Reflections On Creating An Enthusiast Blog Pt. 3

The first round of peer revisions took place in an online setting, on the Sakai forums. This review was based on our blog's "rough draft." Both my group members gave me positive feedback and said they liked my blog very much. They also offered me some tips. Both of them told me that perhaps I should shorten my posts, as they were extremely informational and may overwhelm the reader. While I valued their advice and could definitely see where they were coming from, I decided not to shorten my posts. As I stated before, I intended for my blog to function as not just a documentation of my struggle to quit cigarettes, but a truly useful resource for people who want to or are trying to quit cigarettes. I felt that I inculded a substantial and highly informative content, and even though it was long, was necessary to include all the information that I wanted to present. One piece of advice I did take from this forum was to make my pictures smaller. At this time they were definitely too big. This peer review session was very helpful, even though it didn't translate into many changes in my blog. The positive encouragment from my group mates gave me confidence in my blog. Previous to this I had been nervous about the quality of my blog, and that it may not be very interesting to read. Now I had confidence in it. As we learned before starting the project, confidence is huge when creating a successful blog of any kind.

Next came the Peer Workshop in class on Monday, where we were to have ready a polished, essentially final draft of our blog, complete with our four example posts. Here I received more positive commentary on my blog, and some more minor tips that were helpful. Basically my group mates said they liked my blog, found it interesting, and that it just needed a bunch of grammatical work, which I fixed for my final draft of my blog.

With the aesthetic design of my blog, I decided to just keep it simple. I added pictures that I felt would add to my blog and relate well to the content, but I tried to keep it relativley simple. I didn't want to overwhelm the reader with the aesthetic appearance.

I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating an enthusiast blog. It was fun, interesting, and a great learning experience. As the explosion of technology in our society continues, our society will become increasingly viewed through the electronic medium. Due to this drastic shift, I feel it is definitely important for me to become familiar with how to use things like blogs and other methods of electronic communication that are beginning to dominate our culture. I see this project of creating an enthusiast blog as a valuable learning experience that has enlightened me to the world of blogging.