- Write a meaningful comment. As teachers, we are used to putting a happy face sticker on things and moving on to the next item on our agenda. Explain what it is about the commentary that resonates with you and if nothing does, don't comment.
- If you have written about it, hperlink to it. You give the blog credibility as well as "giving yourself credibility as one who participates and truly cares about your topic and doesn't just have selfish aims."
- If you have a blog, comment about yourself. It personalizes it as well as creates possible traffic for your own blog.
- Use a comment tracking service. Vicki Davis recommentds CoComment. You are able to track comments you have made on various sites and see if the author of the site has responded. CoComment will also create tag clouds for your comments.
- Don't be afraid to comment. It doesn't matter if you are a newbie or an old pro, we all have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.
- Teach commenting and remember the power of words. Students need to be taought the proper way to comment. To paraphrase Thumper as he was talking to Bambi, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Consider how you would feel if someone wrote that particular comment to you. The web is full of bad examples of adults doing the wrong thing. (Just look at some of the comments regarding the death of Michael Jackson.) We need to instill proper netiquette in ourselves and in our students.
There are ways to get people to comment on your blogs:
- Ask questions
- Be open ended
- Invite comments
- Interact with comments left
- Make it easy to comment
- See
Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-comment-like-king-or-queen.html
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