Should probably put my money where my mouth is

In 2005, eprops was part of my vocabulary, as was Xanga. I liken these words to some of the greatest writing of my life: ridiculous, pointless musings that my friends awarded me eprops for. There is no record of my Xanga online, and I cannot remember what I wrote about daily for my audience of high school friends.

As I look at my five-week long blog for this class, I am impressed with the various affordances blogging offers. For example, I have had three very different blogs in my life:

1. My Xanga account, which probably discussed Hilary Duff and Chad Michael Murray’s latest romantic comedy together. I think I dabbled in satirical letters to the editor of our small town newspaper, as well. My audience were fellow Marion High School students who also had Xanga accounts. It was a personal blog.

2. A blog about my experience as I investigated administrators’ salaries at Wartburg College, part of a bigger project for a journalism class. My audience was the teacher, because I did not make the blog known outside of our classroom. It was a required blog.

3. This blog, which functions as a space to reflect on readings for class and to initiate communication outside of the classroom. The audience consists of my classmates and professor, and any other bloggers that may stumble across our class blog. It was a required blog.

This blog is so different from my two previous experiences because it is serious—it actually functions in ways that change meaning, invite controversy, and encourage communication (not just eprops). For once, it was not supposed to contain solely my musings, but thoughtful reflections on composition theory and multimodal compositions.

What I find, upon reviewing my blog, is that it is still all about me.

See what Carly Simon has to say about this.

I may not have changed meaning for my classmates with my musings, but they certainly changed mine. Learning became a personal goal for my blog experience. As a student who must read a text and discuss it to fully understand the theory or implications expressed, I found blog posts to be a useful pre-discussion to our class and to learn through others’ explanations. (This is especially since everyone uses words in class I have never heard before. When it is in writing, however, I can look them up and fully grasp what is argued.)

Our blogs were utilized for communication, reflection, response, and learning purposes. But what are most blogs used for? Does a classroom change how blogs function?

I think so. My posts mostly responded to the writings with alphabetic text. I inserted a few pictures with almost every post but only included one video. Links were added, yes, but the modality of posts was lacking.

Formality was a changing variable as well. In some posts, my writing sounds like I am actually a legitimate graduate student and some sound like I am an intern for E! News.

In a way, my blogging activity reflects my turmoil with multimodal compositions. Posts were better when I had specific instruction and a clear goal—reflective of all multimodal assignments. I did not get crazy with other modalities but took small steps like Cynthia Selfe instructs instructors to.

Now I wish I had gone nuts with my blog and pushed the boundaries of the assignment. Go big or go home sounds like a line out of a Hilary Duff movie…but maybe it is the risks I chose not to take that held this blog back from meaning-making for others. And maybe that is the best lesson to take with me from this class.