Blog Assessment

Throughout this semester we as a class have been asked to blog once a week about either an assigned topic, or a topic of our own choosing. This weekly blogging exercise was instituted instead of doing writing assignments or papers, and in my opinion this was a good idea.
Before this semester I had never written a blog before, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, and after doing it for a semester I have gained an appreciation for it. While there were a few weeks during the last few months where my enthusiasm for the weekly blog waned, overall it was not a bad thing to do. There were some weeks where I felt more inspired to sit down and write, and on these weeks I actually enjoyed it, (well as much as one can enjoy a school assignment). But for me this was a semester filled with long papers and assignments in other classes that I did not enjoy doing, so the blog was a nice change. Faced with a choice of doing multiple writing assignments or a long paper, the blog was a breath of fresh air. It allowed us to write about many different topics throughout the semester while allowing our opinion on to be known. Compared with other classes where I was forced to write a 10-page paper on one subject I cared nothing about, it was nice at times to be able to sit back and write the way I want to.
Now, all that being said, I didn’t like everything about the blog. At times I had no motivation to write it, or just didn’t feel like writing about a certain topic. Another thing I didn’t particularly care for was the requirement to make two comments a week on someone else’s blog. This was harder to do because finding people who posted every week, or finding a post that I felt I could comment on was not always easy. But I understand why the comment requirement was made. It was to make sure we were participating and engaging in blogs that were not just our own, so I suppose I can forgive that.
If I had to give myself a grade for this blog I would give myself an A or an A-. Now this is not being cocky and saying I did a great job, because I’ll be the first to admit that there was more than one week when my post wasn’t very good. But I feel I deserve that grade because I never missed a week for posting, always was on time with my post, and always tried to make as many comments a week as I could. I know not everyone in the class posted every single week, or took the effort to make comments every week, so since I did put that effort forward I feel like I should get an A.
Overall, I thought doing a weekly blog post was a good idea. It wasn’t that complicated an assignment, and it was a simple way to gain participation and points in the class.