I really enjoyed having this blog. It gave me a chance to say some things that I couldn't or didn't get the chance to say in class. It also gave me time to really shape my thoughts so that I could make a coherent point. That can sometimes be more difficult in class. When I blogged, I usually made my point and then expanded on it to an extent I could not in class. I enjoyed having the ability to say a lot without worrying about taking up too much of class time.
The blog also helped in my writing. I used the blog to test out response paper ideas a few times, and it really helped. The blog posts gave me something to work off of. It was if I had written a rough draft. I liked being able to get my ideas down, look at them, and work with them before I dove off into writing the actual paper.
However, what I didn't like about the blogging was that I sometimes found it difficult to blog. I procrastinate, and would put off the posts, because I had no idea what to write or just didn't have the time to. This usually meant that I would write a lot just before the due date to make sure my blog was updated enough. I think to help with this problem, next year's class could use the method I used last year in Non-Fiction Writing. The class was split into two groups, one a Tuesday group, one a Thursday group. Each week, you would make one blog post on your respective day by a certain time at night. Now, we could tweak that a bit to say that there's one required blog post a week, but you can write whenever you feel like writing. I think that would help solve the problem of procrastination and rush blogging.
1 comment:
Thanks for the suggestion--I do think some kind of organized "schedule" for entries could be a good thing, to keep people on point. The difficult balance for me is that I also want this to be a somewhat free-form assignment, with a good deal of independent work and a somewhat different shape for everyone--akin still to the notebook, and the idea that one can just sit down and jot down thoughts without worrying about the form or meeting a deadline. But the reality of the semester is that deadlines sometimes help us get things done on time--I know I would set myself deadlines for the entries I wanted to write (and I'd often have to ask myself for an extension . . .).
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