Self Evaluation

And now, at four in the morning, I commence with evaluating my work for this semester. I decided to take Brooke's evaluation of me and respond to it, because it made me feel very good about myself and I wanted to go over it again. My responses will be in red. Thanks Brooke!
Posts

• Quantity: Johnny has done 35 posts which is great. He seems to be pretty consistent as well. I now have 37 posts.
• Content: Honestly, as interesting as I now find his blog, I haven't been following it this semester because of the sheer number of blogs to peruse in our class; so I had to go back and look over his work. His blog as really evolved and matured over the semester. He went from writing sonnets and reviewing performances to an acute focus on his theme of Manga as a valid vehicle for Shakespeare. I don't blame her for not following my blog, though it is heart wrenching she had to miss some of my masterpieces (insert that new sarcastic grammatical symbol here). I too appreciate the way I honed into my focus of manga, though I did enjoy giving my interpretation of some of Shakespeare's sonnets.
• Format: I feel like Johnny has done a really good job with his post titles. As you look through his history you can see that they get more and more informative as the year goes on. He also uses a lot of pictures which I think is totally appropriate because he's talking about Manga, a visual art. He's also very good at using page breaks and headings for his paragraphs. There is a funny story about my use of pictures. When I cut and pasted a good looking sock puppet picture for puppets, I later found the picture had been replaced with a flashing notice that my website contained items that were "hotkeyed" and that I was doing something illegal. I did not think that using such pictures would be illegal, since I don't have any adds on my blog and have no intention for using it to make a profit. I was more concerned about how someone was able to hack into my account, delete the picture, and put that flashing notice in its place.

Research 

• Thematic Focus: Johnny definitely has a clearly defined and stated focus for his research. He is looking into how Manga is the best way to portray Shakespeare because it captures the psychological aspects of the plays, and because there are strong comparisons between Japanese and Elizabethan cultures. I would not say I was looking at how manga is the "best" way to portray Shakespeare (his plays in particular) as much as proving that manga is a legitimate media to use; just one of many good options. I took this argument because I know too many people (family members included) who think that manga is childish because of its comic book qualities.
• Thesis and Cohesion: He does a great job at cohesively bringing his posts together by mentioning  what he's working on and his working thesis in almost every post. I agree with this.
• Sources: He has quite a few legitimate sources on his "sources" page. But, just a design suggestion would be to make it look more homogeneous. You can tell he copied and pasted a lot of his sources in so they don't match each other. I think the sources page is a problem, but I am not sure if I have time to fix it before the deadline.

Personal & Social 

• Author Identity: The author is most certainly present in this blog. Johnny has a great voice that really shows his personality. I have a tendency to lethally inject myself into most of what I write.
• Documentation of Progress: He does a really great job of this. He talks about his ideas, plans, progress, and research in pretty much every post. He also did several "hub" posts where he restates his thesis and collects his thoughts. Professor Burton mentioned that documenting my processes is one of my strong points. I think this is due to the fact that I love to give excuses, so if a project fails I can remember all of the work I did to show any audience I run into that at the very least I tried really really hard.
• Interactions: He's linked to other students in his blog and I can tell he's really interactive by the way he comments in class and offers up information. I found it touching that my class comments were mentioned here. Most of the time, I thought my comments random banter I used to fill up a silent moment. I feel like I was a "good citizen" in this blogging community, as Professor Burton put it once.

Design 

• Appropriate to Theme: I think he could do more with his design. His background is an old-timey map which doesn't really go with his Japanese animation theme. In response to this critique, I spent two hours trying to figure out how to change my template. I hope that the new one fits better with my theme. It features a manga character with a sword and dramatized features (yes, this includes cleavage, a feature I am sorry to say is quite often and very much dramatized in modern manga, to the satisfaction of pervs and fan girls everywhere) in a forest with the moon behind her. I hope I was able to convey my theme more adequately without offending anyone!
• Side Content: Johnny has a profile with his picture which is nice in a class like this where we're always talking about each others' work and trying to remember who's who. He also has labels which are helpful in our perspective because they're mostly all "learning outcomes" but if someone outside of our little bubble looked at them they'd probably be very confused. I agree with the problem about the labels, but I do include the lesson plan on a page, so hopefully if I don't have time to add all of the labels I would have liked to, Professor Burton will show some mercy.

I had a blast this semester. I am not sure if I will keep this blog up, but I will follow a few from my Shakespeare class during the summer. Thanks to all (or any) who followed me. This new method of teaching and learning is cutting edge. I will stand by it, even if I stand alone!