Blogs Revisited

Throughout the quarter as we have read about blogs, discussed blogs, kept blogs, and researched blogs, I have continued to update my personal blog. My view on blogs has changed over the course of this quarter but not entirely because of eRhetorics. I discovered that people from my dorm had unearthed my xanga and were reading it on a daily basis. This altered my whole audience and thus, my writing. I found myself being careful with words and descriptions as to not offend any potential readers. As a result of this, I revealed less and less of my more private thoughts. Frankly, I didn’t care if strangers read the idiocies that came out of my head, but my friends knowing disturbed me a little bit.

To me, blogs will always be a journal. Even news blogs or thematic blogs such as this one are ideas and occurrences that happen to me in real life retold in virtual text form. What separates a journalism blog from a news article? It is simply a personal viewpoint updated daily on things that are happening to the author. This is a journal to me. Perhaps it has a little more substance than me talking about my day, but at its heart is a journal. I think blogs could have a very firm place in academia. Just because it is not formal writing doesn’t mean it should be discounted as a medium. What a blog lacks in polish it more than makes up for in honesty and spontaneity.

I think the class keeping a collective blog would be great. As long as entries were entered anonymously, I believe open forums about eSubjects as well as the class itself could be a great way to share ideas and express opinions that we might not discuss in class. I’d prefer this to the normal forum because it is a lot more fluid and changing. The strings and responses of normal forums just seem counteractive to natural conversation to me.

Overall, I’ve thought about the impact of blogs as well as the purpose. Even after viewing all these varieties, my blog remains a way for me to describe a thought or vent about something that’s annoying me. Perhaps as I experiment with my audience further, I will need to experiment with my style as well.

Presentation Likes

For me the most important part of a presentation is a comfortable pace and eyecontact. It almost didn't matter to me what the content was in these presentations because for a lot of people, they were at different points in their research or ideas. I did not like use of aids that distracted the presenter. Reading off a paper was my ultimate pet peeve. People would look up for a split second and then go back down to the paper. If you fast forwarded the video they'd just be bobbing and nodding their heads. No good.

Actually a recent presentation is fresh on my mind for using pace and practice to deliver a presentation where she kept eye contact with the audience the whole time.

Video is definitely a great change of pace from simple powerpoints. There were a couple videos used that illustrated peoples points in a great way.

There were also a couple examples where presenters did almost an impromptu presentation where they were at the board and just talked. They were both great at using this technique to keep the audience engaged rather than seeming "unprepared". They were usually more prepared than most presenters because they knew they couldnt have any awkward pauses.

Online Communication

As I perused the articles, I skipped over the AIM and blog ones and quickly settled on the online addiction article. I wouldn't say that I'm obsessed to the point of damaging my social interactions. I actually like using AIM to supplement my social interactions. I do believe that I spend too much time online but I think its a part of modern college culture. For instance, all three of my real classes this quarter require internet use. This class is an obvious one, but my Human Biology classes have online problem sets every week in addition to online readings, slides, and heavy e-mail contact with the CA's. The problem lies in that once I'm online doing work, I'll easily get distracted by AIM, espn.com, or any millions of things I can do from the comfort of my computer. I know for a fact that I can accomplish a million more things if I'm away from my computer, but I tend to think of the one or two things I can't do if I don't have it. E-mail is almost crucial to any extracurricular activity as well as getting help from peers and faculty. AIM is the easiest way to keep in touch with longdistance friends. Facebook.com has evolved into a national network. Its the ability of the internet to present those million options that is the problem. AIM alone can distract me for an hour when I should be working, but I still can't bring myself to sign off when I'm doing work. I'd call that an addiction I guess. But the fact of the matter is that at least at Stanford, no student can go a day without internet use. It has simply become to ingrained in our everyday lives.

The Next Presentation

I'll admit I haven't put much thought towards the next presentation yet especially with midterms this week. My first impression was that I need to narrow my topic to one concrete argument. I think I wrote before about my anxiety over the specific single issue I was tackling. I know I have the general idea of how/why people create separate online identities, but I have not gotten to that one thesis sentence that slams the door shut. I guess that will come with more research. I at least hope it will. I'm not sure if I will do a pwrpoint this time after all that pwrpoint bashing. At the very least I will streamline it a lot more so it doesn't become a crutch (i hate crutches by now). I liked the added a/v aspects of some other people's presentation and might think about that.

RESPONSE:
I need to narrow my topic down or at least find that statement. I'm speaking in too many generalities right now. Also, I need to get my survey done and out because I've been dragging on it. Hopefully it will provide a strong argument for me or even suggest an argument. I asked Liz if she would be using pwrpoint and she guessed probably not. It will be interesting to see how many people will convert (since I think 93% used pwrpoint the first goround) to old fashioned non-pwrpoint presentations after reading about all the evils of it. I will probably still use it just with all the negative commentary in my thoughts as I make it.