Reflections

• What did you learn about yourself as a writer?

I learned that I would not be a very good professional blogger. It is tough to stick to schedule of posting, and I would have trouble creating content on my own. I do better with microblogs, like Tumblr. If I were to use this blogging exercise in a class, I would try to let the students vote on weekly topics or provide multiple topics for blogging each week. This is only because I am a new educator, and I want to see what works for my classes and me.

• What did you learn about digital writing?

I learned that it a whole new beast! There is a whole new set of rules when it comes to writing online. Does the writer want to remain anonymous? How does the writer want to interact with their cyber audience? I think this is what makes digital writing more complex than traditional writing. There are many factors that play into publishing works on the internet, and I think it could tough to navigate. 

• What lessons can you take to classroom or share with future teachers about integrating blogging into instruction?

Experiment with it! I think all kids will take to it differently, and it is okay if this challenge doesn't succeed at first. As we heard in class, this is one of the various incarnations of this assignment for LAE. It makes sense that each educator will have to fine tune it for their needs. I think that is the biggest lesson for me. I prefer to go into a situation knowing exactly how it will play out, but now I understand that I can't control this type of exercise in the same way as a quickwrite exercise in the classroom.

• Challenges?

Personally, my biggest challenge was finding inspiration to write. I have an easier time creating essays or research papers because they are very structured. While the prompts for blogging provided guidance, I still struggled to produce content. I put up my posts in a timely fashion, but it took my a bit of planning to figure out what to say. To translate this to the classroom, I would have "volunteer" blogging weeks where the kids didn't have to post something but could if they wanted. I think that would help take the pressure off of them.

• Successes?

To be honest, I think my biggest success was completing this project. I haven't had the best track record with blogs or journals, so I didn't come into this with high hopes. However, I did it. I think what helped with this was how we could make up for missed posts or add extra comments to other students' posts when necessary. I felt like it was okay to slip up, which helped!