extra credit post

Before this class, I had never published a blog, nor had ever been a blog reader. On the first blog assignment when we were supposed to tell which blog we enjoyed the most, not even one came to mind.

 I think there were two main positive aspects about using blogs in this course. First, I got to experience and play around with the blog format, something extremely new to me.  Blogs are a growing trend in out society that I knew very little about. Second, writing blogs about concepts we had learned in the previous week made me look back at my notes and kept me caught up on all of the readings and course materials in the class.

At first when I started blogging, I was confused on how to upload and double check that my blog had been posted. After playing around with the blogger website, I was able to overcome the difficulties.

The blogs that I enjoyed most were the blogs that we were required to find our own examples and explain their impacts on us as receivers of the media. For example, the second blog on the influence of media in my life made me realize how advertisements truly do have an impact on my life whether it be the guilt felt when shown underprivileged children, or the happiness associated with slender and beautiful women.  I felt that the more general prompts were less enjoyable and more difficult to write about. An example would be the prompt over the association of connotative and denotative meanings and different shot progressions.

I recommend using blogs in future RTF courses as well as other courses in general at UT, because the weekly blog assignments keep you caught up with the course and prevent you from falling behind. Not only did it keep me updated with RTF, but it also prompted me to get my books out on Sunday and start studying for other classes as well. Moreover, using it in the RTF course provides a link to using real life media and connections with the course to examples in the real world.

The only thing I can think of to make things easier to blogging experience in the future, would be to provide a more detailed explanation of how to use the blog website at the beginning of the course, along with a more detailed grading system explanation.

Yes, you can use my blog in a paper or report