Reflections on Blog

Mr. Mitchell,

___________________________________________.

         This is how the beginning of a blog entry feels.  I need to fill in the blank, and I can fill it in any way I want to.  It seems almost like the open genre creative project, except that I usually feel like I should just use the writing genre (although I guess that's not really the case).  I often wrote on the books we were reading, but I tried to branch out sometimes, because I wanted to write about related essays or books or ideas.
        For me, I really enjoyed the blog process, because it did allow me to simply fill in the blank in an essay-type form.  I think this was very beneficial for me, because I would also be thinking constantly about writing something in a blog as I read the books.  This kept me alert to more than just surface-level qualities of the books we read.  However, since some students did not write except at the end of each mid-quarter, I don't know if the blog actually helped them think about the book on their own (I guess I can't say this for sure, though).  To help students be more active on the blogs, I would actuallly suggest biweekly checks with fewer entries required per check, because it would force students to work on the blog in the middle of books instead of at the end of them.
        I think I would prefer the blog to a possible return to journaling, because that way I can edit my work easily (a few times, I would post, and then decide I wanted to edit something, and this was very easy).  While writing in a journal, I usually just start somewhere, and keep rambling on, never going back to check if what I wrote actually made sense, because I knew that editing would be difficult.  Also, I can get my ideas down faster with a blog, and thus produce more work in a given amount of time.
        However, because it's easier to edit and because it's typed, I feel more pressure to write a coherent and deep post.  I think it's important that students rid themselves of the idea that each blog post has to be a mini-essay.  I feel that in saying this I am being hypocritical, because I like the mini-essay form, but I think that the act of typing into a blank slate feels awfully like typing into a blank word document at the beginning of an essay and that this might cause some people to dislike the blogging.  There is some quality to the time-tested journaling experience that gives a more relaxed and personal feel to expressing your ideas.  I think it's hard to get that feeling when writing a blog entry.
        Another thing is that I think it would be interesting/beneficial/cool if students started utilizing all of the media forms that the blog offers.  Did anyone post a video of themselves discussing the book if they didn't feel like typing?  That might interesting, and maybe some people might have preferred other media forms (I don't, and again, maybe I'm being hypocritical, but I feel think some might feel constrained to this form).
        Lastly, I think it would be beneficial to have everyone write a blog post on panel presentations, because that's still a very open-ended prompt but it would make people be more active during panel presentations and make them think about the literary criticisms.
        I don't know if I really got across what I'm trying to say.  I really like the blogs, because it gives me a half-formal way of writing about the books that doesn't feel too intense (but not too relaxed either).  I think some alterations are necessary so that everyone takes full advantage of their own blogs.  Yet at the same time, for someone who enjoys writing entries (and can be pretty long-winded as is evident here), I really appreciated the open-endedness of the idea.  Just...write a blog.  On anything.  Somewhat daunting, but nice.

Thanks,
Chelsea