Blogging about blogs!

My goodness, how did it get to be a week before graduation? I vaguely remember this buzz in my ear saying that Spring Break was almost over, and now here we are with two days of finals left. How did that happen?!?

So with the end of 396 this spring, I've completed a year-long experiment in requiring blogs from students. Feedback has been mixed to mostly positive--and I figure even for folks who aren't at all into it, they're able to speak from experience now. It's been a worthy experiment, tied to Henry Jenkins' book Convergence Culture, which talks about convergence as something that's happening in audiences as much or more than in hardware (hence his term "black box fallacy" to describe the PS3, the iPhone, or what have you).

I'd be curious to hear from 396ers on this--what's your take on this blogging thing? Was it valuable to have an alternative venue for working through your thoughts and ideas regarding media studies? Did it give you any added sense of "community" in 396 or beyond? And hey: anyone continuing after the course? (Let me know, and I'll link you as an alum on my site--feel free to do the same!)

With finals winding down (yeah right, 25 research papers are due in 42 hrs 28 min) I'm hoping to get back on the blogging wagon. In the meantime, here's what NOT to do for your video blog: