Evaluation

Prior to this class, I have never written a blog before. I thought it was a very small group of people that wrote blogs. With the rapid explosion of blogging and social media in the past couple of years, you're finding more and more quality blogs with more and more subjects being covered. Blogs are rapidly becoming a persons voice on the Internet. In my experiences with social networking in the past, I find that I get hooked for a couple days, using the services for several hours a day. Then, i stop using them for days or even weeks. So I'm not very consistent with my use, whereas I think most blogging should be done on a regular basis. If I were to continue blogging, I think I would probably lower my post count to every other week, and make them more quality posts.

I didn't know what to expect from this class. I definitely never thought I would be writing a blog. I have a pretty big interest in technology and my major is communication, so I figured this would be a pretty interesting class. I think the blog actually worked pretty well for getting the students viewpoints out there, and for allowing everyone to see it. Normally in a classroom setting everyone would turn in a paper or homework assignment to the teacher and you would never be able to compare with other students. Being able to see other students train of thought and the connections they make I think is a great learning tool.

As far as the topics for blog posts, I thought they were all pretty good. They covered a wide range of topics that made it fun and interesting to write about. The style of each one is different, and I'm glad I don't find myself repeating things from previous blogs. One thing I found happening on a couple blogs was I ran out of things to talk about. Perhaps adding some more primer questions to the blog to expand the scope a bit more. Another thing I thought about is maybe adding a secondary choice of blog entry for each week. When we all write about the same topic, I find it hard to respond to a blog with any sort of new ideas. Granted, some people may have some unique train of thought which you can comment on. I kept trying to come up with some new angle or creative response to some blogs, and I found myself saying the same things from my blog or another response. I think a second option for each week would vary it up a bit and allow some more diverse thoughts to emerge.

One thing I would like to see is the decrease in reliance on the books. I have to read 4-5 thick textbooks a term, and after a few years of college, I'm tired of reading. I would change it to one book and just base the blogs off that. As one of the other students said, I found myself just reading the book of the week about 66% of the time.

Overall I was happy with what this class covered and the way it was done so. I think its important that universities and teachers embrace new ways of teaching to students, and this class fits the bill well.