I didn’t realise it was quite so long since I had written a post but reading Michele Martin’s web2.0 Wednesdays post asking us to divulge how we manage our time online I decided I should put “pen to paper”.

I think I am spending way too much time online because since I started blogging and twittering etc. I have learned so much from so many people I seem to be on a roll. Trying to fit this in with working full time and managing a family is a juggle and I admit to being a bit of a multi-tasker. I always have at least 4 or 5 tabs open on my browser and flick between them as I go about the tasks I have set myself. I’m not sure that this is the most efficient way to work but if I didn’t do it this way I would miss opportunities to learn from my online friends. I also break things up with a game or two on Facebook sometime with online friends or at least trying to better my scores.

I haven’t use an online Calendar before but am just setting up a Google Calendar for myself because I commit to projects online and then end up in a rush at the last minute because something had slipped my mind or I hadn’t realised the project was starting. I think there are other tools out there like Remember the Milk that I could probably use to make my life easier but the time to organise these tasks never seems to happen. Perhaps that is a task I need to add to my calendar.

The biggest challenges I face in managing all of your Web 2.0 tools and toys is keeping track of the ones I want to have a closer look at. I have lots of Diigo and Delicious bookmarks but my organisation of these is almost non-existent. Maybe that should be my starting point!! I think you have to be selective about the ones you choose to add to your repetoire and I think I need to make time to go back and look at some of the tools I have bookmarked and decide if they suit my needs or not.

I have found myself sacrificing other parts of my life for your Web 2.0 fun. Michele asks “Is this a good or a bad thing?” For me there is good and bad. I spend time most evenings on the computer and sometimes I could be spending more time with my kids although at that time they are usually doing study or homework.It has opened up a new network of friends and colleagues and on a recent trip to Melbourne I managed to meet some of my new friends face-to-face.  When you find you have no-one in your workplace that can help you with your Web 2.0 queries my PLN is always out there and there is always someone out there with suggestions and answers. Would I go back to the way things were just over a year ago? I don’t think so! I am having way too much fun, learning so much and meeting so many new people!

During the comment challenge I came across Caroline Middlebrook who also took part in the challenge. She has produced a program called Stumble Rush. Below is the description Caroline has written about her product. It is well worth reading and I have already discovered several great websites by just “stumbling”.

StumbleUpon is essentially a “discovery tool” - it is a toolbar that sits in your browser of choice and allows the user to hit a button, the Stumble button, and be shown a website that the system thinks you are going to like. How does it know what you like? Well that’s the clever part you see…

When you first install the toolbar you’ll be asked to select topics that you are interested in and whenever you Stumble you can click a “thumbs up” button on pages that you like. Over time, the StumbleUpon algorithm learns the kinds of pages that you like and the pages that get served to you become more and more targeted to your individual preferences.

Those are the essentials of StumbleUpon from the perspective of the user but that’s not what this course is about - this course will teach you how you can leverage StumbleUpon to send traffic to your website.

It is free to trial Stumble Rush so why not have a go!

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.