It's already time for a final reflection!

Lessons learned

As explored in the comments of Euginia’s post on the trustworthiness of blogs, the main ‘lesson’ I have learned in my semester as a blogger is that writing in the context of a blog requires the realization that I am writing for a specific audience.  For me, that realization went beyond the fact that I have been writing for my classmates.  The key element was the recognition that I was writing for a group of digital natives who are used to (and who expect) the specific “blogging style” of writing.  

This facet of blogging can be viewed as both an affordance and a constraint of blogging, I believe.  It is an affordance if you are aware of what the blogging style of writing is, if you are aware that writing in a blog requires less formality and objectivity.  It is an inherently personal and relatively informal platform.  It is easier!  If a writer knows these things, he or she can write a post that will be effective in conveying a message in a context-appropriate fashion.  However, this blogging style can be a constraint if the writer is not aware of its conventions or if the message that the writer wants to convey is more serious or more technical in nature.  In these cases, blogging would probably not be the most appropriate platform. 

  

Cartoon by: cambodia4kidsorg

Extending lessons learned

I believe that this lesson can be extended to writing for all new media tools, based on my experiences with the various tools we experimented with in class.  Each tool that we have encountered has required a unique and specific set of message conveying abilities.  For example, I had never created a video of any sort before this course.  And so, through learning to create one in a hands-on, step-by-step context, I was able to learn the multiple new literacies needed for sending a message via video.  I am proud of the end result, mostly because I now understand the work that goes into even the simplest YouTube videos I watch.  Video creators must think in two streams at once:  they have to know what words and sounds they want to create while simultaneously knowing what images they want to accompany those words.  And then they have to put those two together.  

The fact that new media content creation tools each require their own unique set of literacies is actually nothing new, when I reflect upon it.  Even the “old” media, if you will, each required different skill sets.  Writing a novel has always been different from writing a newspaper article, and so on.  I suppose what is new is the fact that these skill sets do not directly carry over into the new media context, and so as new media content creators, we have to learn new skills and innovate the ones we already possess. 

A somewhat surprising observation

I have sincerely enjoyed reading and commenting on my group’s blogs, and I have been impressed with the writing of our class as a whole.  A major surprise to me throughout this process has been the length of the comments on our blogs in comparison to the comments that I have seen on most other blogs I read, such as Sarah Writes Daily and The Urban Muse.   I myself am guilty as charged, but I am surprised to see that most everyone else is, too!  Perhaps this has to do with the fact that we all knew we were writing for an academic (as opposed to purely “real world”) setting, or maybe it is related to the analytical and contemplative nature of our posts.  Either way, the lengths of the comments stood out to me.  (The reason that mine were so long is likely that I tend to be a long-winded writer no matter what the context…alas, an improvement I need to make if I want to write in the new media context!)

Overall, I think I like blogging.  For some reason, I am drawn to the fact that I am able to share my personal thoughts in the first person.  But, I think I like reading blogs even more.  I have loved the fact that my classmates’ personalities have shown through in their posts and that a blog writer’s personality typically does shine through in this context, no matter what the topic of the blog.  To be honest, I probably will not blog much more after the end of this project than I did before we started.  However, I have already started to read more blogs and am able to better appreciate the skill set required to produce them successfully.  And I think that was the purpose of this assignment anyhow. : )