Online Interaction

Sure, I think blog posts are helpful. We only meet once a week so it a good way to stay up to date with what were discussing in class. It’s also a good way to communicate with other classmates and get new opinions on certain topics. It also helps to know, when we have blogs on what our essay formatting ideas are, that others students are just as nervous to write the paper and yourself. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up with your work and frustrations and you may think that you’re the only one struggling at times. Getting a comment that says something like “I think we’re all nervous about that part” or “I know how you feel about picking a topic I’m having the same concerns” always brings me back to reality.

It’s pretty rare that true conversations start from blog comments. At least for me it is. I have only begun a slight conversation about something concerning science; I forget the true topic now. Ms. Clark got into it though and gave her opinion and she even said in the comment “this doesn’t really have anything to do with your comment Ashley, sorry” which I thought was funny. So that led to something more than just a blog comment but that’s as far as I have ever gone. Normally comments are just there to offer encouragement or compliment an idea that was stated in the blog.

I actually prefer the blogs more than the forum discussions because you have more opportunities to be creative in a blog post than answering questions in a forum discussion. Plus, I feel blog posts are more personable and casual than a forum discussion which is nice. Forum discussions are more like class work or peer reviews where as blogs and blog comments are more like journal entries and discussions with friends and classmates.

I am not dissatisfied with my blog experience and think my fellow classmates are doing a great job keeping up with blogs and blog comments. We’re all new to this hybrid type class so I would never say anything bad about how others are handling it. I do need to finish writing the discussion part in my qualitative media essay though and I have about one hundred more words to write here so that would be a downfall to blogging and commenting every now and then. It just sometimes gets in the way of the more important things, but time management can solve that problem.

I also just accidently did next week’s blog by mistake so this is the second set of five hundred words I am writing toady, along with my essay. But that could also be a positive thing about hybrid classes because I just accidently got ahead. So to sum up: I enjoy blogs however don’t think they lead to more conversations as I only had one true conversation; I think my classmates are doing a great job with them as well; and I am not unsatisfied with the interaction experience.