Well here we are, at the end of the semester.  What a perfect time for a culminating reflection!

 I have to say that before this project I never really liked blogs or understood their purpose.  Why would I want to read other people’s self-published opinions and rantings?  Thus going into the blogging part of this class, I was a bit skeptical.  But after 16 weeks of writing a blog and reading others, my opinions have changed…a little.

I now understand the usefulness of blogs.  One insight I gained was how helpful blogs can be in creating a web of news articles that would otherwise be lost in the fray of the web (Google Reader helped with this too).  I never would have thought I would be commenting on a story from the local newspaper of a town across the country.  The other aspect of blogging I now appreciate is that it makes you write for an audience.  It turns writing into much more than an assignment because random people could be reading your post and linking to your post on their blogs.  In a sense this is intimidating, but it also forces someone to write more carefully.  I can see this being very useful in a future classroom.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is I still don’t like writing a blog.  It’s just not my thing.  For one, I don’t like spending the amount of time on the internet that is required for keeping a decent blog.  Another reason I don’t like blogging is that I’m not one to readily voice my opinion or start an argument with someone over theirs, which seems to be an important part of out-of-classroom blogging.  For these reasons I don’t plan on keeping this blog.

In terms of my topic, I learned much more about prison education than I thought I would.  Reading articles from around the world on the topic has made me more aware of the problems and the hope that exists for such programs.  Perhaps with this new interest I can become involved in a prison library someday.  At the very least, I have a better understanding and respect for what people working in such programs do.

And with that, I’m out.  Thank you for reading.