Wednesday

Thing #12: Creating Community Through Commenting

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs according to the article about blogging from Wikipedia. A blog is a vehicle for a group of people with common interests to communicate, share, and learn in spite of barriers of time and distance.

Read
How to Comment Like a King (or Queen!) from Cool Cat's blog.

Read 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog

Read The Ten Commandments of Blog Commenting oops! this link is no longer available. Searching for replacement.

Blue Skunk has some comments about commenting. Incidentally, he pretty much responds to every commentor of each of his posts! In another post he asks "Are you contributing to the general discussion?" He feels commenting is "a unique characteristic of blogging - that it can be more dialog than sermon."

Meredith Farkas of Information Wants to Be Free has an interesting response to the idea of sharing information through commenting...even if you do not feel you have worthy thoughts!

Drape's Takes has something to say about commenting as a part of his Edublogger Etiquette series.


Here is a short post about commenting using an alias vs. your real name from Blogging 101. You can read many other posts about commenting. There is a podcast about lurking and commenting. Listen if you wish. It is useful information but is rather lengthy.


Discovery Activities:
1. Think about the various points made about successful comments from the above readings. In the post about this Thing, explain two of the points that you think are important.

2. Since commenting has been described as essential to the purpose of blogging that includes community building and interaction, choose at least five different Library2Play blogs and make at least one comment to each.

3. Find two blogs about a subject of personal interest (Google Blog Search!) or from the blogroll of any blogger you read. Comment on these two blogs that are not a part of the Library2Play community. In your post about this Thing, explain what drew your attention to these blogs.

It is understood that you may want to do some of this commenting at different times during this 23 Things experience.
Create the post as usual and as you find new things to comment about, come back to the post, use the edit feature, and add your new thoughts.
OR
Do your blog post about this activity later. As long as you label the post with "Thing 12," it does not have to appear in numerical order.

8 comments:

cwhite said...

Learned a lot from this Thing. Blogging does seem a little like staring at your navel at first. I learned that to get comments, you have to have the right attitude about giving and receiving parts of a conversation. Good Thing!

tisanders said...

I received a "not found" error message for the article about the ten commandmants in blogging. Enjoyed reading the other two. Very informative.

Anonymous said...

I also received the "not found" message for 10 commandmants. The Edublogger Etiquette series was the most helpful for first time bloggers.

sdepaola said...

This was a really helpful lesson. Teaching upper grades sometimes kids can be cruel, so it's good that there are some guidelines already in place as far as etiquette and names.

HOGARZA said...

I started to learn how this works, If I'm not leavning comments why should I want other people to make comments in mine

Ladyt said...

This lesson was interesting. It was not anything that was really new. I am doing my PhD online and I participate in blogs all the time. I think you learn by doing.

KOgden97 said...

I have enjoyed the comments left on my blog so far. Helps me to remember I am not doing this all by myself!
As far as my experiences with commenting, technology has been a blessing and a curse. Thus far, I have not been able to post a single comment. Not because I am not trying, or not choosing an identity... It seems to be the ever frustrating technological reason - Just because it can! hopefully, this will post and all of my posting troubles will vanish!

mmin said...

I wanted you to know that your comments came through. I am so glad that you are enjoying learning about technology. I am a big believer in Web 2.0. It is really about to revolutionize education. When you get into Virtual Worlds, look me up, Doran Horngold at your service.