Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With

Finding a blog I disagreed with was difficult as I had just started a new term with my class and my surfing time was limited.  However I came across a post about Mother’s Day on Savvy Auntie’s blog.

I left a comment but then on re-reading both the post and comments from myself and others I went back and left a second comment which clarified my view.

Day 6: Engage another Commenter in Discussion

This activity links to an earlier one where we had to leave a question when we made a comment. I didn’t leave a comment specifically for this Day because if I do want to know more about a post I will leave a question and then discuss further if I need.

Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned so Far

The Three things I have learned so far in this challenge are:

• that I should leave comments more often no matter how brief because  bloggers appreciate feedback.
• that all bloggers love to have feedback on their posts so that they know it is being read and in leaving comments we are really thanking that person for their thoughts on a particular subject.
• that there are many educators with so much to offer - I wish I had more time!!

Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche

This is a task I will come back to later.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

I only have to see the excitement of my students when they have comments left from their peer bloggers to know that feedback is such an important part of blogging. The reason I started blogging with my class was to provide an authentic purpose and audience for their writing and also to give their families the opportunity to view what we do in class. Comments provide a way for this feedback to be recorded and seen by the class.

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

The reason I have very few comments on this blog is because firstly people do not know it is here and I have deliberately not made many links to this blog yet as I only started the blog at the beginning of this challenge and have not yet made any other posts. My primary blog is still my class blog and we receive many comments on the blog from other classes and students. It was at this time that I talked more about comments with my students and challenged them to leave comments at three blogs that they hadn’t visited before.

Day 11: Write a Blog Comment Policy

On my class wikispace I have our class blogging rules which we kept fairly simple. There is one rule about being positive when commenting. I think I will go back to this page and separate the blogging rules and make a separate section for commenting rules.

Day 12: Make Sure Your Blog Technology is “Comment Friendly”

I don’t think I have ever not been able to leave a comment on a blog but there have been a few occasions since starting this challenge where I have left a comment but was not able to tag it to the challenge.

Day 13: Write a Blog Post Using Comments

This is another task for the “too hard basket”. I have a student teacher in my class and time is scarce. I will post this one later.

Day 14: Turn Your Blog Over to Your Readers

For this activity I have decided to use my class blog and will get my students to “write” the blog by leaving comments.

Day 15: Give a Comment Award

Each week I give one or two of my students a blogging award. It may be for a great post, a thoughtful post, for comments they have left for their classmates or something else to do with their blogging. So this week my blogging award will be to those students who left the most thoughtful or interesting comments that I challenged them to do on Day 10.

Day 2: Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented on Before

It was not difficult for me to comment on a blog that I hadn’t commented on before because I had hardly left any comments.

The first blog I visited was one of the participants of the 31 Day Comment Challenge - Kate Foy. Her blog Spinning a Learning Web she left a video comment encouraging all the participants of the challenge us to make the most of the opportunities opened to us this month.

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

On Day 3 we were encouraged to join a comment tracking service. I decided to follow Sue Waters suggestion and sign up in coComment.

After joining coComment I read and commented on more Bog posts.

A blog caught my attention was Learning Curve and there were two posts in particular that I read and commented on as I believed the discussion in both of these posts could impact on my teaching. Firstly using music to enhance the students’ learning environment and the importance of teaching keyboarding skills.

Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

From the challenge Wikispace :While many of us ask questions in our own blog posts, we may not tend to ask questions when we comment on other blogs. Yet this can be one of the best ways to engage the blogger and other commenters in further discussion.

I decided to visit another participant’s blog and I founf a post about the new SMART Notebook 10 software on a blog called Thinking Past the Square.

Being a Better Blogger is something I talk about with my class when we blog so I have decided that I have to improve my personal blogging and as well as starting my personal blog page I have decided to join the 31 Day Comment Challenge.

The task for Day 1 is to do a self-audit.

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

I like to look at blog posts that have been highlighted by bloggers that I encounter through my blog, my nings and twitter. However I rarely leave comments.

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

I have never tracked my blog comments because up until the last few days when I started reading about this challenge I had no idea that it was a sensible thing to do in the world of blogging. Boy am I learning lots at the moment!! However I now have my own iGoogle and Google Reader pages and will be starting to track blog comments.

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

I actually read lots of new blog posts most weeks but as I said earlier I haven’t been one to leave comments until now.

We were also asked to read Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments
which outlines some simple guidelines to keep in mind when commenting in blogs.