The Grand Finale

• What did you learn about yourself as a writer?

As a writer, I've learned that I need to write more outside of academic writing. I've been doing academic writing and journalistic writing for so long that creative writing has become very difficult. And that's most likely attributed to the fact that my reading over the last few years has been academic and professionally focused. I very rarely read for fun anymore because of all of the academic reading that I have to do. Because I was self-conscious about my creative writing, this made the blogging experience a little difficult for me, but I definitely see its benefits.

• What did you learn about digital writing or being a member of a digital writing community?

I didn't particularly like this form of writing. I realize the benefits of it, but if I'm going to share my writing digitally, especially where I'm not able to control who gets to read it, then I want it to be on my terms and it probably wouldn't be very often. 

• What lessons can you take to your classroom or share with future teachers about integrating blogging into instruction?

Going back to the benefits, blogging allows for collaboration outside of the classroom. It also allows students to have a wider audience, which widens the purpose of their writing. This collaboration not only helps students with their writing, but also builds a sense of classroom community. However, going back to what I mentioned above. If I were to use this in the classroom, I would probably want to find some way where the blog is viewable by class members, but give students a choice of whether they want it to be shared to the wider public. 

• Challenges/Successes?

One of my challenges was being a terrible accountability partner. Most weeks I was posting way before time or at the last minute and I would forget to check in with my accountability partner to ensure that she had posted. I also would just respond to posts at the same time that I posted mine, usually whoever had posted by the time I did. I typically did not come back to the link-up for the rest of the week. I saw the assignment as a chore because blogging isn't something I typically engage in and that presented a challenge in me being fully engaged in it. Another challenge was responding to people's responses to my blog. Since I usually didn't go back to the blog once I'd posted and responded to others, I wouldn't see or respond when people commented on my blog until a week later, sometimes longer, sometimes not at all. That stopped the flow of communication and wasn't very polite (bad netiquette). Sorry, y'all!

One success, however, was that I was able to share things with my classmates and read what they had shared. I believe this created a sense of community in our class.