Why Blog?: Key Terms and Main Idea 

• Why Blog?-  Unfortunatly, decades of research suggest extrinsic motivation can actually hurt our performance.  -A blog is an excellent opportunity for exploring and developing intrinsic motivation for writing. – A blog is an excellent opportunity for exploring and developing intrinsic motivation for writing. – Blog will need to come from inside and discover such motivation not only for writing but I general. Motivation for your academic writing and later into writing as a professional. 
• What Is A Blog Or Better What is Your Blog? –  Different kinds of blogs depends on content. -Public diaies, amature journalism or political views. – Specific interest. – Something that will discuss my journey in English 1117. 
• A Sample of Popular Blogs- The Huffington Post, Mashable, Tech Crunch, Gizmodo, Engaged, and more. 

• Discovering What to Write- Class Blog– the student and the instructor post common blog on the subject. – Individual Reading or Learning blog- Write specifically about the topic of the course or reflecting or a learning experience. – Class Team Blog- Update your blog on the classes project and progress in that class. – Individual Blog- autonomy writing.  

• Some Technical Advice on Building A Blog – These sites will place advertising on your blog instead of free blog. – You might learn about CSS and other elements of web design. – Show how to create a URL. 

Why Blog?: Commentary 

In the “Why Blog?” post the author Alex Reid talks about the benefits of blogging. He feels blogging is an excellent opportunity for exploring and developing motivation for writing. I feel everything has a benefit, even the worst things. So, I can see how he feels blogging will make you a better writer. It will allow you to think different then you would in other writing and reading classes. Alex also talks about how you control the length of your writing, subject matter, timing and all characteristics of your writing. This my personal favorite because it different from other teachers’ regular style of learning. It allows you to have more fun with your writing and thinking. Over all the author believes that blogging will increase your writing abilities and make you enjoy writing. After reading this post I am more excited about our blog journey. 

Why Blog?: Analysis 

In the article “Why Blog?” they show an example of a study determining what makes you an expert. According to Malcom Gladwell it takes 10000 hours of dedicated time to perfect a craft or profession. Just because you put that many hours into an activity, hobby, or life ambition that does not mean you will be good at it let alone a professional. I know people who have been practicing basketball for over 35 years and put in the time to “be a professional” but they still suck. To master something, you need more internal motivation. This article states that external motivation can hurt you. I 100 percent disagree with that because all my life’s motivation and achievements came from external motivation. I do agree that a blog a new way to learn but I don’t agree with it. I would rather have a format, and not such a free-lance writing assignment. Blogs are good for expressing your feelings, but I don’t like it for classes just because it’s so different. I feel like it will motivate me to be a better writer. 

Imagining the Blogosphere: Kety Terms and Main Ideas 

• What Happens to Old Blogs?- the public blogs are abandoned, 1.09 of which only have one post (Perseus Development Company, 2003) 
• The whole of blogs are like an “iceberg”- huge, with only a small part of the whole easily seen 
• Blogs are not a community as they are so often idealized to be; instead, there are few conversational groups, with all bloggers outside of groups being solitary 
• Different Kinds Of Bloging – There are different forms of blogging, each of which have different community values 
• Mass Ceremony – The individuals receive information relevant to their lives within the national community. 
• When one partakes in ‘mass ceremony’, the others partaking in the ceremony can only be imagined 
• Blogosphere Journalism – It provides a shifting two sided news form revolving around the imaginary communities of the Blogosphere. 
• News blogs give personal, uncensored accounts of current events; they keep stories ‘alive’. 
• ‘Filtering – It allows for the most active blogs to be easily seen and accessed. 
• News blogging benefits over traditional print news by being limitless, in terms both of human production and resources. 
• Blogging is digital divide is the dominance of the English language.  

Imagining the Blogosphere: Making Connections 

I see blogs as place for artist and people that are bored to share ideas and images. One popular blog I think that fits well would be social media . I’ve made many different accounts in my life so far . I have always loved social media. Even to this day this day I have over 5 different social media out lets. I enjoyed reading people comments and post. I also love catching up with old friends and watching them thrive in life. A regally and most picture blogs like “Big Media” it will be one of those ancestors’ apps like Facebook. Coming back to the “Big Media” audience, there will be those artist people and people bored so those people will keep those apps going so it won’t full die, but it will be less mentioned from the public eye. I personally like reading a lot of newspapers and articles then most personal pieces about their ideas on major topics that aren’t relevant or as important.  

Imagining the Blogosphere: Analysis 

In the article Lampa talks about blogs are not a community as they are so often idealized to be; instead, there are few conversational groups, with all bloggers outside of groups being solitary. I feel the blogging community is one big family. Everyone that has similar interests will meet. That’s the beauty of a blog you never know what topic you will find. To say the blogging community is non-existent is almost inhumane and inconsiderate to all the bloggers. After reading this article, I have not only gained insight of blogging and the blogosphere, but also insight on myself. For starters, I never realized the amount of those that do not update their blogs, and those to the extent to never return to their very own blogs. After reading about the research and surveys mentioned in the article, I could not stop thinking about how it accurately related to me. The article mentioned that the average abandoned blog only lasts about four months. I instantly thought about this blog. I only created one purely for this class. In one months’, time, I would not come back to use this again.  

Sources: Lampa, Graham. Into the Blogosphere – University of Minnesota. conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/172275.