Blog Reflection

At first I was curious about the blogging assignment for this class, what the exact purpose behind it was, but as the semester went on I saw the many benefits of having a class blog. Through blogging about and commenting on our readings of Shakespeare it helped me gain a wider knowledge of what Shakespeare is trying to convey in his work. The class blog worked side by side with lectures in class, providing me with many opportunities to see different interpretations of the plays, give my input and clear up any blurry points. Through blogging you are given the opportunity to publish any ideas or comments you may have thought of after class or even during, as well as allowing fellow students to elaborate on each others ideas. After all many people learn best through conversing. I also feel Shakespeare's work has many underlying messages that are great to expand on through the course blog, by sitting down and fleshing out thoughts, your given the opportunity to let your imagination run wild.

After reading and reflecting through my blog posts throughout the semester I can see a difference and how my posts became more detailed and focused more and more on character relationships, and concrete ideas rather than simple ones. Each of Shakespeare's plays have many aspects worth focusing on such as relating the play to social issues, social ranking, unrequited or forbidden love, lies, deception and gender roles. I noticed I tend to focus on Shakespeare's characters and their personality traits, it seems he took a common human characteristic/feeling/emotion and developed it into a character- such as Othello can be represented as the trait of jealousy taken to an extreme (the murder of Desdemona). I also tend to compare and contrast two or more plays in my posts-such as my post about what makes "Othello" a tragedy and how its not so different from that of "Twelfth Night" or "Much Ado About Nothing" until the end which classifies it as a tragedy.

I think blogging for class has many advantages and I know it helps me to learn and develop my ideas along with class discussion to the fullest extend. I look forward to continuing to blog throughout this semester and would love to see it used in other courses.