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..

Analyzing Persuasive Websites

Probably the most important part of online rhetoric is ethos. Because the internet makes it easy to post almost anything on the internet, and almost as easy to direct the reader to one's sources, consumers of online content expect to know where you got your information before they can trust it.

The texting website relies heavily on logos--their advice is mostly common sense, so there isn't much need to cite a source, but they could use more figures to define texting as a social issue worthy of notice.

The social networking website makes good use of its sources and hyperlinks, but could probably be formatted better. I had no desire to read all three essay-style paragraphs on each web page.

http://ornery.org/

This is Orson Scott Card's political blog. He is extremely opinionated, and his arguments could almost be a case study in rhetorical fallacies. He fulminates constantly against what he considers to be a monolithic, insidious cabal of left-wing media outlets, politicians, and academic institutions. His site's formatting could use some work, but his writing is generally entertaining enough to keep you reading.

Opening Paragraph (super late)

Video games are unique as a mode of creative expression, with immense potential to engage the consumer, to portray an artist’s views, and, as technology improves, to be purely, deliciously aesthetic. The medium is still in its infancy, however, and game designers have yet to find good solutions to the medium’s unique artistic challenges, or to effectively mine its rich creative potential.

In my defense I pulled my second all nighter this week so I forgot.... Oops

The problem with a lot of websites it the frist appearence. If the first appearance is good then the internet surfer will stay on your website and read what you got to say. If your appearance is lacking then all the shallow people in the world will move on to the next big and great thing that hte internet has to offer. In the students websites what I really like was the one that had the youtube video before you entered the actual website. It got you interested and helped you to immediately understand what issue they are/were addressing. Sometimes videos and images can work really well and can compliment your arguement, but when used too much or at the wrong places it can ruin it all. There was one student web site on their home page had a whole bunch of images, and that just ruined it for me. It looked messy and out of place.

For the web site I chose a wikipedia page. Almost every Wikipedia webpage is trying to teach your or coninvce you about something. In this one it is about social networking. The layout of Wikipedia has obviously been successful because it is still being used with little complaints. It is clean and un cluttered and organized. These things are what can make or break a webpage.

So fun stuff.

Health care and Virtual Reality

So the non-student website i decided to look at was health care. which seems like a pretty easy one for right now. the website i used was http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health-care which the white house website that talks about the health care agenda. being a government website the presentation looks very neat and straight forward. all the most important points are in bold so as to bring out their meaning. this also has video links, which is like the student essay is which i saw about virtual living. they both have video that try and expound on the topic and they are a lot both haveof hyper links. how ever the white house website has more of an ethos appeal, because it is after all the president. they don't put any effort into citing sources because they are the experts on the issue. i also think the color layout, basic blue and white of the government website gives it a more authoritative feel then the student website. Also the calligraphy of the white house has is more formal.

Its snowing :(.....

The website I found was arguing the issue of gun control. Their mission is to basically fight against the movement of putting a tighter hold on gun control. They believe it is a violation of the second amendment and are voicing their opinion. I found their website to be very well put together and user friendly. Which is a huge plus in my book, because if I click on a web site and get lost just trying to figure out how to use it, I find myself quickly using the previous page button on my browser and going back to google. I actually did this for a while when doing this blog post assignment till I found this one. Something that I actually really enjoyed on this website was something that I usually don't, the advertisements on the right hand side of the page. Because they were relevant to the pages context and also I found them to be entertaining I kept reading on. One other thing they did really well was on their opening page, it was just a list of current events on police reports of gun owners using them "for the right cause". I found these to be very interesting and it kept me interested.

Now although I found the website I found to be more professional and more informational. I must admit that I much more enjoyed looking at the students web pages. I loved the texting one and all the new media they uses to keep you reading on. Well I'll be honest some of the media was more entertaining than relevant in some cases, but it kept me there and interested none the less.

Weight

The two websites I looked at are both very good websites. The student website is a little bit less information heavy whereas the official website I found had a better layout. The student website was very interesting, as the photos used made me want to read the website to see if there were more photos. I wish that they had actually directly quoted some of the sources more, but the information that they presented was great. The other website I found is even more interesting: it is a webpage by vegetarians for vegetarians and there just happens to be a story about obesity in America. The article is thought provoking, formatted well, and includes some cool photos. It also has hyperlinks to other articles on the same website, like the student website; however, the other articles have more information and more photos. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it would be hard to say that one is better than the other.