To begin finishing off our blogs for the semester, Dr. Burton has assigned each of us to review another student's blog. He's given us helpful evaluation criteria in order to shape our feedback to be succinct and beneficial. I reviewed Claire Hopkins Mizukawa's blog Musing's of a Wise-ish Fool Her focus is Shakespeare and Education.
Posts:
Quantity: Claire has ample information supporting her thesis. There are 13 links in her hub posts, a few of which link to other student's blogs that relate to her focus.
Content: Claire has a good variety of posts including book reviews, analyzing movies in relation to Shakespeare, creating a Wordle, and creating her own "book trailer". She does analyze themes of primary texts, but she does not have any direct textual analysis in relation to her focus.
Format: The titles to her post are very clear. She uses page breaks for lengthy posts, but keeps most of her posts succinct and easily readable. Claire also uses labels.
Thematic Focus: The theme of teaching Shakespeare is clear in her hub post, supporting posts, and overall design of the blog (if you look at the map in the back ground it reminds me of a class setting).
Thesis & Cohesion: Claire's thesis is "the most effective way for me to teach Shakespeare would be through finding ways to apply it to students' lives." Her thesis isn't groundbreaking news but it's practical, which I think is the best way to go with a focus on teaching Shakespeare. All of her posts are cohesive and dedicated to her theme.
Sources: Her source page is clearly organized and her information is appropriately linked and cited. Good work on the MLA formatting.
Personal and Social:Author identity: Claire does a great job writing facts and research with a personable, informal voice. You can tell how passionate she is about teaching by the overall feeling of the blog but also by each post. Her About Me section gives any passerby her name and a quick synopsis of the purpose of her blog (although it does not include her focus on Education).
Documentation of Process: It seems like Claire begins every post with some sort of personal note, story, or reason of why she is writing about what follows. It makes it personable but also involves the reader in her thinking and researching process.
Interaction: In her hub post she explicitly links to other student's blogs and explains how she has interacted with them while researching her focus. She has also made contacts outside of the classroom, one example being a renown elementary school teacher that she interviewed.
Design: Claire has kept her blog design simple and the colors are not only aesthetically pleasing but also easy to see and read. Her only widget, apart from the default widgets, is a Label cloud so her page doesn't feel cluttered or overwhelming by any means. I really like the design of her blog and it's inspired me to make some changes on my own.
Overall, Claire's blog seems pretty much finished. She's done really well posting consistently and about interesting topics that support her focus. She's tied up all of the loose ends in her hub post and cited all of her sources. Claire's blog is an example to look to, I think, in what our Shakespeare blogs should be. I'm glad I was able to review her blog so that now I have a good idea as to what a finished product looks like. Thanks, Claire!
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| In honor of your soon-to-be-teacherhood! :) |
