Reflection: A Look Back In Time

This blogging experience was an interesting one. There were many struggles, a lot of hard work, learning of different topics, and quite a bit of complaining. There were many advantages to utilizing this instrument, but like any other trial, it had its errors. There were topics that were interesting, while other topics were difficult. There are certain things that should stay the same and some that should be changed. There are different ways this could have been implemented and some topics that should have been covered, but were not.

Personally, my favorite topics were the topics covered in week 1, 6, and 7. I enjoyed comparing and contrasting science and pseudoscience. I also liked that we already had a foundation on the subject from class. I think posts were easier to write when I had a foundation to continue building upon. I think that the week 1 topic was very debatable and thought-provoking. I enjoyed writing about renewable resources during week 6. I think that was an important topic to discuss because of the situation our country is in right now. Nonrenewable resources are damaging to our environment and are also running out. This causes us to need other sources to use such as the renewable resources we discussed. Also, I really enjoyed posting about holography in week 7. Holography is such an interesting topic and since I'm such a fan of photography, it was even more intriguing to discover a new type of "photography". I think it was important for us to discover holography's future uses since it will affect us and our way of living. Besides favorite topics, there were some very difficult ones.

The most difficult topics were the final three weeks. That is expectable since things should get harder as time goes on, but the difference in level of difficulty was startling. Mostly, those topics were difficult because of the length requirements. Also, even though holography was a favorite topic of mine, it was very difficult to understand without a lot of time to comprehend it. I know a few others in the class will be able to relate when I say that I had to spend a lot of time working inside and outside of school on the more recent blogs and blog comments. I probably spent at least 5 hours a week working on this blog project outside of class. Overall, there were a few things I would keep the same about this experience.

The blogging experience was beneficial because it allowed us to write and have our classmates critique our work and everyone had different perspectives on the topics. The blogging experience should remain as independent as it was this year except with a little more monitoring of students who appear to not be working. The topics were overall pretty good topics. I think the topics really allowed us to learn a variety of information.

There were some things that should be changed about the experience. The rules should be unchanging from the beginning of the project to the end. Also, if the need arises for rule changes, the class should be informed. An example was when the date the original posting was due changed from Friday to Wednesday during the second week. This threw a lot of people off and I wouldn't have even noticed the change on that rule if a friend hadn't pointed it out to me. Also, plagiarism needs to be watched for a lot more. There was an excessive amount of this occurring during the project and it quite frankly was not fair to the students who actually wrote their own posts. Also, instead of increasing the work amount, it would have been fairer to just take points off of the people who weren't doing their work. The people who weren't doing their work or were plagiarizing weren't affected by the work increase; it just meant more things to copy and paste. For the people who worked, it was an extra worry and more time needing to be spent blogging. Also, the amount of game playing going on was very extreme and rather aggravating when trying to work. One thing that was also somewhat upsetting was to be told to check the "master blog" instead of getting an answer when a question was asked. A better way to have this blogging experience would be to have it be a supplement to teaching. It could be a weekly or monthly blog describing things that were learned in the classroom. That way for every post, the class would have a foundation to build upon. Also, it would have been useful to know how physics related to all of the topics. Besides changes, the blogging experience should also have new topics.

Some topics that could be added would include electromagnetism, classical mechanics, and thermodynamics. Other topics that would be great would be the different branches of physics. Famous physicists would also be interesting to learn about and what effect they had on physics. Also, discussing careers in physics would be a great chance for career exploration.

This blogging experience was definitely a good way to learn, but wasn't implemented completely correct. However, nothing and nobody is perfect and science is always full of trial and error. It is very difficult to find a happy medium especially on the first try. As much as I might have disliked this project at times or complained about it as some of my classmates have, I really did learn a lot of different information on those topics. I'm not really sure it prepared me for college physics except for the size of work. I really enjoyed the different topics and am glad to have learned about them. I hope this does not offend or anger anyone, because I just wrote what I think is true. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and people should honor that entitlement. Overall, I might not have enjoyed every minute of this experience, but I learned about quite a few topics that interested me.