Communicating via Blog

Blogging through the semester has definetly been a fun experience.  It allowed a lot of the students to interact with each other and share thoughts and experience not only about the class but about their life as well.  It feels like I've gotten to know quite a few people without even having to speak to them.  These type of blogs also allow the students to stay in touch after the semester is over, which is in my opinion great.  The best thing that I like about these blogs however is that they require no research and they let you express yourself in ways that you could not do otherwise.  In other classes, for example, writing assignments or research papers are always required to be cited and you always have to watch what you say in order not to stumble into some kind of unintentional paraphrasing.  With blogs, however, it provides us the opportunity to just write about important topics, without having to worry about citing, or making sure that we are 'politically correct' all the time.  The fact that blogs are also 20% of our grade is also a great thing for the class.  I think doing blogs is great and they should remain as part of the course objectives in the future.