My Books

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Blog Post Reflections



I believe that the quality of my writing has improved tremendously over the course of the trimester.  One way I believe that my writing has improved is by the length of the blog posts.  At the beginning of the trimester I wrote really short blog posts that were not very detailed.  Towards the end of the trimester my blog posts started to pick up in length and they stared to improve with detail.  My vocabulary also improved over the course of the trimester.  Also, throughout the trimester I improved upon changing up the vocabulary.  In one of my first blog posts I repeated words such as harmful two or three times in a row when I could have used a different word such as dangerous.  Looking at my reading connections blog post from the end of the trimester there are not words that are repeated over and over again.  One thing at the beginning of the trimester that I struggled with was adding in URL’s.  Such as with one of my first few blog posts I did on marijuana.  I reflected on an article I read on CNN.com.  In my blog post I never added the link of the article so someone would be able to access it themselves.  Although towards the end of the trimester in the reading connections blog post I had added in pictures and links to an article on bullying.  At the beginning of the trimester I really didn’t have a point to my blog posts.  On my marijuana blog post from the beginning of the trimester I really didn’t do anything but restate what I read in the article and state the obvious such as “Marijuana is harmful”.  Towards the end of the trimester in my reading connections blog post I used outside information by finding other sources and put more thought into my post other than just restating what was going on the novel at the certain point in time.  My overall progress over the trimester I would say has been tremendous and I am very happy as to where I currently am in blogging. 

          After improving my blogging over the course of the trimester there were things in the process that I struggled with.  One thing that I struggled with was adding in my progress from Goodreads.com.  I was able to update my blog and I was able to update Goodreads.com but when we had to transfer our progress from Goodreads.com to blogger there seemed to be issues.  It was challenging for me to insert my quotes and books into my blogs.  Lastly, I was challenged by the two blog posts a week.  It was a lot of reading and after a while I would run out of things to blog about.  Looking back on this trimester, I have noticed that a lot of my blog posts are very similar.  A few of my blog posts state the same things just in different ways because I was at my breaking point and I had nothing to blog about.  As you can see I have had a few challenges there was something that I was really good at when blogging.  If you go back and look through my blog posts from the beginning of this trimester to the end you will notice that almost every one of my blog posts have an addition or added in URL.  I was really good at making sure I had a good use of pictures and added in links to my blog posts.  For example in my reading connections blog post there were two pictures and an article on bullying statistics linked in.  In my very first blog post based on my summer reading project there was an embedded video, a picture, and a linked in article from CNN.com.  Throughout the whole trimester I would say embedding links and pictures into my blog posts was a strength.  On Goodreads.com I had set a goal of five books.  I did not meet my reading goal this trimester.  I did enjoy using Goodreads.com.  I really liked that I was able to get book recommendations from other peers and see what they have read and liked or disliked.  I also used Goodreads.com to update where I was in my books.  Overall I have really enjoyed my experience this trimester with blogger and Goodreads.com.