This year's blog process has been one that I've enjoyed. Granted, I felt a bit forced at times, but when something has to be done for school, it's got to be done for school, and I understand that. We can't blog about whatever we well please in this process or else, well, I'll ramble endlessly about art and love, someone else'll ramble about birds, and someone else'll ramble about how this is "like, oo my god, the biggest waste of time I've like ever spent on homework, Mr. Allen!" (This, of course, is a guess. I do, however, think I could find some people who might agree with me.)
In any event, I've enjoyed this process as a way of doing work that doesn't require me to research and doesn't have the teacher's opinions or intended "lessons learned" as the guiding factors of a grade. I need to be awake and cognitive in class, and be ableeto read directions, and, as long as no complications occur, I can do this assignment. I love the fact that the structure by which we're held day in and day out isn't necessarily forced or upheld; I feel it brings a certain unhindered flow of thought into the blog that one wouldn't get elsewhere. When I'm writing in the blog, I'm surprised that thoughts just FLOW out of me. Honestly, I feel like it's harder to write an essay because one feels forced and restricted in the many different ways that essays control/guide the writer (which I don't think I need to explain) and so perhaps it would be a better idea, as an experiment,, to give an assignment, have students blog about it, find their central focus among all the psychobabble, and have them construct an essay from that. No, I'm not a teacher, so I don't find that something I'd sit up at night thinking how to do. But if I was a teacher, that might be how I'd go about things.
In the end, except for the amount of cursing that I'm assuming isn't allowed in school blogs, blog-speak is US speak. It is, more or less, how students speak, unless we're using correct grammar for brownie points or not typing "lol" at every sentence (and we've all wanted to at one time or another). But you probably already know this, Mr. Allen. I'd be surprised if you didn't. So WHY am I telling you? Well--and with my luck, you've probably already deduced this yourself--we come out writing and using writing skills and learning to improve and turning in legible, intelligent, and thoughtful pieces almost every week, and, this being the kicker, without a classic format.
Maybe it's just us.
I know it's not just me (Blogging around has showed me that).
But I seriously think this blog of ours has allowed us, or at least myself, as students, to get the best of both worlds. And through this experience, I've learned that not only can one be unrestricted (outside of a desired subject about which to write) in writing and still be effective, but that it can be done over, and over, and over again, without obsessive control, from day one. I've enjoyed watching myself be a part of that realization, knowing that I can produce "good" information just through being told to "write", and that my education can be taught by a teacher through a method not so intense that students come crawling out of the wall shouting "We don't need no education" (as some inevitably do, sometimes).
This is a great model for continuing material learning in class and for keeping students' writing abilities up to par. What else can I say?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey Dylan
Whoaa what a long post... anyways...
I definitely agree with most of the points you've brought up. Essays are okay, but there are so many restrictions and grading and expectations that so often just cause me to come to complete halts in my writing and my thoughts. With blogging, I never have to worry about sounding eloquent and making sure my sentences flow and have the proper length in comparison to the surrounding sentences... You get it.. I blog how I talk, because I'm really just being me, Melanie, the uneloquent student, and it's been easy to blog about these open topics because anything I need to write is already in my head. No outside research required!
This is a great post. And I believe Mr. Allen would agree, because you really epitomized "form is content" :]. You wrote in your own way and your voice clearly shines through, and that's also what you decided you liked about the blogging process itself: how you can write exactly the way you would speak, if you were just having a conversation about blogging over coffee at a trendy cafe (that's where I assume you'd be discussion this).
I understand what you mean when you talk about how the blogs just "flow" easily onto the screen. Because they are a much more casual form of writing, usually it's much easier to get your inner thoughts out into the open.
Post a Comment