Before this class I had blogged only a few times for English 110. It was very limited and was just a small response to articles I found interesting. Now, though, that I have seen and responded to numerous different blogs I feel that blogging offers much more than first expected. They allow others to spread their ideas and see what others think of those ideas. Blogging is a great tool for communicating and discovering the thoughts and feelings of those around the country or world. Albeit, many are just thoughts and feelings or opinions, very few blog posts provide real factual evidence. However, some blogs do not need or are not interested in providing factual evidence. Therefore, blogging is a great way to communicate and learn others ideas and can help keep a sense of togetherness in society today.
Blogging is great for getting across your message especially if the media lacks significant coverage on it. Allowing one to get their message to others and spreading the word can be a great thing for society. This can lead to an expanded knowledge of what is actually happening in our world, rather than just what the media wants us to see. The blog "Bad Science" covers the topic of the media using faulty science to be able to report what they want. This blog can be helpful to others because it attempts to expose the tactics used by the media to mislead them. The blog focuses mainly on medicine and how the media can use statistics in a very deceptive manor. This insight can help an audience be wary of the tricks the news media pulls on them. Blogs like this can be enormously helpful mostly because it is trustworthy due the fact that is one of the blogs supported by hard evidence.
Not all blogs are supported by evidence though. The blog "Food Gal" is one of those blogs that neither needs cold hard facts nor is it interested in facts. This blog is mainly about recipes, giving insight as to whether or not they are worth making. This blog is pure opinion, only backed by the author's personal experience. This is absolutely fine because the author's only goal is to provide people with her cooking opinion and hopefully keep people from wasting their time. Blogs like this can help society in a great way as well because it brings the sense of togetherness.
Blogs, not including those whose authors insist on ranting incessantly about their lives or other nonsense, can clearly be seen as a beneficial addition to society. Blogs can be a great source of academic learning or a way to express opinion, either way they provide some kind of knowledge to those who read them. Using blogs in the classroom are certainly a must. Blogs are so diverse and insightful that it would be foolish not to at least mention their importance. Blogging is a very easy way to help society stay informed and united.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Blogging as an educational tool
Blogs are an obvious part of modern culture. Though little a decade old, it has become part of the daily lexicon. Through their expression, they have become an example for both the creativity and diversity of the Internet. Their greatest strength is their freedom of expression on a broad breadth of topics. For the majority of blogs, authors get to write what they are truly passionate about, whether it be food, politics, or science. It is this passion for the respective topics of blog posts that makes them so unique. For example, “The Everywherist” is such a successful blog because the author of it is writing about something she is passionate about. Although it is a travel, blog, she writes about other things she enjoys such as inexplicable foreign TV shows and obnoxious airplane passangers. The freedom to write what she wants makes the blog successful because each post wants to be written. It is clear from the writing the author cares about the topic, making it appealing and interesting to read.
However, it is this freedom of expression and random thoughts that is also one of the limitations of blogs. Because of this, many of the best blogs lack the focus of traditional Internet sources such as newspapers. Their informal writing style can often seem unprofessional rather than just informal. An example of this is a I blog I analyzed recently in a previous post is the science based blog “Pharyngula”. Although the author often has excellent and well-researched reasons behind his points, he has a conversational tone that leans on the side of condescending. Because of this condescending tone and occasional divergences from the main topic, it is more difficult to take this blog post as a serious discussion of the topic. However, many of the blogs that often follow a more serious presentation of content like the Wired blogs lack the soul found in the best blogs.
In the context of the classroom, blogs can be an effective tool to teach writing if the assignments using the blog utilize the strengths of blogs, their freedom and diversity of topics. The blog assignments this quarter have been relatively lax in their requirements. However, during the entire process of writing each of these assignments, I never forgot the fact that I was writing for an assignment. At this very moment, I am thinking about how I can satisfy the requirements for this post. I believe that the writing for these assignments would be of a higher quality if the assignments gave more freedom on how they could structure the posts. By having strict guidelines on what should be in posts, the final product ends up feeling like a short essay. It would be necessary to have the blogs site proper sources just to keep the topics of discussion educated and relevant. Even with that stipulation, I believe that the posts could be of better quality because they allow the writing to take on the style of the writer. Often times, this is the very thing that gets muffled in academic writing, while blogs thrive on the writing style of the author.
The Final Blog
I personally believe that blogging is a really useful tool for sharing ideas and can also become a successful marketing tool if manipulated correctly. When I first started writing blogs for this class, I initially thought that they were a waste of time because my assumption was that blogging was essentially an extended tweet. I don't know anyone who cares enough to subscribe to my blog just to read about my daily life and activities. However, once being introduced to the world of, I guess you could call them, professional bloggers, I realized that its basically a way to throw your opinion out on the internet and otherwise inform or become informed by audience feedback, and as I said previously, it can be successful as a marketing tool.
The only problem I can see with blogging, despite all their advantages, is expanding your audience. Simply getting people to read your blogs seems like a daunting task but one way bloggers seem do this is by their manipulation of rhetorical devices. For instance, the first blog we read in class sought to inform readers about an advancement in technology that could potentially allow us to create invisible soldiers. Unfortunately, it turns out we are far from being able to practically use this technology, but the blogger was able to inform, entertain, and draw in an audience. All it takes is a bit of talent and one can obtain subscribers in this way.
Talent is essential when trying to use blogging as a marketing tool as well. Unfortunately his account was suspended for reasons unknown to me, but my roommate is an affiliate marketer. To increase the amount of hits he got on his links, he did a lot of research, started a blog and wrote about electronic cigarettes verses real tobacco on a weekly basis. Eventually, as he proved to be an "expert" in the field by answering questions and continuing to throw his opinion out there, subscribers became more inclined to purchase the products that he was selling. This is just one way to use blogging as a marketing tool, but it is a very effective weapon if wielded correctly.
It might seem like I have a new-found respect for blogging, but it turns out that I was actually a fan of a few blogs before I knew what blogs really were. For instance, there's a site I am really fond of that just includes a series of hilarious rants about relevant topics. The author, George Ouzounian (pen name: Maddox), in one particular blog shares his feelings about vegetarians, PETA, a potential asteroid collision, and his naysayers all in a simple three-minute video. While Maddox isn't someone you'd site as a scholarly source in an English 367.04 paper, he does present his ideas in an entertaining and convincing fashion. His notoriety even inspired a comic book, which was presented by him at comic con San Diego, and a book that reached #1 on the Amazon.com sales chart. The success of his first book propelled him on to a few television sets and inspired a second book that was published in 2011. In the case of Maddox, blogging contributed to his career in two ways: both as a marketing tool and a way to share information. He marketed his ideas and his personality which acted as a springboard for his career.
Based on my past experience in blogs, I can't say that they are an excellent source for hard facts or scholarly information, but what they can do is give the audience experience with different opinions and the angles. Being able to see how a blogger is trying to persuade and possibly manipulate their audience is a great tool for college students to learn. This knowledge enhances our abilities to sell ideas and question what others are selling us. It is needless to say, taking this class and working with blogs has changed my perspective on blogs in general.
The only problem I can see with blogging, despite all their advantages, is expanding your audience. Simply getting people to read your blogs seems like a daunting task but one way bloggers seem do this is by their manipulation of rhetorical devices. For instance, the first blog we read in class sought to inform readers about an advancement in technology that could potentially allow us to create invisible soldiers. Unfortunately, it turns out we are far from being able to practically use this technology, but the blogger was able to inform, entertain, and draw in an audience. All it takes is a bit of talent and one can obtain subscribers in this way.
Talent is essential when trying to use blogging as a marketing tool as well. Unfortunately his account was suspended for reasons unknown to me, but my roommate is an affiliate marketer. To increase the amount of hits he got on his links, he did a lot of research, started a blog and wrote about electronic cigarettes verses real tobacco on a weekly basis. Eventually, as he proved to be an "expert" in the field by answering questions and continuing to throw his opinion out there, subscribers became more inclined to purchase the products that he was selling. This is just one way to use blogging as a marketing tool, but it is a very effective weapon if wielded correctly.
It might seem like I have a new-found respect for blogging, but it turns out that I was actually a fan of a few blogs before I knew what blogs really were. For instance, there's a site I am really fond of that just includes a series of hilarious rants about relevant topics. The author, George Ouzounian (pen name: Maddox), in one particular blog shares his feelings about vegetarians, PETA, a potential asteroid collision, and his naysayers all in a simple three-minute video. While Maddox isn't someone you'd site as a scholarly source in an English 367.04 paper, he does present his ideas in an entertaining and convincing fashion. His notoriety even inspired a comic book, which was presented by him at comic con San Diego, and a book that reached #1 on the Amazon.com sales chart. The success of his first book propelled him on to a few television sets and inspired a second book that was published in 2011. In the case of Maddox, blogging contributed to his career in two ways: both as a marketing tool and a way to share information. He marketed his ideas and his personality which acted as a springboard for his career.
Based on my past experience in blogs, I can't say that they are an excellent source for hard facts or scholarly information, but what they can do is give the audience experience with different opinions and the angles. Being able to see how a blogger is trying to persuade and possibly manipulate their audience is a great tool for college students to learn. This knowledge enhances our abilities to sell ideas and question what others are selling us. It is needless to say, taking this class and working with blogs has changed my perspective on blogs in general.
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