Mid-Term Questions and Reflections

1. How is your blogging going? What challenges have you faced? What do you like best about blogging?

What we like best:
The audience is different and that's key. When you're writing for a teacher, they know more than you,a nd they're evaluating you. When you're a real writer, you know more than your audience (otherwise why would youb e writing) and the audience is trying to learn from you, connect to you, enjoy your perspective, possibly disagree or write back, challenge you.

Freedom from writing on topics we don't like and structures we don't like.
We can express ourselves better -- because we get to write about what we like -- in the voice we decide on, the length we decide on, structure we decide on, etc. We get to make the decisions about what the writing looks like and sounds like.
No pressure.
It's connected to our daily life -- it's like FB and its a way of staying connected nad reaching an audience. Media is second-nature to us -- it doesn't feel like homework. It's convenient -- it's self-paced, flexible. Blogging fits with our generation -- we're used to being online. We enjoy it because it's like FBing -- it's connected, it's wired, and our generation likes that and is used to it. It's enjoyable so it feels easier. It doesn't feel like we're doing it for a grade. We like writing about our own topic.

What we like best:
There's no pressure.
There's lots of pressure.
Different kind of pressure: the audience is public. It's hard to write it for both class and the larger public. Hard to get the right voice (formal or informal).The whole net can read it, so that make more pressure. But -- there's less pressure because the deadlines are flexible. We go at our own pace which helps a lot.

We like that there's no length requirement. We don't have to write things we don't want to, or say things we don't want to just to fill up the length requirement.

There's no pressure to write in a certain way. It's up to us to figure out the tone, the voice, the organization, the level of detail, etc.

We like that it makes us think outside the box. e.g., for Lisa's baking blog, I try to tie the recipe into a theme -- this is making me think outside the box. I'm always trying to think about how to interest the readers, instead of just one teacher.

There's pressure to make it good, esp because we like the topic, so we don't want to give it short-shrift -- we want everyone to like our topic and be interested in it.

We like customizing it -- create a design. It feels like FB -- kind of trendy, and personal but still public. It's creating a whole experience for the reader

We like exploring unusual topics -- e.g. Christian's on hackers. Normally you'd be expected to have expertise, but the web allows anyone to become an expert -- the audience decides whether you know what you're talking about and they also participate and help you learn about your topic.

We get to be experts.

Keeping it interesting, keeping the reader interested.

The topic is too broad, and it's hard to decide how to shape it. It's hard to figure out how to make all the decisions.

It's hard to be responsible for all that freedom! Requires creativity and contant thinking.

Making sure I don't offend anyone, making sure my opinion doesn't offend. Trying to make sure we don't say something that is misunderstood.

Temptation to procrastinate, because there is no pressure.





Making sure you don't offend anyone -- not turning the reader off.

Comparing our writing to everyone else in the class -- this can make us intimidated and shut down our creative juices. We start to critique our writing.

It's hard to make it interesting. Keep the audience interested.

The good thing about blogging is that it makes the audience come alive for us as writers and it makes us care about the audience. School writing has too limited an audience.

2. How would you evaluate your blog? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

3. What have you learned about yourself as a writer, or about writing, from the experience of blogging? How is blogging similar to and different from other writing that you've done?

4. Do you think a class like this would help students become better writers? Be truthful!! Explain.

5. What do students need to do in order to improve their writing? What do teachers need to do to help students be better writers? Bonus question: what do we mean by "better"? More grammatically correct? More fluent? More voice and ownership? More persuasive? ???

6. What new ideas or questions about writing and/or about school have you gained this semester?
1. Is school ever going to change? Will teachers ever realize that what they're doing isn't helping us?

2. If teachers communicate to students that they care and are on the students' side, the students learn more, regardless of the subject or how the class is set up. Is this true? What really needs to change to improve students' experiences in school?

Teachers / advisors seem like they really don't want to help us.

3. Is writing a skill that can be directly taught or does it have to be nurtured?




7. What kinds of learning experiences would most benefit you in this
class, going forward? What do you want to learn and do in the
next seven weeks? What would most nurture your writing?
1. Work on resumes and cover letters
2. Work on personal statements for grad school
3. We agree with 11:00 class
Writer's Chair: Akwoung and Shanae






1. Spend time in class looking at resumes and cover letters.

2. More feedback on our blogs. Direct feedback.
Possible homework: find the blog with the best sentence-level writing. Find the blog that most needs help with sentence-level writing.

3. More commenting on each other's blogs.

4. More tips for writing from Prof Trainor. Debunking myths about writing. Myth-busters about writing.

5. In-class work on blogs (bring laptops, do focused activities on your blogs).

6. Assign writer's chair so that the writer spends time getting ready for it.
More detailed writer's chair -- more detailed feedback.
Hannah, Susan