Meta-Post: 2nd Quarter

Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor - I'd like you to grade "Raised Hands of Girls Decreasing Over Time?"

This quarter my blog has developed into pieces of complex writing. I've noticed that in many of my most recent blogs I am analyzing numbers. This doesn't surprise me considering I love math. But what I think makes these posts particularly better than ones in the past is that I write a complete analysis of those numbers. I am not giving the readers a statistic and then immediately asking readers what they think. Instead I answer the question I pose and ask my readers for their opinion. In my blog post "North, South, East, or Race: Teen Pregnancy", I ask the question, "Why do certain regions have higher [teen pregnancy] rates?" and go on to explain that I believe its just purely a cycle. In one of my first quarter posts, "Slavery in Modern Day America", I give a statistic about the number of prostitutes in the US and then immediately after, ended my blog with a question. It didn't leave any opinion for someone to comment on which is something I've tried to work on this quarter.


Something I'd like to work on in the future is making my blogs more controversial so that I won't need to ask so many questions but instead have people comment because my statement compels them to add their opinion. The one post I think I did a good job of this is "Body Scanners: A Breach of our Freedom?". I ended this post saying, "I'd rather go through  body scanner than have a plane blow up." I didn't need to pose a question in order to receive responses. I got 2 comments. I am going to try and do this in more and more of my posts in the future. 


Even though I am disappointed in the number of posts I wrote this quarter (I wish I would've done more than 1 per week), I must say that I am proud in the fact that most of my posts are well thought out and even encroach on the side of being too long. One of my more recent posts, "CEO", is lengthy but at the same time I do not feel as if I ramble on and on. First I give statistics about what I'm going to be discussing, next I set up the problem that I'm going to be analyzing, then I give my analysis and back it up with evidence. I feel like this is a dramatic improvement from my "Life Graphs" post from the beginning of the year where all I did is describe what we are talking about in class and posed a question. 


Blogging has definitely forced me to explore the issues in the news and I am glad that we get the chance to connect school with the world around us. I am looking forward to writing more blogs!