Thing #4

Commenting helps to create a sense of community because it -is- the community. Without comments there is no exchange of ideas. Without comments there are no new opinions or feedback. A blog without comments is just an online journal. I found the "Be Controversial?" technique helpful and the idea that not responding to comment could be a form elitism. I love to put controversial news articles onto my SarahLiz.info site to see what other people's opinions are. This may be a bit more dangerous for your class website since parents can be (sometimes) easily offended.

I chose to comment on fellow students' blogs of people I actually interact with during class time. I think this helps because I have already been introduced to the person. I can put a face to the opinions and voice behind the words. I commented on Kelsi Clark's blog, Alex Hilton's blog, Catherine Barlow's blog, Samantha Fargis' blog, and Andrea Watt's blog.

For the non-student blogs I commented on Literacy and Laughter's post about their Book Lovers Bash and on 2nd Grade Stuff's post on Classroom Dojo (A classroom management app).

I think that I may be in love with the Classroom Dojo app. I commenting on the post about how I think it could be used to inform parents of their student's behaviors in class. I all looked at some of the other comments and found that several of the teacher's that used it loved it. On the Book Lovers Bash post I commented about how I liked to contrast of being rewarded for doing a good job on a quiet activity could be rewarded by allowing them a very active and noisy activity - like a dance party.
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I commented on a different thing of each of my fellow students. I wanted to pick some that I felt I could offer some assistance on and a new perspective. I tried to ask at least one question in each comment to try and encourage a reply and help build a connection. I think that it is very important to ask for feedback when you are giving a person feedback. It's great to know if what you said helped or if the connection you were hoping to make failed so that you can learn and grow and try different methods.
-On Kelsi's I commented on her thing 5 about school 2.0 and the possibly that good, traditional practices might fade away in favor of technology.
-On Alex's I commented on her thing 7 about various methods of learning and creating stories from random pictures.
-On Catherine's I commented on her thing 3 about how much I liked her idea of using a student run blog about school difficulties. I also warned about relying too much on student guidance and to remember that you are the leader.
-On Samantha's  I commented on her thing 1 about how context clues have influenced my confidence in absorbing the right/important material. I asked if she thought her lack of confidence might be a gap in her early education, and something teacher's might should stress to their students to learn.
-On Andrea's I commented on her thing 4 about how I view my internet identity as separate or as only a small portion of my true identity and how that assists me in my management of my blog.