Response: Blog vs Term and Essayification

Matt Richtel, author of the “Blogs vs. Term Paper” article in The New York Times, talks about the controversial issue of new media and technology, and how it could benefit to aggregate this new form of “learning” into the schools’ current curriculum. With such a drastic change to the strict traditional way of learning, there are always those who find a flaw in a new proposal of gathering information. Blogging is a new form of communication, only recently becoming common in the 90’s. Many English professors and other English majors find this new medium perfect for getting information across with instantaneous feedback. Students who use this new medium, instead of the monotonous essay-format, find it an exhilarating change for the better. Personally, I find blogging as a more productive form of writing in an educational environment. Young people are always classified as impulsive, accompanied by reckless, no matter how intelligent they seem to be. Blogs allows feedback within a few seconds, and gives the whole prompt more meaning by just knowing that someone other than a professor is going to read the essay. Students put more effort into a blog, so as to impress hundreds of people, as a way of satisfying themselves personally, and not just for a grade.

The essay itself is uncertain, and classified as an attempt, very similar to what a blog represents, an uncertain opinion and an attempt to get a point across to a larger audience. “The essayification of everything,” a term used by Christy Wampole means that life itself is a protracted attempt. Essays are short and portable, and uncertain, much like the human mind. Wampole also describes the people as non-thinking before they speak, write, or blog. Blogs, the human mind, and essays all clash together in this aspect, and therefore I find only reasonable that blogging and other forms of technology be taught in schools, of course with a balance of traditional academics. Studies have shown that technology, even just browsing the web in an educational manner, has modified the brain to think in a different way, more impatient. Essays have always been accepted, and now blogs are changing the way essay writing is coming to be. The new technology of blogging is again only expanding the ambiguity of what an essay is defined to be, as it is now not just considered a traditional written form, but has also expanded to new mediums such as video, pictures, and blogging.

I find essays as a blank canvas that the writer can choose if and when their writings are considered essays, and blogs definitely expand that genre. Technologies that adapt to the modern age of digitalization can change the way that the public thinks, and this realm of uncertainty is usually accompanied by critics against those breaking tradition. Balance is key, students should be introduced and familiarized with the technology they will be exposed to in the “real world,” without losing the traditional learnings of literature.