Reviewing Brandon's blog "Get thee to a Nunnery"

This post is part of how my Shakespeare class is developing a scalable process for online interaction and evaluation among classmates through blogs.  I have previously done an evaluation of Max O’s blog, and learned a lot about the benefits of clear organization.  It was a good learning experience, especially since it required a critical analysis of a kindred blog.  At this time I will be examining Brandon P’s blog "Get thee to a Nunnery."  He is focused on Shakespeare in pop culture, and argues that Shakespearean references are identifiable enough within these works that they are not simply aesthetically pleasing, but rather point individuals towards Shakespeare.  Let me show what he has done to illustrate this:

Posts

Brandon has a large quantity of posts that further develop his pop culture/Shakespeare emphasis.  He covers topics such as the direct adaptation of portions of a play into song, such as the post Ariel’s songs, he even does several critical analyses of modern adaptations more based on Shakespearean themes, such as Rush’s “Limelight,” and Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet.”  The posts contain a detailed analysis of what interconnections the music makes to the Shakespearean text, even calculating whether that connection adds to or diminishes the value of the original.  As far as the format of each post, he does a great job of breaking them up with subheadings, and bullet points or numbers, which makes them easier to read.

Research

He developed his focus of Shakespeare in pop culture early on, and throughout the semester he appears to have further decided to focus primarily on music as the medium of pop culture that he analyzed.  I think that this focus has helped him to do more in depth studies (such as his series of posts dedicated to the musical adaptations of Hamlet [Kovintsev and Hamlet, two comparisons of music used in Hamlet movie trailers, the use of music and the lack]).  He has a good sources page that lists a combination of academic books, and links to audio streams of the songs analyzed.  It is well organized and easy to access.

Personal & Social

Brandon describes his process of discover over a series of posts, rather than directly in any one specifically.  That being said, his post my direction does reveal a bit more of his personality, then other entries, as does his personal progress report.  He participated with the class in the technology forum, and also went to the play “Much Ado about Nothing.” One of the intriguing ways that Brandon interacted with other classmates was through his analysis of the class Flash-Mob performance.  Overall he seems pretty well connected and highly focused on his theme, which in and of itself shows a lot of his identity as an author.

Design

I like his side bar content of most popular posts.  I think that it is well set up.  I wish there was a search this blog tool.  I think that would increase the functionality of his blog as a resource for future learners.  I like the image he has behind the title of his blog.  The picture is cool, but I don’t see a clear connection between his posts and the title of the blog.  He might want to change the title so that it more directly references Music in Shakespeare ("Get thee to a Nunnery" is neat, but not useful in identifying the blog).  
The color scheme is but a bit to mellow for something about pop culture.  I think that, given the focus on pop culture, the colors could be a lot more vibrant and really pull off a nice effect.  That might further add to the overall value of the blog.  Also, as mentioned in class, the colors themselves do make it hard to read text when it is highlighted, or when it is a link.  Just an idea, but I think that those two quick alterations would greatly enhance the presentation of his otherwise spectacularly well organized, and researched blog.