Emily Huepfel

What is a Blog? Jill Walker Rettberg (2008)

Open Book Quiz

Note: you will be graded on the thoroughness and thoughtfulness with which you answer each
question. You may answer the questions underneath the questions. Please indent your responses
to make it easier for me to read. When youre done, you will be posting this on your weebly site
as a document on a Standard page called Research. I will give you more detailed instructions
in class.

1) What do HTML & CSS stand for and what do they mean? Offer an example or two.
a. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language (5), and is the code used to
write Web page so that it can be displayed on a browser. CSS stands for
Cascading Style Sheets (5), and it is the code used to design and format a Web
page for a Web browser. The HTML describes how the wording is set up. For
example, using the symbols <p> before and after certain text separates it into a
paragraph. CSS, however, would format the visual aspects of the words,
describing the indents or line breaks.

2) What does RSS stand for? What does it mean/do?

a. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (8), which is a type of software that
makes it very easy to manipulate the content of a website on a computer. People
can view the RSS version of a blog or other primarily print-based website (like a
newspaper) to see the coding instead of the regular webpage.

3) What is Web 2.0? What distinguishes Web 2.0 from the first wave of web developers?
Please offer some examples and explain why/how these are considered Web 2.0.
a. Web 2.0 is used to describe newer versions of Web sites that allow everyone to
use the Web as a platform to share their own information (9), not just for elite
publishing companies or governmental propagandists. This enables anyone with
access to the Web to release their work, ideas, and information to the world
through websites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, or blog sites.

4) Please list and explain the 3 different types of blogs discussed by Rettberg. Explain what
the defining feature of each are and how they are distinct from one another. What
category do you think our niche blog fall into and why?
a. The first type of niche blog described was a personal blog (9). Personal blogs
draw from the unique experiences and perspectives of the author, often using a
diary/journal style of writing that is humorous, but takes into account that others
will be reading it.
b. The next type of niche blog described was a filter blog (12). This type of blogs
does not necessarily talk about the authors life, but posts more about information
found online relevant to certain topic areas. They often post links that the author
 found interesting and/or revealing, but do not necessarily have to be accompanied
with writing.
c. The final type of niche blog described was topic-driven blogs (15). As the name
suggests, these types are primarily focused on specific topics or hobbies that draw
certain communities online. For example as a teacher, I find a lot of teaching
blogs where teachers describe their experiences using certain activities or
strategies in the classroom and whether they were successful or not.
d. I think that the niche blogs that we write will most likely be topic-driven. By
finding our niche, we can find a specific audience which will be interested in
our insight on specific topics. Since this is a writing course, this will likely require
the most writing incorporating research, whereas personal blogs would not require
research, and filter blogs seem to require only research and no writing.

5) From where does the word Blog derive? Why is this significant?
a. The word blog comes from combining the words web and log, (17). The
author goes into detail describing how logs used to be important for navigation at
sea so that sailors could take in account all different factors (position of the stars,
weather, speed, etc.) to keep track of their location before the technology was
available. Web logs can be a way of keeping track of our lives and ideas in the
present-day, not necessarily to define our location, but to share our experiences
and opinions and keep a log of how these change over time.

6) Rettberg defines blogging by discussing the phenomenon in terms of genre and medium.
Please explain why she does this and how it helps us understand the genre of blogging
and how blogging functions as a medium.
a. Rettberg suggests that whether or not you decide to define blogs as a medium or
as a genre depends on our perspective, (20). Looking at is as a medium, one can
differentiate between this writing-based medium compared to video-based
medium or computerized video games. However, looking it as a genre, one can
compare various types of blogs (personal, filtered, topic-based, etc.), or one could
also compare it to other writing-based websites with articles from magazines or
databases or e-books.