So, This was a pretty fun semester. When I first found out about what we were going to be doing, My first thought was, great this will be as lame as it could get. As time went on it didn't turn out so bad. It was very intense at time hearing different peoples views on The Holocaust. When we first started this I didn't care for the idea because I didn't think i would be interested in The Holocaust, But it was a very interesting and I learned of new stuff about it. And to share ideas with each other in groups made it that much more of a learning experience. Over all I thought it was a lot of fun and it was better than doing homework everyday.

-Wade Taylor

my thoughts

The whole blogger experience was good and bad. It was a good experience because we got a chance see what students in a different state thought of what we were all learning about. which really it was pretty much the the same thoughts threw out all of us. it did seem like we had gotten twice as much work done in a shorter period of time, it was faster than doing normal school work. i thought it was going to bad and really boring but I guess it really wasn't a bad experience but it wasn't always the most enjoyable thing to do.

blogger response

I really liked using blogger because it was very helpful to me to get some feedback on what my group or what I post on the blog. Getting feedback I think was really important because it helps you become a better writer and some people need that feedback. I really liked getting the feed back because I knew what I had to fix if I needed to fix anything. I really also giving feedback because I think that if no one were to give feedback on other people’s work then they would think that they couldn't make their work any better. So I think that blogger.com has really helped me because I can make improvements on my work as long as I have feedback on my work. Some people may criticize you for your work but you have to learn to ignore that or to change what you have written in a post. I think getting feedback for other students your age is a great thing to do.

Jackie Grady McCool Junction

I think the book night was a good book to start with blogger. I enjoyed the groups decision but didn't like the assignments that went along with them. I also enjoyed learning more about the Holocaust. We learn more and more each year and gets more interesting every year. I like how we got to comment other groups post, even though we couldn't say some things that we wanted to. Over all I think that blogger was a good experince. There were both positive and negative experiences. We had some easy assignments and some hard ones but I think blogger was fun to learn how to operate it.

Blogger:The Good & The Bad

My thoughts on the blogger and what my experience were, are all good. I like the blogger because it was easy to talk about subjects and get down to the point. When you talk about subjects in person, like in a class room, they change according to how peoples reactions are. But on blogger, its more like you state you opinion with out changing it to what other people would like it to be said. Everyone can put what they really think without the influence of other people. So I think it is better this way. So in the end, I had a good experience with blogger, and I would like to continue with this.

Response To The Blog

I have to admit that I really didn't like blogging at first. It was hard for me to blog because I don't do it very often. For me it was a pain trying to put how I felt about the situations into words. I have so many mixed feelings about the Holocaust. I was scared to know what others would think of my opinion. After awhile I started to like it. I liked the input everyone would give. And I liked the fact that you could get a different look to everything. And if you didn't agree, you could have a debate. I liked hearing everyone's opinion. I started to really like it because we were interacting with others that we have never met before. Instead of our classmates that we know and have heard their opinions like one hundred times before, we got a new view. Many different opinions from people we have never met. It was a really fun way to learn. I would suggest that this continues because I think that others will benefit from it and really enjoy it like I have. It was also a great experience to open the mind and except others opinion and learn how to, even if you don't agree, respect their opinion. It was really hard to try to comment on someone's post that you didn't agree with. You didn't want to start a fight so you had to think hard about what and how you wanted to put your opinion into words. Which for me that is a good way to improve your writing. Overall, I think that the blog has been a great experience and I really liked hearing everyone's opinions and advice that they have given. It takes courage to express your opinion.
Andrea Root

Blogging...

This whole blogging experience has been pretty interesting. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. I learned a great deal more than I thought there was to learn. There were some things that didn't make sense to me, but then again I think there were things that no one understood. And there were countless things that made me angry, but still learning them was well worth my while and if I had the option of doing it over again I know I would.
The books we read were also really interesting. I am not the reading type but I did like the books. Night was probably one of the most difficult things I have had to read. It was just so different reading someone's actual account of what happened. The Wave was really good too. And the fact that its based on true events makes it that much more intriguing. Who would have thought you could recreate what Nazi Germany was like in an ordinary high school? I was seriously speechless at the end of the book. It was that good.
In all, I think that what I have learned in the past semester will stay with me. Not many people get to have this kind of experience in a school setting, but it made learning about the Holocaust interesting. It wasn't like every other time we have had to learn about it. I started out thinking, "Oh great, here we go again." But then it was something completely different from what I had expected. So, I guess you could say that I really did enjoy the semester.

The good and bad of the blog

When we first started the blog I didn’t really know what to think. It was different for me to have other students from a different school out of state comment on how I did and try to help me do better in my work. I started to understand how it works better as we got more into the blog and interacting with other students. When we started going more into writing responses or other assignments, I started to like it. It helped me to be able to say how I felt about the topic so I wasn’t scared to say how I felt. I learned many different facts when we read our books or looked up interesting information on the Internet about the topic. There were some parts of the blog I didn't like. Sometimes I didn't like how people commented and I know we all have our own opinions about a topic but sometimes it puts me down. I soon to like the blog more as we go on and I think that it would help me later on with my writing.

Reflect

The blogger was definitely interesting, and never dull. I liked doing the responses to the questions, because we were answering questions to history. I mean we weren’t there in that place but the book gave us a feel of the pain they went through. The blogger gave me an outlook on the holocaust. You got to write what you felt and you got to look at other peoples’ post who maybe made the situation more clear. It was fun being in groups, because then you can have a bunch of different opinions. Like say there could be people that have a very strong faith in God and maybe a couple that don’t, that would make the post very interesting. I like how you could put down what you felt and either people liked it or they didn’t. It really showed opinions. Sometimes it made it a little tense though.
Dislikes. I really didn’t have that much against it, but sometimes I felt when there was a real powerful question people didn’t answer the question to the fullest. Also when people did write good posts sometimes groups would kind of shoot posts down. Not all of the time, but I must say we were all very head strong. I didn’t like the tension that I felt that was going on sometimes between groups. It made me a little intimidated to write some things that I felt because I felt that I would get rejected. I’m a person that doesn’t like criticism I know it had to be done, but I can be very sensitive in that subject J.
Otherwise the blogger was okay. I mean you got to see very many sides of opinions that definitely weren’t pointed out before, but sometimes opinions are opinions and we all seemed to forget that a little when people wrote what they felt.

*Lindee Jackson

The Blogger Experience.

My Blogger experience was... eh, o.k. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the most... exciting. It was better than most of the stuff that we could be doing, like writing essays or doing grammar assignments. I also liked the fact that we were collaborating with a school in a different state, which is cool. I was hoping to get to know the people from the other school a little more, get to see how different they are from us, but I didn't really get the chance to. I did like the actual thought of blogging at school, since most blogs aren't allowed in school (i.e. myspace, facebook, etc.). All in all it was o.k. for those reasons, but other than that it's just blah.

Blogger Experience!

To me the blogger was a fun and great experience! Talking with others about the assignments and then going onto the blogger and stating our opinion was fun. You learn more about the people in your group and others backgrounds, like where they came from and what they believe in. I learned more about the Holocaust in the past semester than I ever knew and the book Night really helped! If I didn't quite understand something that went on in the book, my group was there for me to explain in a little better. Then when we went and posted our response to everything, we got even more people helping us out, stating their own opinions and what not. Which usually opened my eyes up even more and I tried to understand where they are coming from. Some of the posts became a bit harsh, it seemed like another war had started. But that is the whole reason for this blogger., learning and discussing about assignments. So to me this blogger was a great experience and I learned for it! Now, when someone doesn't agree with me, I take their opinion in and think things over ans see that they are right as will in some other ways!

McCool Jct. Post
By Jackie M.

Blogging...

I admit at first I didn't really like the blog at all, but once we got going with it, it was something that seemed easy and fun but didn't turn out to be what I thought it would be. I think the blog has helped me understand more about The Holocaust and genocide. By interacting with students from a different state gave me a different outlook on what we were doing. We talked about so many different ideas from the book Night to the happenings in the Holocaust. It helped me learn so much more about the history behind the Holocaust that I never knew before. But there were times I had mixed feelings about the blogger. I liked interacting with students from a different state because they have different opinions and ideas, but at times i just didn't like it at all. Sometimes the assignments seemed so easy, but yet they were so hard for me to write up. Also some people would almost get competitive while they were giving each other comments. I mean there's nothing really wrong with that but its your own opinion don't be so harsh about every little thing said. Everyone has a right to voice their own opinions and sometimes it almost felt you couldn't or people would comment you badly. I'm not trying to pick out the people who might have done that, but thats just how I felt. That's their opinion so they can state it to, but maybe not so meanly. Over all blogger seemed to be an interesting learning experience in my eyes.

-->Shelby E.

Learning to do the blog was a new experience for me. I wasn't sure what to think of it. I thought it might be tough to start a conversation with a person miles away from me who was reading the same book but we did. It was a new way of learning that I could adapt to. Overall, I liked being able to communicate with people far away from me. If I wanted to defend my point and start a cyber fight, I could. If I were to grade this new experience from one to ten, I would give it a seven. I would say to continue doing the blog just because it's a new way of learning. The End.
-Kyle

My Experience on Blogger

I had a very good experience on Blogger. I think that being able to interact with other students and your own classmates is a positive thing. Other people's criticism helps me to improve as a writer and expand my horizons. Being able to post our own thoughts and feelings on various subjects was also a good experience. Discussing touchy subjects such as genocide, idealism, and religion was really amazing. I never had been part of such a deep conversation. Talking about faith, religion and death was almost overwhelming at first but once I got used to it, it was a really mind blowing thing to talk to others about such sacred subjects. On blogger everybody's opinion is stated loud and clear. Sometimes in the classroom certain people get overpowered in discussions and some people have strong opinions that they aren't afraid to state. On Blogger that doesn't happen. There's something about typing words instead of saying them that gives people the courage to say what they feel, so everybody's voice is heard. Being able to log on and post or comment at home was also very useful. Overall Blogger was a good experience that I believe was worth my time and effort.

Bloging: the Good, the Bad, and the Wordy

I have to admit that when we were first given this blogging assignment I had not the slighest clue as to what blogging really was. And after I learned exactly what our assignment was about, I was absolutely certain that I would hate it. I was sure of this not only because of my hatred of computers ( a hatred that is recipricated on the part of the computers as proved by the many papers, applications, and variious other items that have disapeared into thin air right after I had saved them), but also because of the darkness of the topic we were to discuss and the conflict that was sure to arrise due to the nature of that said topic. I am a very opinionated person, but I do prefer to usualy keep my opinions to myself and avoid conflict whenever possibe. So the very idea of blogging did not appeal to me at all in the begining.
Over time, however, I surprisingy came to somewhat enjoy it. I found that I relish in having an opportunity to express my views on a subject, and see how others view it when we are all almost equally knowledgable of that subject. The posts were usually quite meaningful and heartfelt, and the debates were heated and, in my opinion, did not seem to get out of hand. I also came to realize even more the importance of studying the Holocaust, not only to hopefully ensure that history is not allowed to repeat itself , but also as a way of honoring those who had to go through the horrors of the Holocaust whether they be living or dead.
Still, even though I recognize the importance of being knowledgable of and discussing the Holocaust, I wish we would move on and cover something new. I do not like dwelling on something so depressing, nor do I like feeling so strongly about something that I can no longer do anything about. As far as actually reading the book, Night, I felt that it allowed us to get a better view of how the Holocaust effected a single idividual, that it was well written, and that, overall, it was a good book. However, I would not have read it if not instructed to do so because, as I said, I do not like to dwell on things that are so sad and depressing.
Overall my expirience with this blooging asignment was a much better than I had anticipated. I have learned a lot. Not only about blogging itself but also about the Holocaust as a whole, Elie's plight, and how different people view different things. And, Mr. Neuberger, I too, like this a heck of a lot better than that horrible research paper. :)

-Shelby Smith