First of all, I apologize to Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor for writing this final post a bit past the required deadline; I hope it still meets all of the requirements. The post that I would like to discuss for my final blog reflection is titled Americana, What we See Dictates who we Are. In brief, what I felt that I did well with this post as compared to some of my other ones is that I was careful with the amount of media I included, used a reliable source to spur the post idea, and made a logical progression from my original thought. Also, I feel that I had particularly interesting ideas and posed particularly poignant questions in this post.
I mention that I was careful with the amount of media I included because this seemed to be a problem for me with some of my earlier pieces in that I would have too many embedded videos or pictures. This overwhelms the reader a bit and, although I've found it liberating to use the Internet as a way to further convey my arguments, sometimes the simpler the better with blog posts. This is a less significant part of my post, but a change nonetheless.
More importantly, this post is a good example of how I've progressed in my abilities to come up with blog post ideas. I'm definitely thinking about the world in a different way as a result of taking this class because it's not always typical for a weekly assignment to report on and question the world around you. In this post, my ideas stem from one story I saw on the Sunday Morning Show on CBS. This program often has interesting stories, and in the past, I wouldn't think to share what I've learned. Now, I can tell others and pose follow-up questions. Plus, by using this particular show to come up with my post idea, it makes me feel better about my ability to use certain methods for producing post ideas. The Sunday Morning Show is now one of my go-to's for blog writing, and I'm happy I found such a good source.
I feel that in this post particularly I made some interesting and significant connections on the topic of "Americanization". Although I wrote this post in mid-May, it connects nicely to where our course eventually progressed. Now in class we are discussing the qualms surrounding progression through the lens of Kentucky coal mines. These mines destroy a beautiful landscape and entrap many people in a dangerous line of work, yet we need coal for our daily comforts. I bring up similar controversies surrounding the quintessential "American way" to go bigger, faster, and stronger in my post, tying in well to the direction our class was heading.
