Student Blogging Challenge – Week 2

Original post by Sue Waters.

Dear Students,

An important part of the Student Blogging Challenge is connecting with students and other classes by reading posts and leaving comments.

Comments allow you, and your readers, to engage in discussions, share thoughts and connect with your blog.

Most new bloggers find publishing posts easy and commenting harder!  Your activity this week is to learn more about commenting and improve your commenting skills!

What makes a good comment?

Comments transform your blog from a static space to an interactive community.  Commenting is one way a blogger can create conversations.

Your readers leave a comment that hopefully asks questions (which encourage conversation), you reply back to their comments on your blog, then visit their blog to read their posts and engage with them on their blog.

The better your comment the more chance you have in creating conversations.

Start by watching either of the following two videos on Commenting.

Watch Mrs Yollis’s ‘How to Write a Quality Comment‘.  You can also watch it on Vimeo if YouTube is blocked in your School District.

Watch Nicolas Weiss’s Leaving High Quality Blog comments video  if you are a high school student.

Now visit Huzzah’s Commenting Guideline to learn some more commenting tips.

Important tips:

  • Refer to Adding a comment support documentation if you are unsure how to add a comment.
  • Comments may be moderated on your blog.   Remember to check your Comments folder, and comment spam folder,  to approve any pending comments.
  • Include the url (address) in your commentwhen you leave a comment on another blogger’s post so the blogger can visit your blog and comment.

 

Here is an example from Ayla last week:

Hi Ms. W,
I have just finished this week’s blogging challenge by uploading my avatar and making my about me page! Here is the link: http://aylaz13.edublogs.org/about-me/
So far blogging I have enjoyed creating my blog and I hope to get lots of comments
Thanks
~Ayla
http://aylaz13.edublogs.org
http://huzzah.edublogs.org

Now it’s your turn to practice crafting quality comments.

Activity 1:  Practicing commenting on a class blog

Mrs Smith has published an excellent activity that guides you through commenting, learning to read student posts and practicing comments.

Visit Mrs Smith’s I’m New Here post to work through the tasks in her post and then leave a comment on her post. Remember to include the URL of your blog.

Activity 2: Write a post, create a video or create a poster about commenting.

Might be tips to get more visitors,  guidelines for acceptable comments on your blog, examples of good and bad comments – think outside the square. Remember you don’t have to approve all comments. It is your blog; send some to the trash and if it is a company trying to get you to visit their blog to buy something, then label it as spam.

Here are some links to commenting guidelines written by students and classes. Class in New Zealand, grade 11/12 class in USA, Huzzah class blog in Canada, Abbey has a blogging guideline page, Mrs Allen created a poster about commenting,  WarriorKat uses lots of visuals in her guidelines,  Sophie had a great post, the Blogging Frogs have some great tips, Emme created a powtoon on commenting , Darcey write about commenting,  Kyndal wrote about how to comment, Rachel wrote her own guidelines

Activity 3: Visit other student or class blogs

Visit 4 other blogs on the lists above the header area. Leave a quality comment on one post on each blog. Might be the About Me page or another post you found interesting.  Write a post on your blog mentioning who you visited, which post you left a comment on and why, then include the comment you left. Hint: make sure you copy the comment before you hit the submit button.

 

The Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge

It’s official; we’re registered for the Edublogs Student Blogging Challenge!

Screen Shot 2014-03-12 at 9.20.10 PM

While I signed us up to participate as a class, you’ll also have the opportunity to register as an individual with your student blog as soon as we’ve established guidelines (for posting) and commenting.

It’s a good thing that we’re having this conversation this week because it seems that your teacher needs to take some time to reflect on the guidelines for commenting, himself.  Take a look at my first comment, in response to the Week 1 Challenge.

Screen Shot 2014-03-12 at 9.20.46 PM

What did I forget to do?

Welcome to Blogging Bootcamp!*

Dear Students,

This week you’ll spend some time exploring Edublogs’ featured student blogs for 2013 to get ideas for what the blog that you create might look like and the types of content that you might include.  We’ll also take a close look at what students do not share on their blogs as we create guidelines for protecting your online privacy.

Before you get down to the business of creating your own blogs, it’s important that you learn the vocabulary specific to blogging.  This will help you to support one another as you troubleshoot issues related to formatting your own blogs.  How many of the following terms can you find examples of on this page?  Where might one find examples of those terms that you don’t see?

post

themes

columns

widgets

HTML

links

tags

categories

pages

draft

publish

avatar

embed

thumbnail

*I’d like to give a shout out to Mr. Miller and the 7th grade students of Chalone Peaks Middle School whose own blogging bootcamp and guidelines for commenting inspired this post: http://mrmillersblog.com/blogging-boot-camp/