The Blog Spectacular!

The Blog spectacular!

I have always loved the first day of class. It is great people watching. Everyone is usually walking on egg shells and not quite sure what to say or how to say their viewpoints so they will not offend someone else. Due to the minimal times actually spent with peers in this class, there was not much time to sit back and sit on your hands and not communicate with someone face to face…or through a blog. The blogging experience was a perfect way to keep in contact with various viewpoints and discussions used through class discussions, or from interesting articles found browsing through magazines and articles. When I first saw how this class was designed, I was a little on edge about how to respond to it. Blogging? Does that mean I get to “tweet” too?! Then I was excited about it because I thought it was a very new age way to communicate, and every time I used the word “Blog” in a sentence, I felt like Elaine from Seinfeld saying “my fiancé”! Then reality kicked in, and I realized that everything I was writing was going to be seen by everyone in the program. At first, that made me very tight and conservative in what I was writing, but as more people were posting, the more I became attached to reading what people were saying and the more I wanted to respond with just how I felt, without the formality of writing an essay paper.

My frustrations:
The actual process of blogging I did not find difficult at all. The only thing that I can’t stand is the hyperlink…yes I still can not figure it out! I can make it work on my word document, which I am really excited about, but I can not make it work within the blog space. That has been the most frustrating part of this whole process. I actually found the first round of blogs a perfect introduction to graduate school and for me, higher education.

One of my biggest struggles as I look back on my work is trying to transform my thought process from my world of K12 education to higher education. These blogs and current event topics forced me to open up and see how the higher education system works which in turn was a great educational experience for me. What I found to be most enlightening to me was reading everyone’s blogs and their opinions about topics, but also reading their responses. It was a 21st century way of creating a Socratic seminar.

When this semester first started, I was really anxious about how to research again, how to write formally again, and making sure that I was doing everything correctly. This class eased a lot of my stress because of the structure of it, and how easy it seemed to do research, write about it in a semi-formal way, and do so on topics that I was interested in. To me, this was a perfect way to get back into a graduate program after being “on the bench” for the last 10 years. I learned how to dive into articles, higher education magazines, and newspaper articles and read about and find myself becoming invested in what was being discussed and then write about it. I eventually found myself reading about articles and various blogs that I usually would have no interest in, but when I was done, I found myself responding to a person about my feeling and opinions about their main blog. Because of this, I have gone back and looked at my blogs and created a top three list.


My 3 Favorite Blogs:
When doing so, I seemed to always drift towards the College athletics blogs because of my background and my interest I have in college sports. However, when the Penn State debauchery occurred, I stopped going there. I could not read anymore out of disgust. Anyway, based on that, I really liked my first blog I wrote in this class about athletes and law suits mostly because I was very interested in the topic and found myself reading tons of articles the following week about this. I realized because of this main topic choice of College Athletics how many different types of articles and headliners are out there that one can write about at any given time.

My second favorite blog I wrote about was called, burning the midnight oil. http://currentevents695f.blogspot.com/2011/11/burning-midnight-oilin-co.html. I really enjoyed writing about this blog because when I first saw this on the news, I immediately researched it and found out more information about it. That is what this class has done to me. As I hear about current events that are happening on issues that I normally would not even think about, this class has opened my eyes to them and I want to know more about it. I found this exceptionally interesting because of the amount of talk that for-profit institutions are getting because their enrollment continues to soar, but now there is this push from community colleges and public university’s to keep up.

My third favorite blog is about the international conflict in Chile. http://currentevents695i.blogspot.com/2011/11/chilean-protests.html. This may not have been my best piece of writing, but again, this class has allowed me to search topics that I normally would not dive into. Because of the main International blog topic, I started speaking about this with my colleagues and we ended up taking a Spanish class down to the computer labs and having students research why students protest, and in this particular case, why the Chileans are so upset with their government. I was able to use what I was doing in this program in an everyday setting, and to me that is true learning.

The ongoing experience:
The design of this class was very fitting for a class that needed to discuss current events but did not have the people around to discuss them. Blogging allowed for people to remain connected to discuss areas of interest. As I pointed out in the beginning of this, people were unsure at the first day how to respond to one another. But by reading peoples viewpoints and concerns, it allowed for people to discuss and agree or disagree with what was being addressed…even if you get tongue tied in a heated discussion about politics. I felt the experience was truly an enlightening and engaging class even when we didn’t meet. I really enjoyed writing about something and reading people’s responses to my post because for the most part, I would just be thinking about one specific part of the issue being addressed, but then multiple people would expand on your topic and give you so many different avenues to think about. That I though was one of the most beneficial parts of the blogging experience.

The last part of this experience, as I sit back and reflect, are the class discussions and the last two assignments. The class discussions I felt were some of the most valuable instructional times that I have had in any class I have taken. From my standpoint, I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to higher education because my world revolves around the K12 sector. For me to sit in on discussions and learn about financial aid, student loans, residence life, international affairs, veteran affairs, or even non-documented students, it opened up doors to college that I honestly never even thought about as far as student affairs is concerned. The topics were fascinating and worked perfectly for where I am at right now.
The other part to that are the two assignments. The letter to the editor I found interesting to do because I have always read them, but have never had the courage to actual write one. This made me craft fully create a letter…in 150 words…and submit it. Mine did not get published, but it was awesome to see someone from class get hers published, what an accomplishment! The other was the letter to my supervisor. I have never done on of these in my life. It really made me figure out how to address my boss when I have a pretty good relationship with him in a formal manner. I did have a legitimate issue I wanted to address with him, and now I know how to do it.

Overall, I have to say that with only meeting a handful of times, this was probably one of the best college classes I have ever taken in my life. I learned more from this class, and higher education, than I ever anticipated doing. And that is shocking to say with how little was lectured to us. I really enjoyed the opinions from my classmates and learned a lot from their point of views as well. I hope they can say the same for me…on that note, thanks. Blogger…OUT