Reflection

> What are you most proud of on your blog? Why?

Personally, I am most proud of the content in my blog. I put a lot of thought into each entry and I spent a lot of time writing each one. I did my best to make sure that I understood all of the articles that I was reading and writing about. I tried to do my research and choose valid articles that also sparked my interest. I wanted each of the articles to be related to something that I have a genuine interest in, so that the content can be strong and honest. I am proud that I am able to form and share my own opinions through writing these blog entries. I love the fact that I've become sincerely interested in the stories that I am writing about. I find myself asking a lot of different people many questions to make sure that I understand what I am reading and writing about. By doing this, I become genuinely interested in what I am writing about, which I think can help strengthen the content.
I'm also happy with my writing in each blog entry. I tried my best to make sure that I was fully-explaining all of my thoughts and ideas through my writing. I wanted every entry to make sense, which is why I would often find myself going back and reading over what I had already written. I tried to keep the writing organized and understandable, yet interesting and informative for the reader. I even won an award for Most Outstanding Writing in a Blog (:
Lastly, I'm proud of the neatness and organization that I maintained in my blog. It was important to me that it was easy to read and understand and I wanted all of the entries to be up to date and organized. This makes it easy for me and others to look back and review earlier posts. I also wanted a variety of pictures and videos in the entries and I tried to find at least one for every entry, if possible.

> What will you improve during future blogs? Why? How?

One thing that I know I will need to work on is finding stronger connections to U.S. History. Sometimes while writing my blogs, I will find that I'm not able to make, in my opinion, a strong enough connection to concepts that we have been learning in class. Sometimes I become so invested in the current event, that the relationship between that and concepts of U.S. History is weaker than I would like it to be. I think that I should choose articles that I feel relate more to the topic we are learning and make sure that I can explain a strong and solid connection before I write the entire blog. For example, I feel that my blog about Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists has the weakest explanation and is one that I will be editing to make stronger.
In the future, I will also try to improve on my research skills. I want to use a variety of sources and stories to write my blogs. In the future, I plan on having multiple articles and sources of evidence, rather than just one. I also want to make sure that the stories I choose are always interesting to me, because I know that I gain a lot more from reading something if it is something I am already interested in, like the election for example.
There are also some smaller details that I plan on including to improve my blogs in the future. One of these would be to propose more questions in my writing. I think that it is good to leave the reader wondering after they finish reading and asking questions throughout the blog is a great way to do that. I also want to work on coming up with better titles for each entry. I want them to be more interesting, because honestly, they have been very boring. And lastly, I definately plan on editing my posts much more often. While I do spend time editing, I plan on taking full advantage of that in the future and editing each one more and more.

> How has blogging impacted your understanding of the U.S., the media, current events, and "old news" (i.e. the Constitution, Federalist Papers, etc.)?

I've already learned much more than I had expected to by writing these blogs. I honestly think that it has been a really good way for me to start thinking more about the world around me. I know that if I didn't have to write these as an assignment, I probably wouldn't be reading CNN or BBC News or paying so much attention to the newspaper. I'm really glad that it has made me do this because I now I know that I really do like to know what is going on and that I can form and voice my own opinions. I've been interested in the election all year long, but actually taking the time to write about it has taught me a lot more of the small details and has caused me to become a lot more involved. I've learned how the media can twist and manipulate something into whatever they want it to seem. This seems to be most noticible right now, during the election which is what I chose to write about for one of my blog entries about John McCain's Campain Advertisements. I've also learned how current events and "old news" go hand-in-hand. It became apparent to me while reading news articles and thinking about what we learned in class that U.S. History will consistently be showing up in current American news, which you can notice if you are observant enough. Simply put, writing these blogs twice a week has given me the chance to be more involved and know more about what is going on in the world.