Exploring Blogs

I have never really had a blog that I follow religiously. I do however have a friend that does a pretty good job of keep up with her blog. It is one that I will look at often to see what she is thinking and up to. The name of her blog is “What’s in Coco’s Hair” she keeps it light but explores everything and anything on her mind. 

I will also keep up with blogs of my friends who are traveling for study abroad. I like to live vicariously through them during their experiences. Sometimes I find it neat to see how they are being conditioned by the new culture that they find themselves in. 

This summer I had to blog about my internship experience that I was having while interning with 4-H and Youth Development. I really enjoyed this because I got to share what I was doing with the rest of the interns that were scattered throughout Kentucky. It was neat to keep up with their experiences as well. 

Blogging is something that in PR we talk about a lot. It is a key tool to build website traffic when that can be lacking. Finding the right style for a blog can take a while though. There are services that will even write and develop a blog for you. I am not sure how I feel about this. When those who are writing the blog aren’t actually having the experiences I think it discredits the blog and those who it is written for.

I think that finding a blog that you like with content you can relate to is important. However in this digital world it is hard to make sure that there is credit within that blog and information that you are looking into.

Dear Digital Diary...

Blogging itself is like a digital diary, one that can be full of secrets or the truths off our lives. We can hide behind a screen name if we want, or let our full blown identity out for everyone to see. Just like a diary, a blog can be written at your own pace on your own time. You can write about anything and everything. 

Blogging adds a new vulnerability to our lives if we allow it. Asking for the world’s feedback is just what may happen. There is a lifetime of knowledge that can be found when you ask for it on the web, it may not be what you want to hear, but you will get an answer. 

I think that the blog platform just gives us one more way to express and share. There is also the aspect of sharing and dialoging with people you do not know that is a major appeal of blogging. You can respond to a question that is posed and interact with someone who is halfway across the world and have a heathy discussion. 

Personally blogging can be difficult for me, I have a hard time sharing what I think in writing. I love sharing my ideas with other people but I have a hard time doing this in my writing without being paranoid of judgement of my writing style. My style is more honed now than ever now, I feel like I have my own style that is reflective of me. 

Moving with the Times

When I was in high school I had a geometry class that I loathed. The class was taught to us the same way the teacher probably taught for their entire career. Put up a sample problem, work it out, then we were expected to know how to solve all the problems in the chapter. This however proved to be very difficult for me. Just the one example was not enough for me to understand the concept.

This is where I ran into issues with the teacher. He could not bring a concept down to my level for me to understand what was going on. I was in an advanced class, but I could not get the concepts to click. I think that teacher was stuck in another realm that did not believe in differentiation. Or technology. Or anything that wasn't 30 years old for that matter.

Teachers get so hung up on test scores and loose their students in the cracks of the system. Not all teachers are guilty of this, but I know a handful. There is another flaw though. We go through elementary, middle and high school with a plethora of differentiation, manipulatives, creativity, and so on. Then when we enter college there is a reverse effect. Again, not all professors are guilty, but I have had my share. We get to college sit in a hall for 50 minutes to over an hour being talked at, without a chance for group discussion. Research shows that we can learn form our peers and that peer to peer learning in beneficial. So what are we suppose to do when we are being taught on way for the better of 13 years then are dumped into another environment that expects us to just listen.

There does have to be a fine balance between lecture and discussion, but fundamentally there should be discussion. Where else are new ideas generated? Part of this is my personality that thrives on a good conversation, but there is another point here. We have to know how to interact in these types of academic settings with our peers. Without discussion ideas die and are not shared.

A New Genre, A New Language

For centuries, shorthand writing has been a form of language used to jot quick notes. Many times journalists can be found using this form of language. Why do I bring up shorthand? Because as the web and technology further developed, we also developed our own version of shorthand writing. Transforming phrases into series of letters. We went from complete sentences to a short hand language of texting.

Something that was always buzzing in the media is that if we are using this new language in our social writing that it will start to enter our academic writing. So with that said, how many of you have used an LOL or TTYL in a paper. That's what I thought, none of you. We have discussed this phenomena in class as well. There is social writing and academic writing, both of which we as students can differentiate from.

I like to think of it as when I was in middle school and we all learned how to speak in Pig Latin. Did we speak that when we were in classes to our teachers, no. To each other though we spoke it all of the time. We knew when that language was appropriate and not. I find that today kids are not given the slack sometimes for how competent they (we) are. We are considered many times to be the dumbest generation that lacks all respect. It is statements like these that discourage.

My brother is working on a paper for his U.S. History class for the VFW writing competition. The topic this year is "Why I’m Optimistic About our Nation’s Future." My brother is 16-years-old. He has a lot of future ahead of him. Something he cited in his paper is that we are deemed to be one of the worst generations to have happened. How can we still have faith in ourselves when this is being crammed down our throats? We are recognized for our failures, and when we succeed everyone gets a ribbon.

So where is the credit for being individualistic? We have developed this short hand for communication but it is cut at the knees because it is believed that it will be misused. Our society needs to step back and see what we can do before assuming what we will do.

A New Age Genre

Until reading the chapter, Writing on Screen, in, A Better Pencil, I forgot to really consider email, instant messaging, Twitter, and other digital forms of writing as their own genre. You would have thought that at my age I would have thought of that, but I did not. I think I will default that it is because it is so new that I forgot.

Especially considering email in this new genre, I have had several classes that focus on how to write a good email. Something that we have talked about in class that at one time had no rules and now has a certain "structure" to follow and even policies to abide by. I think that with all new genres there is a "beta" that they go through even after the actual beta testing of a new technology. Your focus group may have defined a way to use the new genre, but when the public gets a hold of it, there is a whole new beta that begins.

The hosts of these new genres even go through and evolution to suit the genre. Just consider the evolution of Facebook from 2004 to 2012. It went from a platform where you just shared information to a place where you share thoughts.