Thing #4

Commenting is a great way to create a sense of community and interaction. This is done through the communication between those with blogs. As you continue to read blogs and comment on them you gain a sense of who the blogger is. Also as you comment in some cases you can get a discussion going which also add to your interaction with others.

Vicki Davis from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog gave some great advice on her blog “How to comment like a king (or queen!). She gave tons of detail on commenting, but her main points included  “write a meaningful comment, if you have written about it, hyperlink to your post, if you have a blog, share some about yourself when you comment, use a comment tracking service, don’t be afraid to comment, teach commenting, and remember the power of words.” Out of these main point the one that hit home to be was don’t be afraid to comment. I am always nervous about commenting on anyone else’s writing, but from the perspective she gave I will try to make an effort to comment meaningfully on others’ blogs.

Darren Rowse also gave some good advice on how to receive comments. He suggests that you “invite comments, ask questions, be open ended, interact with comments left, set boundaries, be humble, be gracious, be controversial, ‘Reward’ comments, and make it easy to comment.” All of these tips will contribute to a more interactive blog. These are great tips and are really easy to understand.

For the five blogs to comment on I picked Ashley Criswell, Victoria Mars, Marianne Spencer, Danielle Witter, and Wendy Young.  While trying to pick people from our class at first I was just picking random blogs to briefly read through. When I read through Ashley Criswell what she said in her blog seemed to stick with me. Then I read Victoria Mars’s blog and I really like what she said for thing 4. I then went to Marianne Spencer’s blog because she is very vocal in class and seems to be at the same level as I am with technology so I picked her because I thought I could relate. Then I picked Danielle Witter because she sits next to me in class and helps me when I need it and she is very knowledgeable in different areas with technology. The last person I picked was Wendy Young. I picked her because she seems to have a lot to say about some of the blogs and in thing 2; she said she is new to the blogging world so I thought I might be able to relate to here some. For the two blogs not relating to the 23 things, I am having difficulty finding those.

I commented on Nikki and Victoria’s thing 4, because I like what they said and they way they worded it. I commented on Wendy Young’s thing 1 because I could relate to some of what she said. I have not commented on Marianne Spencer or Danielle Witter’s blogs yet, but that is because I am going to comment on some of the later things and I was going to complete my things first so I can relate better to what they say. While scrolling through their blogs, they both seemed to have lots of good things to say.