Posts
Whew, what a week! I don’t think we are asked to actually tally our hours invested, and that is good because I can’t count that high. But to be fair, I spent an obscene amount of time just researching blog-engines and RSS-readers and other nuts-and-bolts stuff. It reflects on me, not on the task. Anyway, here is the itemization for “How I spent my summer, episode 1”:
- I read the all 288 of the Discussion Board posts time-stamped before1400CDT today.
- I made 10 posts of my own, but two of those were an introduction and the URL to this blog. Of the remaining 8, about five benefited from real blood, sweat, and tears, and the other three were pretty spontaneous. One was too spontaneous and clearly didn’t make sense to anyone but me. I didn’t concentrate anywhere particular, as this is all new to me. This asynchronous, text-based communication is going to take some getting used to. At least for me, the lack of voice inflection and other body-language cues really impoverishes the communication.
- Counting this one, I made six posts to my blog. That is six more than my previous lifetime total.
- I read all of my classmates’ blog posts up through Friday night. (That’s assuming I set up my feed-reader correctly—I think I got everybody.) I did not respond to anyone’s posts on their blogs, and that is the source of my resolution for next week—I’m going to make a particular effort to let each classmate know that we really are reading what they produce. Despite my effort to keep my ego in tight check, when I see “0 comments” I can’t help but wonder, (“Was this uninteresting? Did anybody read it? Am I in the wrong class?”) I’ve found that if you choose to write for others, you suddenly need them for validation. Jeez….
Don't be too hard on yourself about the comments. There are probably lots of other people out there like yourself who read everything but simply didn't comment much this week.
ReplyDeleteThis is one reason that I prefer Wordpress for blogging-- they have built in blog analytics so you can see if people are reading, what they're reading, how there were referred to your blog, etc.
To build on Allyson's comment, you can also install some blog analytics here (and google has some you can use) which will show if you're getting hits, etc.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I think the combination of blogging being new to many folks and the holiday weekend has kept commenting low, plus the potential sense of overload (20-something new blogs to read, a discussion board and what else?).