Blogging and Sharing

1. What do you like or dislike about keeping a blog for this course?


I've had a Blogger since 2007.  I can see its value and I personally like keeping a blog.  I think it helps develop thought and writing skills.  Basically the old adage "If you don't use it, you lose it" applies in this situation.  I think blogging is an excellent way to practice writing skills.  Over time, I have seen significant improvement in my own writings from the beginning to now. 
 
2. How can keeping a blog make you a more effective teacher?


I agree with the video, Sharing: The Moral Imperative, in which a comment was made or inferred that blogging can be used as a way to reflect.  I think my teaching skills could grow, just as my writing skills have grown.  This could be useful for several reasons.  I could use my blog to go back and reflect on my early thinkings because we tend to forget what are train of thought was while creating anything.  I could also use it to critique my thought processes.  Often if we write something down and come back in a few months to a year we can see it from a second point of view.  Almost like we are critiquing someone else's work.  This would enable me to improve lessons from year to year. 

3. Will you consider continuing to post to your blog after this course is over? Why?


I most certainly will.  I posted before the class started and I want to continue to use this valuable tool after.  In fact, I have a trip to Nanjemoy, MD I'm dying to share on Blogger.  My family and I kayaked old wooden WWI shipwrecks.  We took beautiful pictures of ourselves standing on those ancient ships and the ecological benefit these massive wooden giants have created.  We also took pictures of 3 nesting bald eagles.  It truly was an amazing trip.  One I want to share with the rest of the blogging community.  I completely agreed with the video's message of using blogs to share teaching methods. 
 
4 Keeping a blog helps you develop four new media literacies:
Appropriation - The ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
Collective Intelligence - The ability to share and pool knowledge and compare notes with each other toward a common goal.
Transmedia Navigation.- The ability to follow the flow of information and stories across multiple modalities.
Networking - The ability to search for synthesizes and disseminate information.

Give me a concrete example of how blogging in this class is evidence of your abilities to do one of these four new media literacies.

Collective Intelligence for the simple fact that I have been following classmates blogs since the first blog list was posted.  I like to see what everyone else is thinking.  I fear that sometimes I make a topic too complicated.  I put too much thought into things that really need to be brought to a point.  I like reading how my classmates do this, since we are all using the same topics.  It also gave me an opportunity to peek into their thoughts and even see how much importance and thought they put into the class and their assignments.