Reflection on Blogging

I learned a great deal of things I should do differently after the readings and looking at the other blogs from our fabulous blog creators!

Knoebel & Lankshear say that we should "pay close attention to text, design and communication." I chose a black background because it looked neat and appealing to me. I thought I should use bright colors for the text, but I learned that it is difficult for color blind folks to read those bright colors. The blogs I reviewed all used subdued colors that were neat and clean.

At first, creating a blog was just an assignment to me. But, I now want to get in a make my blog meaningful. Knoebel & Lankshear tell us that "reading a blog includes much more than simply reading the printed text of each blog post, but paying attention to layout, colors, images, and even sound." Although none of the blogs I reviewed used sound, they did appear to follow these guidelines.

One of the blogs I reviewed had great hyperlinks embedded within the text. Initially, I simply typed the URLs in the text, but I think using hyperlinks in the text looks so much better. Knoebel & Lankshear tell us, "The feature of any hypertext which most obviously distinguishes it from other kinds of text is the hyperlink: it gives the onscreen text a kind of "depth," a richer texture than a printed page generally has."

Richardson tells us that "the first step is to find out as much as you can about the author." Two of the blogs I reviewed had this, but one of the blogs did not as far as I could see. I find it interesting to know as much about the creator of the blog as possible.

Knobel & Lankshear. (2007). Looking from the inside out: Academic blogging as new literacy.

Richardson, W. (2006). Weblogs: Pedagogy and practice. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, & other powerful web tools for classrooms.