that.

Knowing that people were going to read what I wrote did make me want to make sure that it sounded better than if I had just been writing it to write it probably. Also it made me have to defend my writing or realize that I did need to improve it a lot. For example one time I felt I was kindof attacked on what I had written and it made me step back and I think I learned from that.
One thing that I don't think was good about the blog is that it was almost too informal. For example, my title. It really is hard not to add some lols and hahas in sometimes because the blog has a facebook feel. So I noticed that sometimes our blogs seemed really unacademic. If we had turned them in like a regular paper than those things might not have been as tolerated I'm pretty sure.

Blogging About Blogging

At the beginning of the semester I really liked the blogs and thought it was very creative. But as the semester went on, I was fine writing them but a lot of the time I thought it was annoying to have to go back and comment on others' blogs. But I think commenting was important so I do understand. Having other people comment on my blogs made me realize I should probably write descent since people will have to analyze my blog so that they can make their comment. So that was a little motivation to write better. But their comments usually were always helpful and it was nice to get other people's point of view, or advice. My favorite blog was probably the analysis of the song. I thought it was fun, and also fun to see everyone's songs and what they thought of them. I can't think of my least favorite blog post, probably because I blocked it out of my memory. I thought the blogs were very helpful when we were doing blogs concerning our papers. It made me be more organized and helped me progress through my paper faster, instead of waiting till the last minute. It was also helpful because others would have comments of advice. I like this type of assignment other than the traditional assignment because the blog posts seem to take less time, and you are also able to get other people's advice quicker and easier. Overall I thought the blog posts were good.

One chicken at a time....

Well this whole blog thing has been a joy and a little bit of an adventure.

It really has been entertaining to read and comment on everyone's blogs. The funny thing was near the beginning of the semester when no one really knew each other so you didn't really know who the person was commenting on your blog. But as we got to know each other, our personalities really began to show in our blogs and in our comments. That was an interesting development to watch. I really liked watching how our titles to our blogs started out about all the same basic titles related to our topics but then slowly turned into random things. Basically, it was entertaining to watch us go from more formal to informal as we got more comfortable with each other and as we got more lazy (or when we stopped caring).

At first I didnt really care about people reading my blog (or at least I didn't really think about it) until that one time when I got a surprise comment. I had been in a bad mood that day when we had to analyze a book and I decided to be rude about a certain book, and then the author decided to comment on my blog post. Yup that was a humbling moment. I felt really stupid. It was a bit of a slap in the face, reminding me that all of this stuff is open to the public to read and I should probably watch what I write.

Overall I think this blog posting thing was a good idea. It made me think about certain things that I hadn't ever put for conscious thought about. It was espcially helpful for the rhetorical analysis unit when we had to analyze a lot of different mediums of stuff (music, books, ect) to prep us for our rhetorical anylsis papers. And then it was also helpful to have to post our outlines and topic ideas for other papers to help with the writing process for the issues paper. It forced us (or at least a little bit) to not completely write our whole paper and do all of the research for the paper in one night.

As much as I enjoyed writing these blogs, I am not entirely sure how it improved our writing. I think it just aloud us to become very informal and even casual in our writing (like ignoring some grammar and spelling). Because I dont know about anyone else, but I never reread my blog posts before I posted them. But then again if we had to do daily hard writen assignments I think the same situation would occur. So yeah at least these were sometimes fun to do. I would much rather have done blog posts then daily written assignments.

for the record, I am listening to the climb. right now. coincidence.

What has been your overall experience with the blog?
My first time having a class blog and I LIKED it!
What have been your favorite blogs posts?
Talking about our favorite things (start for our issues paper ideas), and talking about a good book we've read lately. I also like the post analyzing pictures. The main reasons I liked these kind of posts was because they were fun and creative, and entertaining to read each others. OH and I like the sentence style blog.
What have been your least favorite blogs posts?
Completely honest, I kind of don't like finding an article or website and writing about all of the rhetorical tools they used. Like finding an argumentative website. I think those are more fun and effective to do with the whole class where you can have discussion.
Have certain types of posts really helped you with your writing?
Uh... I guess the ones I didn't like the most helped me.. the most. Oh embarrassing. To be specific, the website one, the "power of the word" one, and "evaluating sources."
Has the discussion through blog comments helped your learning?
Yeah I think so. Kind of. It's nice to read somene else's comment and analyze what they are saying. Brings new perspective.
Do you feel like you’ve participated in true discourse with your peers?
Yes? It was an entertaining activity to comment each others' blog posts. And now we're all friends :)
To you, what are the advantages and disadvantages of a blog over traditional assignments of the same size?
Advantages of the blog: convenient assignments. Students don't mind so much to write a quick paragraph or two in front of their computer at home as compared to writing up a hard-copy. Plus they've been easily accessible to look over and to comment on other peoples'. Is that right grammer? or spelling? whatever, you get what I'm sayin'.
Disadvantages... Can't think of any right now.
Does the fact that all of your peers are going to read what you write change how/what you write?
Well, automatically I say no, but really, probably. But I don't know why..