Reflective Summary in Semester 1 – My First Impressions and Experience of Blog

First Impressions

Firstly, writing a blog is almost a new experience for me. Therefore, in the beginning, I thought it was the same as some social apps, such as Facebook and Weibo, and the blog is also a way to share subjective feelings and opinions by posting short texts online. However, in fact, it was through the brief introduction of the blog that I realised that the content and comments in this course required more rigour and academics than other social media websites. At the same time, the practice of the blog is to create a sense of community, a platform for people with the same professional background to come together to communicate and discuss, thus expanding their ideas.

Experiences

At the first introduction to the blog course, we were divided into groups to discuss the blog such as the structure and theme of it, and the group I was in discussed the draft of the banner for the blog. Indeed, through the discussion, we developed a few of the same ideas including that the image should be about Newcastle, on urban design and a simply understandable pattern. After that, it was for each group member to design the draft banner according to their understanding. It was an interesting process because the process completely showed how we created different works with the same rules, below is the draft banner I designed (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 –Draft banner relating to the urban design of Newcastle City. (By author’s illustration).

This somewhat responds to one of the aims of such a course as I mentioned, which is to expand ideas by reflecting on other people’s ideas and designs. Moreover, as I mentioned before, the content of the blog and comments are rigorous and academic, so I need to read a lot of relevant articles to support my ideas. During this process, my theoretical knowledge was greatly enhanced, for example when I wrote my article on Design Code, where I first engaged with the role that design principles and design codes play in urban design in the UK, and researched relevant case studies located in Trafford. Although it was a challenge for me to learn about the design codes and principles of a new country as it involved various aspects of local culture, history and politics, at the same time it was a unique opportunity to learn more about the context and reasons for urban design in the UK. At the same time, my writing skills have improved to a certain extent due to the fact that I need to express my topic and content clearly in a limited number of words. As a result, I had to carefully consider how I could get my point across in short but clear sentences.

Conclusion

Overall, the process of practising writing blogs has increased my reading and writing skills. Furthermore, by commenting on other people’s blogs I have also improved my critical thinking and analytical skills. For the next semester, I will maintain this learning style and further develop my research skills to make my ideas more in-depth and clearer.