Free Bird blog

Today I took a look at my own blog from back in 8^th grade. The assignment was to make a blog to record the process of making a bottle rocket for Mrs. Cheney’s science class. The project was shared between James O’Connor, Brad Spitz, and I. The title of our magnificent creation was the Free Bird.

                We put our blood, sweat, and tears into this project… ok not really, but it was still really fun to do.  Our blog consisted of our design and our research into what parts of the rocket worked the best. All of this was created to form the rocket that not only won second in distance, but also the best designed. I think we won some lollipop or something for that. Our blog however, while funny was not very well written.

                The blog was written by three 8^th graders nearing their end of their career at Learwood, which for anyone that really understood how the grading worked really didn’t mean a whole lot for how we did on this project. I like to think that the reason it was so poorly written is because of how much work we put in the actual rocket, but I don’t know.

                Our blog wrote about the design that was second to none. The design was a curved Perrier bottle covered in red and white stripes, with a blue square with white stars near the top. To top it all off we included a glorious picture of Uncle Sam on there. We truly showed off our patriotism, capturing the essences of this fine nation into our rocket.  

                While it was a fun project, the blog will not be thought of as highly as say the rocket was. Hopefully, we all learned at least a little from writing this blog.

                

Al''s Blog

This week I took a look at an older blog, going all the way back to the year 2014. Al Pivcevich wrote a blog about something near and dear to his heart… trees. Al’s family is known for their work in trees; Al really took an interest in something that his life revolves so heavily around.  He made a normally not interesting topic seem very interesting to the rest of us. Al took his great personality and really made it pop out in his blog giving it his own flare.

            His blog has bright spots, but some dim ones as well. For example at some points it seems like he really is putting in a lot of work to make his blog sound good, other times it just sounds like he is just trying to get these blogs done and over with. He hits a lull if you would, for about three blogs in a row that are very boring. When Al wants to he is a very talented blog writer.

            Overall the design of the blog is alright, I would’ve liked to see a little more to make it pop. The writing is good except for the couple of blogs I talked about earlier. He is a talented writer and the topic of the blog is a cool idea. I enjoyed reading this blog, and next week I’ll be doing a review of Jaret’s blog… round 2!

Mid-season Reviews

It's halfway through the blog assignments and things seem to be going well for the most part. Whether the blog is about books, sports, or music the blogs are starting to gain some content. I myself have reviewed 4 different blogs: Mr. Arra's, Brandon's, Jaret's, and Talia's.

One critique in general for everyone, including myself, would be that we are all a little behind on our blogs. For example, when I reviewed Jaret’s blog he was still two blogs behind, which made it hard for me to review most of his content. I may stop by Jaret’s blog later this year for a second review when there is more content.

One of my favorite blogs to read would have to be Brandon’s. A side from the grammatical mistakes here and there he does have a blog that interests me personally. I like to read things that I’m involved in and so reading a blog about shoremen football is cool (whether or not he does tear our performance up that week).

Even some of the reviewed blogs took my advice to heart. Mr. Arra updated his blog a few times since I last said that he should update it more often. It’s nice to see people take what you say seriously instead of just blowing you off.

I hope to continue doing these reviews for the coming weeks and hope that you all enjoy reading these posts. Next week: Al Pivcevich’s blog…

Brandon's blog

     I love Brandon, love him. The only thing is…. I cringe reading his blog. As a member of the shoremen football team, I hate reading about our failures, as any competitive athlete would. My stomach turns reading about some of these losses, especially the Olmstead Falls one. I truly was looking forward to his blog hoping it might be a bright spot in otherwise dim media coverage of our team. Sadly, it wasn’t. I guess we deserve it as a team for how poorly we have performed this season, but still I hoped he would cover more positive areas of our games. I can’t blame the kid though; it is much easier to find the negative aspects to our game rather than the positive ones.

     The blog itself is well put together. After a rough start, Brandon has really picked up his writing. I particularly enjoyed the last article; he used a lot of media and it really helped make his article pop (maybe should of put a picture of that huge, good-looking, center of Avon Lake’s instead of the other pictures). He did make one mistake in regards the records however; Midview is the second best team in the state. Other than that his stories were completely accurate form what I can recall. The template of the blog is a little bland; he should probably make it something more related to his topic, to make his blog stand out more.

     

I like the fact that Brandon does write with emotion. You can tell exactly how he’s feeling after each article. Being an avid shoremen fan for the past decade it is hard for him to watch the team this year; comparatively to teams that it seemed winning the SWC’s were a sure thing in the past. Overall Brandon’s blog is good, not great, just good. This could be because I’m a little biased toward the shoremen losing, but whatever. I hope that the past two seasons still do not take away from Brandon’s passion for shoremen football.

Jaret's blog

First things first about Jaret's blog, WHAT A BACKGROUND! Whether or not you are a Donald Trump fan you can most certainly appreciate the background choice. I could not even imagine anything that is as eye catching and appropriate at the same time as that background. Furthermore, his blog is well put together, including different gadgets such as the news feed, which is very fitting, and the blog archive. Overall his blog is a very well designed template, only thing I would change is the color of the headings, they blend into the background.

         Now to the content… Jaret is very opinionated when it comes to politics, which is a great thing! I love to see young people take such an interest in the real world rather than focusing on what Kim Kardashian wore at her last runway show.

 Family is statistically the greatest influence over political beliefs, I was raised being heavily influenced by a, as he would call himself, “right wing extremist” father. I will argue some points with my dad but for the most part we agree on just about everything. I’m sure if Jaret is reading this he is gagging in his mouth. Sorry. The blog has great content for the audience that is trying to reach, that’s just not me. It is filled with great opinions, and I particularly enjoyed the first post about trump. Jaret does a great job not only giving his opinion but also using humor as well to get his point across. Even though I do not agree with some of the points he may make, Jaret does write a great blog. I’m looking forward to what he has to say in the coming weeks.

Recap of Week One in the Blog World

After a very exciting week one in our class’s blog assignments, I have come to a couple conclusions. First, a common theme for the guys seems to be about sports, or more specifically football. Second, I’m glad that Brandon is doing his blog about the Westlake game this week, seeing as the first post about the Elyria game did not make the football team so all too hot. Finally, in my honest opinion, the best idea for a blog would have to go to Talia for the “The Ultimate Bucket List”.

Tis’ the season for fall leaves, school, weird Ohio weather, but most importantly football. It does not surprise me that the most common blog topic among guys is football. People love football! It is fall there’s nothing better than being a dude on a Sunday, sitting back and watching football for hours on end. I love to see that many people in our class have taken such an interest in this sport, whether it is the pro level, college, or even high school.

The Avon Lake football team did not open the season on the right foot, and Brandon Miller definitely took notice. He held nothing back, even stating, “The Shoremen had a tough night offensively and defensively as they gave up 31 points to an okay team.” All in all though we kind of deserved it, we played horribly. I hope to see maybe some kinder words in his newest post.

I do not want ot criticize anybody else’s ideas at all, but for me, the most creative idea for the blogs was the bucket list from Talia.  I know everyone else did a blog about something that they are interested in, and I respect that, but her idea seemed the least ordinary. If I were to think of blog ideas I think my first four would be books, sports, politics, and music. I love the idea for a bucket list, that is something that I would want to read; it would catch my eye right off the bat. Kudos to Talia for a great idea. 

Mr. Arra's Blog

          At first glance, Mr. Arra's blog is very enticing. He makes great use of gadgets, photos, and links to other pages. He even includes a very cute picture of his kid. The layout is intriguing and catches even a novice blog reader’s eye. His blog helps keep his students up to date on assignments and extra credit too. For example, instead of coming to him about what the class turnitin.com username is, you can simply look back at the blog. His blog has everything that student who is in journalism could need.

            I also particularly enjoyed the links to past students’ blogs. It is great to see Mr. Arra acknowledge those who really did a great job with this project. I’m sure it feels tremendous for the students as well to be recognized that way. The links to these blogs also serve as great examples for future students when writing blogs.


     The down side however to his blog, he has yet to update this blog since September of 2013! If Mr. Arra truly wishes to take his blogging skills to the next level and up those page views, then he will need to come out with some new material for his blog.

I would also like to see him include more articles that are fun to read rather than simply just assignments. The blog layout is attention grabbing, but some of the articles need to be as well. I realize that it is not made for fun articles but, it will appeal to students more if there is an article every once in a while that doesn’t pertain to homework.

All in all Mr. Arra’s blog is great with one fatal flaw, not being updated in two years. That is something that can easily be fixed and Mr. Arra’s blog could return to the spotlight soon.

 

 

http://mrarra.blogspot.com/