A month or so ago I created a survey about what makes a good comment. I gave some reasons for people to choose from. They could tick as many as they liked. Out of the 25 people who responded, these were the results:
- A question is asked 16
- Must relate to the topic 14
- Writer knows what they are talking about 9
- Been polite 11
- Given their point of view with reasons 16
- Adds information to my post 4
- Shows humour 3
- Must be positive 5
The readers could also add their own reasons for a good comment:
- Showing a different point of view.
- Proper grammar.
- Being very informative!
- Agreement or appreciation of a point in the post
- Perhaps when people continue the conversation between the commenters and author.
- Asking people to visit your blog
- The commenter knows what they are talking about…
- No bad language and writing that you can understand.
- You both know what your talking about and putting more posts on
- No mean comment although you can disagree with others comments and posts
- When the commenter can relate to your post.
- If they have a blog of their own, so you can go and visit it.
- When they ask a question and you can reply back to keep them coming back to the blog.
- Suggestions of where next or a different direction or……..
- Perhaps a comment or question to move the conversation on or get others responding
- Furthers the discourse and fosters community growth and connection.
What five reasons do you think would make a good comment on your blog and why? Perhaps you could write a post about this very topic.
Do your students enjoying blogging? Do they write fantastic comments on other students’ blogs? Would they be interested in taking part in a blogging competition just for students? It would involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard.
Please visit my class blog to register and watch out for a page there called the Student blogging competition 2008 during the month of September. Each challenge will be added ready for the students to do.
One question the students have to answer is “Have you told your teacher you are participating?” This is so each school can award a small prize to the best blogger or most improved blogger in their school. I don’t have the facilities to organize a world wide prize but hopefully each school could find a little bit of spare cash for a small prize.
So far we have students from Australia and New Zealand registered and a couple of teachers from the USA thinking about it for new students after their holidays. If you have any good ideas for challenges for beginners or experienced student bloggers, please comment here and I will add them to the challenge.
The teacher from each school can tell me the winner of the prize and I will mention them in our class blog.
Any students who are taking part will be included in the blogroll on my class blog so it will be easy for students to visit each other’s blogs.
Well we are now in the month of August and beginning our study on China and the Olympic Games. But this week we have had students presenting their work on sumo wrestling that they have researched throughout this term. Most decided to present using a powerpoint even after being reminded that this meant:
- the powerpoint was just used in the background as a reminder
- you don’t have lots of words on a slide
- you will have to give a talk in front of your classmates relating to the powerpoint
Students took out extra words, found more diagrams, wrote their notes on cue cards and for their first efforts, did a great job. Presentation afternoon and out came the video camera - the battery was not fully charged.
“Can we use our phones?” Go for it. So we had about four budding camerapersons videoing the events.
I was so proud of students who got up to present in front of the class for the first time this year; a student with a teacher aide organizing an interview as part of the presentation and another student whose powerpoint was run completely from the Smartboard without any help from me.
But this is now where I have no idea what to do next.
“Do you know how to download from your phones?” Cords were brought to school and hopefully tomorrow the talks will be downloaded.
But readers, what do you suggest we do next? How can we get these videos or powerpoints on the students’ own blogs? Firstly, we will need parent permission, then do we use slideshare for the actual powerpoint? But what about the videos?
I’m at an EDNA seminar at the moment and just learnt about a quick, easy way to give attribution to images from the keynote speaker Frankie Forsyth. Visit this website which allows you to search for creative commons images. It also gives you the attribution which you need to include with the image on your blog. You may include it with the photo or add it under the photo.
Original image: ‘Tassie devil’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30805622@N00/351640307
by: Adam Tibballs
Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License
Steps to follow:
- Search for photo by putting in a tag eg sumo or Tasmania or fishing
- Click on photo you want to use
- Click on “edit image in-house”
- Click on “Add attribution” if you want it included with the photo – see my picture on the right
- Right click and “save picture as”
- Follow normal instructions to add images to your blog
Be careful, though, when adding the attribution to the photo. What has gone wrong with mine?
Back in May, some students in our class took part in a comment challenge, which was mainly set up for adults. I tried to adapt the challenges to fit what students could do. Now that you have had your blogs for a couple of months or more, what would you suggest we could use to run a competition just for student bloggers?
Remember, we are trying to improve our blogging skills which should include:
- having a great conversation
- improving your reading audience
- improving your blogpost writing skills
- learning about the big world out there
Please tell me some ideas you think we could include in this competition and perhaps what we could have as a prize. Also how could this competition be judged? What else have I forgotten?
Cross posted with “Technology in our classroom”
Students were asked to mention why they enjoy blogging, how it helps them and to give some hints for teachers new to blogging about to start with their own students. I did this after a post by Sue Waters in The Edublogger asking for teachers to share their experience in blogging and tips for using with students.
I didn’t moderate student comments until today, so no-one could read the previous comments and get some clues about what to write. I felt it was very interesting to see the words like fun, savvy and people appearing fairly large in the wordle.
Please also read the students’ comments here at http://wyatt67.edublogs.org/2008/06/18/students-what-does-blogging-mean-to-you/
Photo source
