1. In your opinion, what was the purpose of this blogging activity? (Why did I choose to do blogging instead of more traditional writing activities?)
In my opinion I think Ms. Rumford chose to do blogging over the more traditional writing activities because blogging is more interactive. When writing a normal paper, you may ask someone to edit your work, and this person may only correct grammatical errors and sentence structures, while on the blogs a person from anywhere in the world does not necessarily have to be your friend can comment on your work. This comment can applaud you on a well written blog or can talk about how they feel about, these comments essentially do not need to be about writing errors, and can concentrate and focus more on an opinionative statement. I like this more because who doesn’t like it when someone admires your writing and compliments you on it, it is human nature to love attention and through the comments you may receive a lot of attention toward your blog. I also feel that any comment on your blog is a good one, unless it is inapropriative and does not relate to anything you are talking about. Comments can criticize your writing, but I feel all criticism is good because you can always take what the person is asking under consideration and try to improve in that area which you lack proficiency in, so listening and taking consideration to people’s feedback can prove valuable to many of us, if we want to improve our writing. Furthermore I love seeing the different perspective of my blog, whether they agree or disagree and why. It is always fascinating to see how different people are and sometimes it’s just a way to get to know someone better. For instance I never knew a friend of mine was interested in netball, nor did I know another friend of mine liked rock music, when I thought the whole time they actually liked rap better. This is why I prefer doing blogs because you can learn so much from them and when interacting with the technology you can also interact with friends learning new things about them that you never knew. Furthermore when writing on a piece of paper you do not get to interrelate with technology, as more and more people become familiar with computers and sometime it seems like our world is dependent on computers it is always good to know a thing or two that may not seem very important but everything you know can help you. I was able to learn how to link photos, videos, words to the dictionary and tag words. Not knowing this before I am grateful I did this because now I do and I may be able to use that in other things or maybe I may continue as a blogger. I also like you using the blog because once I learned how to link a picture, I find that any sort of visual affect always is prominent to the viewer. Finally in a teachers perspective blogging is great because not only can they see if they the student completed it on time they no longer need to listen to any excuses of why a student did not complete it. Lastly it is much more convenient to mark because she does not need to take a whole bunch of papers home she can just open our website and read it, so these blogs also prove to be eco-friendly.
2. What have you accomplished during your blogging?
When writing this blog I felt like I accomplished many things that I would have never known before. Firstly I never knew how to link things to your writing, such as videos and pictures and I had a lot of fun doing so, because as a person I feel when I learn something new I have fun with it and get slightly obsessed with it. This is what happened to me even though I did not link much of my blogs I had fun learning how to do it and it gave me a sense of pride that I learnt something new. Secondly when doing the blog we focused more on a certain type of writing element each week. This helped me a lot because in a normal paper I would just write something instinctively without thinking about the words or the sentence structures that I use. I was able to accomplish a great deal with my writing not only did I improve my vocabulary when writing I also learned many new things, what a simple sentence is, what a compound sentence is, what a complex sentence is, what a compound-complex sentence is and what are main clause, dependent clause and independent clauses are. Now when I write I am aware of how I can make my writing even better and maybe even outstanding with the help of the new knowledge I leaned when doing this activity.
3. What key concepts have you learned while blogging? (This can be about writing, research or technology etc.)
I have learned three major key concepts while blogging. The first one is how to use technology and intermingle in with my writing which makes it better and prominent. This may not seem like much at this point but I know some day thins may come in handy, you never know when you have to work on a project and you must link sites to it. Or in computer skills we learned how to use a hyperlink and I have used a hyperlink in many presentations of mine. Secondly I have gained new knowledge in writing skills which will help a lot when I go to high school, in high school I expect that instead of the more free writes and expression of ideas there will be more ground rules which we will have to follow, I expect these ground rules to include many foundations in our writing. Through this activity I was able to learn how to improve my sentence structures through different types of sentenced I could use, which can enhance the quality of my work. In high school I also know that our vocabulary is going to be much more difficult and the blog where we had to use more advanced words helped a lot because now instead of repeating the same words I can use better and more superior vocabulary. Finally when doing these blogs I had to research a lot for my topics and this skill will greatly help me in any subject I need to do research for.
4. Based on the skills you learned while blogging, how will this benefit you in the future? This maybe inside or outside of school.
I remember a few weeks ago my friend and I were talking on the phone about what we wanted to become when we grew up, I was telling my friend about how I always wanted to become architecture or a lawyer. However I remember telling her that I wouldn’t mind becoming a journalist because I find that I am a strong writer and I have voice in many of my pieces of writing. This blog showed me not only do U have voice and imagery in my writing but I also have structure in my writing and I think if I work hard enough I think I could become a journalist. I would also love to become one as well, writing is a passion for me and these blogs taught me that. When writing about something I feel strongly about I have voice in my writing and I just love to put my self into a room and write all day.
