Blog Reflection

When I first read that I was required to write a blog for the length of this course, I didn’t understand the purpose or usefulness of this activity. After writing this blog for the last few months, I can say that I have changed my mind.

I learned from writing this blog that blogging is much harder than it looks. It also helps to have a topic that you are passionate about, or at least interested in, for your blog to be successful. I found that writing about a specific topic gave me a challenge to not only provide useful links but at the same time these links needed to be interesting to my readers. Having to blog about a specific topic was a challenge in itself when trying to think of all the different possible angles that could relate to that topic. I think I was fortunate in my choice of topics in that they were interesting.

I had never heard of clickers before this assignment and found learning about them fascinating. Searching the internet for topics was often a chore and I found myself talking to other people about angles that I might not have thought of. In this way, blogging caused me to talk with others and engage them when I often wouldn’t have bothered before.

With Second Life, I found the topic to be much larger than I expected. I thought Second Life was just an online video game that a lot of people played. It is not something I would have even considered being a part of until I started learning more about it. The first time (and only time) someone from outside the class posted a comment to my blog I was surprised at how significant this was to me. Granted she only looked at my blog because I linked information from hers but still it was a milestone for me.

What can I do to improve my blogging? The first thing I need to do is spend more time writing on it and checking for comments. I found time for my blog only after all of my other class work was taken care of for the week. I don’t think I gave my blog the priority that it deserved. The second thing I could do to improve my blog would be to provide a wider variety of information sources. In the beginning, I usually only linked to articles or other websites that contained information on my topics. As the semester wore on though, I found that I became more creative in my choice of links. Continuing this creativity would certainly help keep my blog fresh.

As it stands today, I wouldn’t mind putting my blog address on my resume for potential employers to read; it certainly wouldn’t hurt my job chances and it might actually help. I think this is one way that blogging can be helpful to someone who is looking for a job; blog about information that would be useful in your job and show your potential employers that you know a lot about that topic.

Now that the semester is ending, I have to answer the question of whether or not to keep on blogging. I have mixed feelings about this. Although I dreaded having to write on this blog twice a week, I found that I could do it and I would like to believe that the product of my efforts was worth reading. I can see myself choosing a topic once a month that I know little about and blogging about it. In this way, I educate myself on something I should probably already know. Maybe I should start with Facebook.