Communication via Blog...

I think using blog for out of class discussion is a very good idea - especially in Professor Kurpis' class that has lots of activities! Because of the activities, we didn’t really have much time in the class to really share with other classmates (or even our groupmates) what we thought or felt about the activities. Through the Blog, however, I was able to understand how other classmates felt about the activities and what happened in their groups. I could easily see where my group went wrong compared to the groups that received extra points. Unfortunately, one problem was that not many people posted on their Blogs straight away. That made it hard to really get to know what others thought about the activities until much later. The other difficulty I had was that I didn't know the names of many of my classmates... that led me to keep going to same Blogs of people who I know or are in my group.

I actually did not know that the Blog assignment covered 20% of my grade. I did not read the grading of the assignment because I thought the assignment was one of those interesting side assignments and I didn't expect Professor Kurpis to really care about Blogs this much! Had I known I would have totally focused more time on the Blog!

This was the first time I've used a Blog and I like it a lot. It is so useful not just as a class tool but as a communication too to post ideas, photos, video and interesting links. I have another class that also requires me to keep a journal of our class field trips. I decided to make my journal a Blog and the professor for that class has been very happy with the result. I now have two different Blogs under my name that I will be able to keep for as long as I want to.