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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
haha love your title! and i agree about the comments are just there to get the grade! (like maybe all of mine?) and now that i read your second paragraph i realized that i do treat blogs like facebook and they were probably a little to informal (i included those haha's before reading it all :P)
ReplyDeletethe comments are the only thing that separates this assignment from writing response papers in every other class. hitting the target number was kinda annoying but she has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
ReplyDeleteI noticed the same thing as you! One time I felt like someone had just pulled apart my analysis. As I was going through it I realized that I was actually right, but I had just needed to explain more and defend my point more. So that comment, although it didn't exactly help me, it helped me realize what I needed to work on.
ReplyDeleteThanks Amanda....see point proven it is so hard not to put informal things like that sometimes. Haha I feel better writing them though. :) Here is me not being as formal as I have tried to be throughout the semester.
ReplyDeleteOk here is my thought....Why am I doing this second post instead of just replying in one comment to both Ty and Amanda? Because of the grade. True sometimes you may respond to one comment and then see another person comment on your blog later, but sometimes I feel it is silly to have to spread out comment responses just for the grade.
ReplyDeleteTy I do think that comments were great in many of the posts, but sometimes I felt like all I could say was "Good job" which is still nice to hear and has it's purpose, but did not really help a great deal. Still overall the comments were beneficial though I guess.
The comment responses were the things I had a hard time dealing with though mostly...I mean all I could say was "Thanks" sometimes. How is that helping my writing? Then again though having to respond to comments forces you to read what people wrote so it has its place also. I guess they were annoying, but I would not get rid of them.
Oh and I meant Troy, not Ty.
ReplyDeleteI remember that post Chelsie and it was a good example of how comments can help.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with everyone else, I think being forced to do comment responses is silly. I don't really have anything to say. For example, right now. I am not offering any additional nuggets of knowledge, but I am getting points.
ReplyDelete