Mid-Semester Reflection

Noitcelfer Retsemes-Dim

After studying 21st century media for eight weeks I've learned a lot about blogging. I've never blogged before and never had a reason to learn, but I'm glad I have. It's definitely a skill I plan on using in the future. I've also learned about the thought that goes into a commercial regarding how to suck a viewer in. It's been interesting to apply when just watching TV with the guys in the dorm.

This class has also taught me a lot about myself. It hasn't taught me anything I didn't already know about my writing self since I am a writing major, but I've learned I need to be a much more critical reader and thinker. I tend to take things at face value and don't usually dig deeper unless prompted or very interested in the matter.

If I were to take this class again I think I would take the blogs more seriously from the start. I thought they would be boring busy work assignments at first but I've grown to actually start appreciating them and I wish I had done so from the beginning.

But if I took the class again, I would like to get more use from the textbook. It was the most expensive book on my list and I feel like I hardly get any use out of it. I love the classes, but I feel like the assignments from the book are just busy work things - probably why I didn't take the blog seriously to begin with.

At first when I was given the power tools packet I groaned. It seemed like a lot to memorize and nothing worth remembering. Now, they're not so bad. a lot of them were just common sense concepts given new names so there was hardly anything to learn there.

The course blog has always been helpful. I'm not a fan of posting the book responces there, but it makes it so much easier to find out what the assignments for class are. Soooo much more helpful than Demon (aka Angel).

The personal blog has also grown on me. As I said before, I thought it would be a bit annoying, but I actually like it. I love making the posts my own.

The everyday quizzes definitely help to drill in the power tools that I didn'y already know. Occasionally they can get annoying sicne we have them every week twice a week, but overall they're handy to have.

The in-class films are usually fun to watch and discuss. I really like the discussions following "Reel Bad Arabs," it was the type of interactive discussion that makes a class both fun and informative.

I don't thing the book is very useful at all. We basically use it for busywork-homework. Rarely do we use what we read about in class. There should be more ways to incorperate it in the lessons.