Final (for the time being) Reflection

My overall growth as a blogger has grown tremendously after maintaining this blog. The first area in which you can say I was, well, "converted" was in my attitude towards the whole idea of blogging. I've grown to respect bloggers and appreciate the time and effort they put into posting their ideas and knowledge. Originally, I underestimated their important role in technical communications and assumed that bloggers were people with mostly interesting and sometimes irrelevant ideas with too much time on their hands; I liken them to radio and television talk show hosts.

After taking PTC 605 (Elements of Visual Design), a course part of the Professional and Technical Communications Masters program at NJIT, this blog was my exercise for the entire semester. I wasn't exactly sure where my class was going with this, and I found it a little impractical; I wondered what employer would care if I write up a blog? And forget about career; when am I going to do this at all? I initially perceived the maintenance of this blog as a load of busy work.

My presumptions changed however as I published more posts throughout the semester. The blog topics assigned for my graduate course enabled me to think creatively and analyze the present issues about technical communication within the Internet and related computer technology. Instead of "regurgitating" information picked up from other publications, I had the opportunity of publishing my ideas that evolved from a combination of past learnt information, past experiences, and my personal views. Inevitably, not only was creatively exercising free speech, but I realized my ability to serve as a contributing member of society through the sharing of ideas and knowledge to a growing audience from one to potentially millions.

The visual and written changes to my blog are still evolving. When I began this blog, I approached this site as an experiment for my classmates and myself as we delved into the new features of the World Wide Web, including blogging. Therefore, as you may notice in the screenshots from the November 26th blog entry (entitled “Redesigning the Blog”), my visual choices were bland since I chose to use a simple, standardized template entitled “Rounders 2” offered by blogger.com for new blogging members. This was comprised of a crimson-colored page header background, while the remaining text backgrounds were in various shades of gray. I also didn’t bother putting up a photo of myself and wasn’t aware of the option to add a banner, so the heading was also very simple and would probably fail in attracting other subscribers.

As I better understood the enormous effect a blogger can have on the web community, I was determined to change the look of my blog. As you’ll see in my past blog entitled “Redesigning the Blog”, I included a personal banner at the top of my blog site to serve as an identifier for other viewers. My choice was based on the overall color palette of the entire blog (which is primarily black, and degrees of blue, green, and purple), as well as the intent of my blog. The font style I chose is called "OCR A Extended", which I found appropriate for my technology-oriented blog as it reminds me of the digital numbers on a clock, weighing machine, or computer, and is also the same font used for many a computer program scripts.

I also made some changes to the template CSS to move it away from the "standard" Blogger templates that make your blog look like thousands of others online. This included changing font styles (bolding most of them for the sake of readability), changing colors of backgrounds, and changing font colors. I also decided to include a picture of myself in replacement of the NJIT logo to make add a personal touch.

The colors I chose were mainly to enhance the readability of the blog and the overall look. I felt that bright (though not too bright, like neon) against a black background would give a more contemporary and professional look, without being a distraction and inappropriate as some other colors might (like neon pink).

As for the written changes to my blog, I tried as best as possible to improve my writing style by creating entries that reflect my understanding of the blog topics and effectively apply new concepts and current issues to real-life situations (particularly in the techno-corporate world) by providing practical examples. I’ve also attempted to personalize these blogs my incorporating my views, concerns, and past experiences that relate to the topics of blog discussion.

I’ve also made it imperative to always reread and revise my entire to ensure proper word usage, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. When examples are provided, I also try as much as possible to provide the links so my audience can investigate further.

Last, but no least, as mentioned previously, I’ve made changes from the provided template, original images, and added functionality. It also contains original visual content and the legitimate use (if applicable) of others content. Finally, there is significant change from the standard Blogger template, and additional logos, screenshots, illustrations, photography, and multimedia were included.

As an interesting side note, my employer, United Business, has now migrated from their traditional webmaster-controlled intranet to a wikisite that enables all employees to post up blogs, ask polling questions, chat, as well as a central information section related to Human Resource issues. Unfortunately, do to privacy and copyright issues, I am not authorized to show you this site (it's password-protected, anyway), but I was extremely surprised to find how popular blogging is becoming in the corporate sector... and it's now affecting me at the perfect time, thanks to PTC 605.