9. Classmate Blog Critique

As a Plant Science major, I don’t have a lot of contact with my classmates in either the Media Law and Ethics or Directed Study II classes. My contact with them now has been further cut because we are no longer in class on campus, and I am in a different Blackboard Collaborate class. I miss hearing them talk about their blogs, because it is clear how interested they are in the topics they choose. Now, my only contact with my classmates is through their blogs. I love seeing what they choose, because it shows how creative they can be with a topic.

When I hit a roadblock with research on a topic, I like to take a break and check out my classmates’ blogs. It helps me to see what other people have done (in this class and the 2018 class) because I can look through the research and weed out what was going off-topic. Looking through the blogs also gives me inspiration on how I want to write a blog. A few blogs that I always make sure to check out are Elizabeth Nalley’s, Rhett Gentry’s, Katie Graham’s, and Lindsey O'Neal's blogs, but I will usually have looked at everyone’s blogs by the time I am done writing mine.

Elizabeth Nalley

Elizabeth’s blog is one that I always check when I get stuck writing mine. She always gets her blogs done one time – and often has them done early. Each one of the blogs shows that she spends a considerable amount of time perfecting them. They have lots of links and she finds a way to incorporate video into each of them. In her Predictions blog, she has eight links in the first paragraph alone. All of her blogs look and sound professional, and I enjoy reading them. I have never found a major error in her blog, just a few pictures that did not upload correctly. I also like that she labels each of her blogs with the number and title of the blog, because it makes it much easier to find the one I am looking for.

My favorite blog from Elizabeth is her Binge-Watching blog. It looks professional and clean, and each show she talks about has its own paragraph. She weaves in her personal opinions on each show with a full description of what the show is about. While one of the videos did not want to load on my laptop, she provided a link directly below the video. I love this because there is still a way for me to see the video she wanted to include with the blog. I think another reason I liked this blog so much is because I have found a new appreciation for nature documentaries, so I really identified with her enthusiasm for the shows.

Rhett Gentry

Another blog that I like to check out is Rhett’s. Each blog is thoroughly researched and has headers for the subtopics within each blog. I love this because I can scroll through a blog and see what he is talking about in one paragraph. For example, in his Product Review blog, I can stop at each section for his review on the Galaxy S7. He has subtopic headers for Watching Videos, The Camera, Interactivity and Multi-Tasking, and The Galaxy S7 vs Competitors. If I was just skimming the blog I could stop and see what he said about the camera’s capabilities. Rhett also provides a lot of pictures in his blog that he incorporates into the text.

My favorite blog from Rhett was his first blog on Personal Video Habits. He incorporated statistics in the first paragraph of this blog and then applied those statistics to himself. An important sentence was given its own space and was in a bigger font. When I opened the blog, the sentence “I do not watch any TV or streaming services” was the first thing I saw. It is a great way to pull someone in, because the blog is about personal video habits. If he does not watch TV or streaming services, what does he watch? So, you read the blog because you want to know what he watches (Spoiler Alert: it’s YouTube). He breaks down what he watches into subcategories and provides links and videos to each YouTube channel he likes. Then, he has another subheading titled “Summing it Up.” I like that he summarizes the blog because he gives a last comment on the information in the blog. It also feels like a conclusion in a research paper, so it neatly ends the blog.

Katie Graham

Katie’s blog is another blog that I think always looks professional. One of the reasons for that is her header with her name in a very cute font. It gives the whole blog a more professional appeal. Each blog is labeled with the number and title on the home page, along with a picture from the blog and you can see the beginning of the blog. I like this because you can kind of read through the blogs while still on the home page. It is like a preview of the blog without committing to the blog. Katie’s blog also has a “Featured” title for her latest blog and the rest of the blogs are below that under “Latest Posts.” Katie always makes sure to have at least one video in each blog, along with plenty of links, just like Elizabeth and Rhett, and many of my other classmates. The font she uses is also aesthetically pleasing to me. Fonts are something that I focus on, mainly because I put a lot of effort into making my blogs look nice, and I like to get inspiration from what other blogs look like.

My favorite blog of Katie’s is her Advertising Analysis blog. I like this blog the best because there are a lot of good links, and she does something I personally try to do for each blog – she incorporated Tweets. There are four different Tweets about the Mountain Dew Superbowl commercial, and they are humorous addition to her thorough analysis of the commercial. Her commentary was great, and I especially liked the way she described the video, saying “well, it’s a see-for-yourself kind of clip.”

Lindsey O’Neal

One other blog that I like to look through is Lindsey O’Neal’s blog. Lindsey’s blog is well-written, and I love the personal feel each blog has. Her blog title has a cute font that shows up easily against the colored background, and I liked that the headers for each blog were color-coded to the background. I was concerned about her text showing up against a black background, but all the text for her blog was easily read and written in a neat font. Lindsey even came up with cute titles for her blogs, such as her Global Trends blog titled “Hi, I’m Your Number Neighbor.” Her writing is concise while still being thorough and personal. It was harder for me to pick one blog that I liked the best, because, as I was going through them, I kept seeing more little things that I liked about each blog. Her Predictions blog had a neat, numbered list that I liked, while her Global Trends blog had a lot of pictures to illustrate the Twitter trend she was talking about.

The blog that I decided to look at more in-depth was her Surveillance and Law Enforcement blog. This blog was titled “How Social Media Helps Law Enforcement” which was a great summary of the blog. She included statistics at the very beginning, presented in a bulleted list. There is also a video with a link directly under it. The inclusion of the video is one of the reasons that I chose to look at this blog. While it is not always easy to find a video that fits what you decide to write about, Lindsey made a good choice with the video. I also like that she included a link just in case the video would not load. A little later in the blog, she gave a numbered list of four articles that she found. The descriptions were kept short and concise, and she included a picture of a Facebook post to go along with one of the descriptions.

Every time I do a blog critique, I am blown away by how well all the blogs are done, especially this semester since we all got hit with a curveball. I am impressed and proud of my classmates for getting their blogs done on time and with the same level of research and interactivity as they do in the classroom. I can’t wait to see how they all finish the semester and wish each one of them good luck.