Evaluating my blogging experience

HUM101
Blog 5
Evaluation of my blogging experience
By Joe Bassi

This is our last blog related assignment, and for the benefit of my readers I shall briefly explain what this is. Our instructor has asked us to evaluate our blogging assignments with three questions. I will answer them. The questions are in parentheses and underlined. They are;

“Compared to writing traditional essays as you have in other classes, were the expectations of the blog assignment easier, harder or just different? In other words, was it clear to you what the format of a blog was and how to produce one? “I found blogging to be an enjoyable challenge. I was unaware of the blog format before taking this class and I wrote my blogs just as I would any other essay. The only difference was the technology, instead of quoting my information sources and putting them into a works cited section at the end of a paper. I used hyperlinks at the end of a quotation in my blogs to give credit to the source from where the information came.

I liked the way the questions were presented, because I had a choice of five different questions each time the blogs were assigned. I could pick which one of the five was interesting to me and that gave me a better chance of getting a good grade because of the freedom to choose a topic I liked I was more willing to put in the required time and effort to get an “A”. I think I earned an “A” on every blog, which is good because when we very first met for this class I was intimidated by the subject matter and the text books. I am a mechanic I work in the world of machines, this sort of class seemed very abstract and vague at first but the instructor was able to put it into a way that was practical for me.



“Did the blog assignments, and the requirements to create a blog, relate to the class topics and course objectives? Why or why not?” I think the blogs did because part of the grading rubric was to present two different viewpoints. Also part of the grading rubric was to make a case favoring your opinion, a logical, valid case not an erroneous fallacy-filled case.

I remember my first blog was on the subject of “was it patriotic to shop? “ I took the position that it was patriotic to shop because of the tax revenue generated by shopping and the employment of retailers, but I made some important distinctions. I did not say that it was entirely patriotic, in some ways it is patriotic and in some ways it is not patriotic, it is just a ploy by retailers. So I presented both sides of the question. Like most things covered in the course there is not a simple yes or no answer, the answer is complicated because the question is complicated.

I would also like to add that the class has made me think twice about my purchasing decisions, and what I watch on T.V. We spent a lot of time discussing the media, which encompassed the news media, advertising, entertainment, sports, and the whole enchilada. I tend to be conservative so is my spouse, so we watch a lot of fox news channel who spins the news to conservative tastes. I am more aware of the spin now. Also I am more aware of my addiction to sports, I spend a lot of my free time following E.S.P.N. on television and the web. For example the N.F.L. draft just took place about ten days ago and I could not stop watching it.
I think it is a way of escaping from the reality of working-class monotony, but maybe I would be better served reading or playing the guitar.

“Did the non-text elements of the blog program contribute to your learning in this class? Did they get in the way? Or did they have no effect at all?”
The real challenge for me in this wasn’t the writing, but the difficulty I have with Microsoft Word documents, the internet, and anything to do with computers at all. Logging onto blogger and getting my account started was a major hassle for me, because I don’t do things like that. I think having this blogging assignment was a technological growing pain for me much like getting used to the blackboard format for my online classes here at Yavapai College, and having to become capable of doing word documents. In other words blogging and all the stuff with computers over the past four semesters while getting this degree has pushed me into the modern age , where as in August 2008 I was in the stone-age of computer terms. I used think copy and paste meant using a scissors and some glue.

So to sum it up, as much as becoming computer literate at Yavapai College has been a pain in the neck it has prepared me for the modern world at work, play, home you name it.