Last Blog

I have found the blogs to be an interesting addition to our curriculum. I had never used blogs before this semester. I am glad that I do now know how to use a blog. I think the blogs were very effective in improving our writing skills. Often times we were required to analyze readings and then blog about it. These assignments not only helped our writing skills but also helped us develop our skills of analyzing and synthesizing our readings. Often times when we were required to analyze our readings I did not look forward to it because it took a lot of time. I often had to re-read the material a few times to grasp the message and to effectively analyze what was being said. Then I had to figure out what I was going to say and make sense of it all.

Using our blogs was a great way practice writing skills that we learned in class. After writing papers and reading the remarks left on my paper gave me things to improve on in my writing. Using the blog was an extra excerise to improve upon the things that I needed to work on. Being able to read other classmate's blogs allowed me to see how other people wrote and provided examples on how to improve my writing style. I think being required a word count was often a hassle but I think it was a good thing. Being required a certain amount of words kept us from slacking off and just writing two sentences. Having a set amount of words made us think more in order to come up with enough valid points to meet the word requirement.

I think being required to comment on other peoples blogs was a good thing. Reading what other people had to say in their blogs gave me a new perspective on many things. Blogging was a good way of communication between classmates. Reading what other people had to say about my posts also gave me things to think about and a new perspective. Being able to voice your opinion about things was another great thing about the blog. I think sometimes it easier to write out your opinion rather than speak it. Commenting on blogs also lead to some in depth conversations about the topics discussed.

I found the post where we were required to include a picture to be fun. I was not aware how to even insert a picture into my blog, but was I figured it out it was very easy. I think including images in blogs are very effective. I am a very visual person and incorporating pictures often helps me retain information better.

I think having to reflect on how we did on our papers was a good thing too! This made us go through our papers and think of what we could do for our next paper to make it better. In the long run this was very beneficial because it made us realize what mistakes we made on our last papers so we would not make them again.

While I did not always enjoy writing blogs I think it was an effective learning tool. And using blogs was a great way to save paper!