Summary

Blogging is one of the assignments of the course and this time I would like to summarize how I feel about blogging. During the process, I have encountered different challenges and difficulties but most importantly, I have also learnt something from this:

1. Critical Thinking
   
   

   

   http://www.leer-leren.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/einstein_thinking.jpg

   
   Why I would say that is because I have found that deciding what to write about in my blog is actually very challenging. Therefore, I always need to think critically before I write anything. To do so, I would ask myself a lot of questions:
   
   
• Do I like the topic I'm going to write?
  If I don't like it, it's really hard for me to start. And most likely, I wouldn't have motivation to continue which my writing will become a mess eventually. So what's the point of blogging something that I'm not interested in?
  
  
• Is it going to attract people?
  Attracting people is actually a big issue for writing blogs. Topics that are appealing to people do not have to be always positive, which I mean is that, you don't have to always share what you like or what you think it's beautiful. Instead, sometimes, negative and controversial things seem to get more attention. That is why I was blogging about Google Maps that I concern.
  
  
• How to make my post attractive?
  It's very obvious that one could find almost all information he wants on the Internet and that's why it is very difficult to have a very outstanding topic to write about. Thus,  other than topics, I need to think of another trick which is adding images and videos. Therefore, I always include pictures together with the text which I try to make my posts less boring at least.
  
  
2. How to Use Blogger
   
   

   

   Screenshot of my blog managing page

   Since high school, I have been always blogging but using different platforms. For example, I used HKFlash (seriously, if you know this one, I'm quite sure we should be the same generation! haha!) Xanga, Tumblr, Wordpress etc. And this is my first time to use Blogger!
   
   So in order to get familiar with the new platform, I have been spending time on trying different functions on Blogger. These functions are mostly related to layout designs which I am very interested in. Therefore, I spent quite a lot of time on trying different layouts and even eventually uploading one of my favorite wallpapers on my blog.
   
   You can say that's no big deal since Blogger is quite user-friendly. However, for me, I want to be an advanced user of it instead of just simply posting texts. Moreover, I want to make use of everything I could to attract people to go to my blog.
   
   
3. Comments
   

   
   

   https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqVu01tBiwKgcGfOxWKT4GT0Q6wtpxzbbIj9RA-NCi8DQzjpPiaKslerqTUpJGjtnoYqyLPvPJt63B_IAOueBvLQB4jgq8yq7W7CJST99I1wnHBIBkI-pgtJ_FkXsJwYcEvWehoyCSnNow/s1600/threaded+comments.jpg

   
   

   I think we all do a really good job on replying Facebook comments that we always keep checking whether we get "likes" or "comments" from our friends so we can respond to them. However, when it comes to blog, it's totally a different thing. It seems to me that we need to think much more carefully before replying any comments on our blogs. Unlike that on Facebook, we won't really think seriously before making comments.

   
   

   
   

   
   

   On the other hand, as we need to consider more before making comments on other blogs or replying people's comments on our own blogs, the time we take to do so would be much longer. However, these comments seldom develop into hot discussions compared to Facebook, which includes more immediate responses from people and these are easier to become hot topics. Therefore, it's harder for bloggers to bring people into discussions like Facebook and maybe this is also why blogs seem not as popular as Facebook by now. 

Blogging has been an amazing experience for me and I love the way that it's similar to reading articles from magazines which are designed, planned and actually written by a real individual. I also love the way that blogging also shares lives of different people in a more specific and explicit way.

http://www.hermeswitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/inspired.jpg

After this activity, it actually encourages me a lot in opening a new blog to start writing about my life. Although I'm not living a very exciting life, I'm sure that the process of sharing my life with others would not only make me meet a lot of new friends, but also get inspired from others.