Over the course of the first quarter, my writing has drastically improved due to the weekly blog posts. I get my blog post ideas from many different sources. My life is full of inspiration for them. During the first quarter, I was assigned to post to my blog two times a week. At least one post a week had to be a response post which was described as “Grab a thought provoking quote from another student's blog and respond. “ This was a fun thing to do because it gave students a chance to give their thoughts on another students work. The next option was to do a free-write, which was simply writing about anything to get responses from other students and to let out ideas.
My writing has improved (in my opinion) from some of the first posts to some of the later posts. In the beginning, my sentence structure wasn't varied, I didn't support any of my facts, and most importantly my flow made the posts hard to follow and understand. In my Con Abortion Statement, I didn't use strong language so my debate was unsuccessful and we didn't excel.
“Abortion is eroding America’s potential for future heroes, great presidents, scientists, athletes, and other occupations necessary for the nation’s success.What if some of the mothers of great leaders of America got aborted?”
In this excerpt i don't think I made strong arguments against abortion, this was topic for the debate. I could improve this writing by added more supported details and using more compelling details.
In one of my posts, I responded to an academic essay, titled Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs by Stephen Jay Gould. It was about theories of the possible cause for the extinction of dinosaurs. I continued to write about how theories need to be backed up. I think this shows great improvement from my last post.
“It is extremely important to have good evidence when doing a science report or supporting a hypothesis. If there isn’t any facts supporting the data in a theory, then is simply an idea that has no merit. Advertisers get away with “faking” evidence all the time in infomercials. This is just like a theory that is not supported.”
This shows much improvement because I used more advanced language and it was much more interesting to read. I think I didn't do as well in the first one because i wasn't as interested in the subject. I think the science of dinosaurs in much more interesting that arguing with my fellow classmates on a topic I don't necessarily agree with. Another reason I improved from the last post was I had a lot of practice writing because I had to do at least two blog posts a week. I think that getting feedback also helps me improve. The two types of feedback that help me the most are peer feedback and self feedback. Peer feedback gives me ideas on how to write better for my peers. Self feedback lets me reflect on my piece and review how I can improve and do better.
The inspiration for blog posts comes from many different things in my life including: sports events, family, other students posts, and prompts from the summer reader. In the first quarter, I think I was most inspired by other students in the response posts. I liked to see their views on popular topics and some random stuff. One of the most random and thought provoking posts I responded to was The Pleasure of A Grocery Store by Cristian Cortez. In this post, he explained the wonder of supermarket storms. This post reminded me of a time when I was younger and I shared the same fascination of “supermarket storms”.
“‘The way people react to it is all so fun to see. little kids, and even some adults (don't be shy) all put there hand in the water for what ever reason. It is something that you should experience any time during your life.’
I can remember when I didn't want to get dragged to the store with my mom, but she insisted. One of the points she used to persuade me was “You can see the veggie rain.” With that argument i could never refuse going to the store. As Cristian mentioned in his post, it was always exciting to here the mock thunder from all the way across the store and then running to it.”
As I mentioned earlier, It is fun to see how my ideas relate to the ideas of my peers. This makes me relate more to my friends at ASTI and gives us a lot of new topic to chat about. Blog posts have helped me meet many more people at ASTI.
I also had a similar experience with Bianca’s Post. In which she connects bullying from childhood to adults and even between politicians. I responded to her post here.
“From my point of view, this type of bullying happens when with the two California Governor candidates, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown compete against each other through the media. Meg Whitman uses numerous and repetitive commercials to make citizens believe that Jerry Brown will lead California to destruction, while she will lead it to success. Whitman uses an underhanded way to make herself look better by making her opponent look worse. Like the girls who turned others against one girl, yet another question arises: If she has time to shoot all these commercials, why not put that energy into planning how to give teachers back their jobs.”
I responded by finding that I had the same feelings, in fact I made a similar post at the same time. I like to know that someone has the same thoughts as me. Bianca put into words what I had been thinking all the time. This really inspired me to write a blog post and response.
My two main goals for the next quarter include not procrastinating and coming up with complete ideas. I think that I can refrain from procrastinating by brainstorming ideas. If I brainstorm ideas in advance, then I will have arsenal to use when I am stuck for ideas. This will help me not be stuck on Friday nights at 11:59. Coming up with complete ideas is an important thing for me because when I neglect to do that my blog posts do not make sense. Completing ideas can be achieved by brainstorming, just like my other goal of not procrastinating.
nice reflection
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