Initially, I did not sign up for blogging; I actually did not realize that it was a course a student could choose.  However, when I got my course sheet for the upcoming senior second semester, my senior elective was blogging.  A little frustrated I did not get into Hippie Literature, I still decided to stick it out and see what ‘blogging’ was all about.  Since the word was unknown to me, looking it up on dictionary.com seemed to be the logical thing to do.  I figured I should have some previous knowledge of what ‘blogging’ was before I enrolled in the class.  This definition was the result: ‘an online diary; a personal chronological log of thoughts published on a Web page’.  So I unhatched what a blog is, a diary that is typed.  I did not understand how the class would even work however; we show up, write what we did for the day and leave?  It just did not make sense.  From the class, I expected my writing to improve, because we would be writing everyday in our ‘diary’, but we did so much more.

            Considering I had no expectations walking into the class, I was still surprised at how much we accomplished in one semester.  ‘Blogging’ was not just a personal diary of a day’s work, it included the news, opinions and gossip.  I had no idea that a blog could consist of so many ideas.  Not only did we practice writing, we watched and learned about the Presidential Election, the Aboriginals, and on a lighter note, freezer balls.  From serious to entertaining, our class discussions ranged from a variety of things.  I did not expect, also, that we would learn how to hold a debate and respect eachother’s opinions.  Not only did I learn how to sort out the good information from the useless information in web articles, but I also got a little more computer savy with using our blogging website, edublogs.org.  

            Every Monday, a blog would be due that would exemplify our writing and thoughts from the previous week.  It could be on absolutely anything, from politics to events around Tabor.  We did around nine blogs each, and there is a big difference in writing style from the first one to the last.  Our writing style consisted of connection of ideas.  Connect your topic to first how it affects you, then your community, and then the world as a whole.  The lessons learned or events that everyone can be educated by was really the theme in each blog.  Along with carefully corrected grammer and paragraphing, the topic had to interest you first, and then your readers.  If you were not interested in the topic, then it was hard to write something interesting that people would read.  It was helpful that there was no parameters on the topics of what we could write about, that way you could write something that interested you.  Also, it was helpful we had a wide variety of interests in the class, some sports, others athletes, and as a result each blog was unique.

A post that I had, ‘Its still a good day to be a seawolf’, exemplified our writing style because it connected to me, as it was about losing the semi-finals on the team that I was on, and how it affected me.  Moreover, it connected to the Tabor community and the world as a whole because although we lost, the lessons learned and companionship will stay longer than the happiness of a championship.

            Blogging was a great class to learn the ins and outs of internet.  It taught me how to use a certain writing style to connect to not only yourself, but to the people around you.  It brought to my attentions events that I would never have explored myself, such as the Presidential Election and Obama’s Priest.  These things make me recommend blogging as a senior elective.  One thing I would advise doing would be to spend a little more time using the website, because it is complicated to figure out on your own.  Thank you giving me the experience of blogging!