Thursday, June 17, 2010

Thoughts about academic blogging

For the most part, writing posts on an academic blog instead of a conventional research paper has been more fulfilling than I expected. On the one hand, blogging did necessitate a greater time investment than a typical paper would, as this was unfamiliar territory and required some independent study on technical and conventional nature of blogging, but I was surprised at the greater capability for expression blogging allowed in being able to draw from and link to external media sources which I could then use to flesh out and supplement my own arguments.

Writing a standard paper is more isolated which allows for more intense concentration, but I found in writing my blog and making suggestions on the blogs of other members of my 295 class and following their own developing ideas influenced the take I established on my own topic. I found myself incorporating strategies the others were using such as Becca’s descriptive headings, Audrey’s involved explanations, and Amanda’s way of beginning with a quote, and Krista’s way of taking developing a central metaphor from the primary text. I feel like I learned a lot from being able to share in such awesome people’s writing process and have no doubt that it’ll be valuable to return to this blog to retrace my writing process as my ideas have evolved over the weeks.

Pertaining to the BYU Institutional Objectives I think the blogging format really contributed to “extending the blessings of learning” to the online community at large. In sense, we have made available what we’ve learned in the writing process to anyone that might happen to google our subjects.  I think this blogging is the start of some lifelong learning for me as well as I have come to see the value in sharing in this process.

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