Blogging is a new adventure for me. While I love reading my good friends' blogs and find them to provide wonderful insights into peoples' lives, I have never taken the initiative to create my own blog. I think I'm partially intimidated by having, what I think of as such personal thoughts, open to the public eye. However, I'm excited to start this blog, even if it was required for an academic setting.
Although I've never blogged, I feel like I can relate to students' feelings in "That's online writing...". There seems to be a certain untamed level of creativity that exists in blogging, and it's clear that the students in the Talkback Project found a sense of freedom in their blogs. For students like Cassandra that found tremendous pressure trying to write in the classroom, blogging was a great way for expression and formulation of thoughts. Since the classroom often brings with it pressure to perform to a certain level or achieve specific goals, writing often forces students to feel that they have to conform to a teacher's expectations. However, blogging allowed students in the Talkback Program to express freely, even though they were still being slightly monitored. It eliminated pressures to have correct grammar or the perfect sentence, and students seemed to thrive.
While blogging is new to me, I can relate to students' experiences. I don't feel nearly as much pressure to write perfectly, and it feels great!
