What is a Blog?

When I started this class I had mixed feelings about starting and maintaining a blog. You would too if you had the same view of blogs as I did. All I knew was that a blog was what people used so that they could narrate their lives and let anonymous people on the internet read about it. It was a concept that didn't seem to appealing to me from either side. Especially since I didn't want to have to make a website, something I had to do a lot in high school and had gotten bored of. After the initial assignment where we had to define what a blog was and what it was used for, I began to change my mind. I found out that it was more than just a way for people to talk about themselves. It was something that was useful in tons of different ways to many different groups of people.

I learned that a blog could have many different uses. Businesses could use them to communicate with their employees. This would promote faster transfer of information within the business and instant feedback from management and employees. It's also an easy place to organize all the ideas on different topics for the business. It can also be used for companies to promote their new products, which is a good form of free advertising. Bands can use blogs to keep a journal of their tours whatever else is going on to keep their fans informed and give them something they'd want to read. Hobbyists also can use blogs to share ideas and give tips to each other on a large, but personal feeling, scale. In my first post, I speculated that blogs could even be used in research fields to give people a place to share their ideas, theories, and frustrations. Also, of course, blogs can be used as a personal journal, which isn't as bad an idea as i originally thought. Having an online personal journal lets only the people who care about what you have to say, hear what you say. With that, you only get people who have something to say about your ideas and experiences making comments to you.

I think that, overall, using blogs for our ENG 105 class has been beneficial. Although it has been a pain to constantly write and post on our blogs, it's no different than writing the assignment on a piece of paper and turning it in by hand. I believe that blogging in this class even has had some benefits over doing the work on paper. For instance, you can turn in the assignment at any time from any place with a computer. With Blogger you can even save blog posts that aren't completed and finish them from any computer when you feel like it. Additionally, instead of just handing in the paper and that being the end of it, you get to read what other people thought about the subject and look at what your classmates had to say about your ideas. I'd say that, overall, I thought that using the blogs for class was a good idea and implemented well.