I really enjoyed this assignment this year. This assignment inspired me to start my own personal blog which I update fairly regularly. Blogs were also an assignment in my chem class so I really got involved in this medium this year.
Blogging allowed me to ponder things that I wouldn’t normally think about, and that, in itself made this assignment worthwhile.
But to me, some of the blog prompts seem slightly forced. For example, with the “best of week blogs”, many kids in our class had issues coming up with things, often asking around to see what other kids come up with. This led to less than stellar blogs, and a less than stellar experience.
To me, these blogs aren’t really “blogs”. By imposing strict guidelines on what you need to blog about, and not letting students post other things it becomes more of an online journal rather than a blog. Another critical element with blogging is interaction with the community. Other than the comments that we need to post for the “blogging around” prompts there’s really nobody else. I installed a hit counter on my blog out of curiosity, and it gets probably 2-4 hits a week. Mostly me, you, and the occasional other academy student. My personal blog, where I post lots of different things, gets 50-60 a week.
I feel like without this interaction with the online community, I could get the same experience by emailing a response to prompt to you every week.
This blogging experience did introduce me the idea of having my own personal blog, which I enjoy a lot, and for that I’m grateful.
6 comments:
Kyle-
I found your post really interesting. I've read your personal blog, and it's very entertaining! So I'm glad that blogging in English led to starting your own blog. I agree that some of the blogging prompts were somewhat forced and could be improved upon. I also struggled with the 'best of week' prompt, although, in theory, I think it is a good idea to reflect on the insightful comments of our peers. I think sometimes it's just hard to remember those comments at the end of the week. I also agree about the online community part. I hope that Mr. Allen continues blogging with his students in the future, but I think adding an element of online interaction would make the blogging experience even more worthwhile. Great job!
-Kate K
Hey Kyle,
I had no idea that you had your own personal blog, but send me a link - I want to check that out.
I think it's ironic how something that was dictated by another to you and used as a grade in class opened to you to a new way to express yourself. Huzzah for blogs!
I disagree, though, in that the guidelines are super strict. Sometimes he let's us choose what prompt we would like to use and a lot of times the prompt he does assign correlates to something we learned in class. I do agree in that some of the prompts needed some instruction and more insight though so that students are left wondering what to do or what to write about(have you seen my dialect blog? talk about train wreck!)
Anyways, thanks for your insights and I hope to read more on your own blog!
PS - what do your write about in your chem blog? My feelings and reflections toward science are pretty simple: it kills my GPA and labs are fun. Not exactly brain surgery.
Kyle,
Great post! I agree with a lot of what you said. I also said in my blog post that I felt that some of the given blog prompts were too forced. I thought it was interesting that you said that with this type of assignment, we could basically email Mr. Allen our "journal response" each week and get the same effect as the blog. In some ways, I agree with you because basically we are being told to write a response to a question and the only unique thing is that it's online. However, in another way, this does make our response more accesible to other people. If we just turned in our responses to Mr. Allen, no one would really be able to read them without going and getting our responses from Mr. Allen. I'm glad that this experience has helped to inspire you to start your own blog. I've read your personal blog and really enjoy it! Finally, I agree with you that adding more online community interaction would be beneficial to this experience. We only really looked at other students' blogs when we did the "Blogging Around" prompt and online community interaction is a big part of the blogging experience. Great post!
-Emily
Kyle,
To start, I'm pretty impressed you have a personal blog getting 60 hits a week? Are they all people you know?
It's interesting me that you don't really few this as a blog. Blogs seem to be about whatever you want them to be about. After all, most journalists syndicated and staffed now write blogs supplemental to their columns and/or reports. Seems like they have dictated scopes on what to write about.
If that doesn't convince you of some merit of having a prompt, defer to your opening paragraphs- this helped you think about things you wouldn't normally consider, which probably helps your thinking process and can't be arrived at without some external challenge.
At least you get the best of both worlds.
Mitch
Mitch,
What you said doesn't seem to make that much sense. First you say that blogs seems to be about whatever you want them to be about (which this one isn't) and then you talk about journalists writing blogs about their columns. I'm not sure if I think those count as blogs either, as they're more of a professional nature, but even so, they still get to choose what they write about each week.
Hey Kyle,
I had the same thought when we started blogging- How many people see this? I put Ads on my blog, and for the whole year, Google owes me... $4.15! That's about 250 page views total.
Maybe if next year's prompts were a bit more open- ended, they could develop into something people would really want to read.
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