Blog thoughts aka bloghts

I like the idea of having a casual blog for people in the class to use to discuss ideas from the course outside of class. I think its a fun activity because personally I don't get a lot of opportunities to just write out mostly raw opinions. I also think its really nice to be able to determine for yourself which part of the text interests you and bring in your own analysis. I like in class discussions but they're guided by the intent of the teacher and by the consensus of the other students. I think a blog is a really good way for people to express opinions they might not share during a class. I did have some technical issues that I've seen other people bring up. It would be nice to be able to see your own posts and comments somewhere so they're easy to find and review. Or at least it would be better to be told at the beginning of the semester that we should tag all our posts. I'm pretty ambivalent on the anonymity. I think in a small class its not really that hard to puzzle out who everyone is but also I think the real relief is just not having to see people when your thinking through the books. I think being alone and having plenty of time are the factors that make the blog really productive. I think its cool to have the pseudonyms be characters from the lord of the rings. It would be interesting to try to incorporate the identities into the blog posts but I just don't see a practical way to do that.