In my opinion the purpose of this blogging activity was to help us to be creative writers to topics that interest us. I believe that people could write more things if they are writing about their interests. I think Ms. Rumford chose blogging than traditional writing activities for many reasons. First, for the last few years I was in ASD, I have been doing traditional writings with that you don’t get the chance to choose your own topic to. In my opinion, this is boring because all of the students are writing the same thing. But, blogging gave us the opportunity to choose our own topic that would interest us, and it would be more interesting to write about because you have the knowledge about it. Second, technology is famous nowadays so why not use it. When you do traditional writings, your teachers and peers are the only people that could see this. Whereas for blogging, your writing is posted on the Internet that can be seen by anybody not just your teachers. Also, it wouldn’t be the usual paper type writings. Third, blogging is new to us and we don’t usually do these. I think it helped us to be comfortable to write in a wider audience because it would be your usual L.A. class. More people would see your talent on writing.
Throughout the blogging activity, I have accomplished many things. One thing is my very own topic, desserts. I have learned more things to desserts such as their history and its recipes. For example, when I was doing a blog post about ice cream, I researched about it and I found out its history and how to make it with different flavors. I have accomplished to help people learn more about their favorite desserts. Another thing that I accomplished is my sentence usage. While blogging, we had to be aware about writing our sentences. I learned that while you write sentences such as the simple, compound, and complex sentence, this would lead you to your point because it the sentences would all be connected. For example, when I’m writing about ice cream, I would want to talk about its history, recipe, and my events when I ate ice cream. The sentence usage would help me lead to my point because you would be aware about what you’re writing, and you wouldn’t go on and on and your writing would end up not making any sense. Lastly, I have accomplished to write better online. For example, on the social networking sites such as Facebook, everybody is so comfortable to write whatever they want without thinking about grammar and punctuation. When I was writing my blog, I often made mistakes with grammar because I was used to writing freely with my peers. Then I would change all of that because I would realize that this wouldn’t fit to some of my audience.
There are many key concepts that I have learned while blogging. First, when writing about something, you can’t just keep on saying things you won’t get to the point. There are skills that I learned which helped me avoid this, such as the types of sentences. Simple, Compound, and Complex sentences helps you organize your writing so that you wouldn’t go on and on about what you’re talking about and wouldn’t lead to anything. Second, research helped me accomplish my blogging because for my topic about desserts, I have to research about recipes or the dessert’s history. I learned that when doing research, you couldn’t just go to one site and get all of your information there because you don’t know if it’s real. You have to go to a few sites and compare what each of them are saying then you would know what to write about. Third, organization is helpful in doing blogs. I learned that when your writing something, you can’t keep on talking and talking that would lead to different things then suddenly it wouldn’t be related to what you’re actually talking about. You need to organize your thoughts so it wouldn’t be confusing for your readers and they would enjoy it as well.
The weekly requirements helped me become a better writer. Ms. Rumford assigned us things that we had to do per week such as the vocabulary that helped me expand my vocabulary knowledge and forced me to find words that I usually don’t use. From the vocabulary usage, this helped me learn new words and refrain from using exact same words every time. A requirement that took a long time was the sentence structure. Because, whenever I try to do a sentence, I would go over it again and again if it makes sense. Also, I try to make all types of sentences spread out so they won’t be all the same ones. For example, I’d do the simple sentence and after that a compound or complex sentences, not another simple one. When I try to do this, it takes time because I have to connect each of the sentences. Also, the highlighting sentences was a challenging part because you have to identify each of the sentences and sometimes I’m not sure if I would be highlighting the right one. The embedding was pretty easy because most of my blog posts, I try to put a picture so it would be more interesting to look at, besides reading the whole blog. Sometimes I get confused when putting punctuation such as the comma because I’m not usually sure if I put it on the right place. Whenever Ms. Rumford assigns us word count such as 500-600 words, I always get really annoyed because I don’t know if I can write that long. But once I start it, I actually can write between 500-600 words and I felt better after that. The weekly requirements helped me write my blog because I would know what I’m trying to aim for when writing it.
While blogging, Ms. Rumford taught us different skills that would help us in the future. One of the skills was writing that consisted of the sentence structures, punctuation, and word choice. This skill could benefit me in the future because on other classes, there could be a writing assignment and I could apply this skill to it and I won’t have a hard time. Another skill that I could benefit me in the future is technology. From the technology skills, I knew how to embed media, about the widgets, and the tags. This could benefit me in the future for my job. For example, if I would like to advertise something, I could use the technology skills that I have and blog about it. I could write about facts and important information using the writing skills I learned, also I could embed videos or pictures using the technology skills I gained. All in all, everything that we did during our blogging activities would help me in the future because if I need to use blogs in my job or in college, I would know how to construct my writing with the writing skills I learned and technology would help my blog to be better.
