Emerging Media Thoughts

I have been spending time today reading your various posts. I will go over some general comments in class on Tuesday to hopefully help you all, but one thought in particular struck me, that is that the students who were most familiar with blogs were most successful at writing posts. (I know this is captain obvious territory here, but stick with me.) One of the things that makes a good writer, is being a frequent reader, after all we learn often by copying others. In that regard I thought I would link to two particularly strong posts here which you should all read in order to help you with your own writing.

• Vera’s Post on the iCar: What Vera does well, aside from adding in an image (don’t worry we can cover this later for those who haven’t given it a try), is have focus with perspective. That is she talks about one issue, not the iCar, but the design of the iCar, particularly user interface. She provides illustrations, and examples (not setting her car stereo) to drive home the point, all the while staying focused on the topic, and linking to other places that support or provide more context. Notice how each paragraph has a point and each one builds on the prior, making for a well structured post.
• Johnny’s post about Lightbox and Javascript: This is completely different from Vera’s, but well done in its own way. He tells you what the issue is up front, provides a link to define the term that you might not know (excellent use of Wikipedia), quotes the blog he wants to discuss, and then gives you his take on the issue at hand. In other words he stays focused on one topic, and provides an observation/analysis that adds to the conversation. And most important, he gives a quick turn at the end “in the end very few of the comments eschewed the solution for avoiding JavaScript, but rather using too much JavaScript” that sums up the point. (Notice the use of italics to get the point across.