What can students learn from commenting?

One task of the Comment Challenge was to write a blog post using comments. I would like to highlight a comment and a blog post from Charles Nelson and reflect further on the issue of student commenting.

On my last post about comments, Comments on Commenting, Charles Nelson left a comment and stated,

I concur with Kevin that it's not easy, and I agree with you that commenting is something that students need guidance on. But I would ask, Why have students commenting on each other's blog when they can post a more thoughtful response on their own blog?

I should explain a little more about the context in which I blog with students first. Of course, I would love to have students post well-thought out posts on their own blogs; however, so far I have only used class blogs with students. Last year, I wrote the posts and students and guests wrote comments; this year the students are writing all the posts and then interacting with each other and guests via comments.

This semester's blogging project is a Book and Literature Circle Blog. The students are reading The Little Prince and discussing it in literature circles. Because the students can't hear what has happened in the other groups' discussions, I ask the groups to collaboratively write a post for the blog after finishing their discussion. They usually highlight the most interesting aspect(s) of their discussion and ask other students for their opinions.

After the first week of the Book and Literature Circle Blog, I found that students wrote short comments, and there was no flow between contributions in the comment area. During the second week (this week), I specifically asked students to think about how they could connect their comments to previous ones and build up a conversation.

Thinking about participating in academic discussions, and synthesizing sources in academic writing assignments, I think that by challenging students to make connections between their comments and their classmates' comments, they are learning a valuable communication skill that they may be able to apply to other types of assignments. In his blog post, Charles Nelson made an excellent point:

"But for those of us who are educators, I would say that we need to be careful about being sidetracked by the social contagion of commenting and instead keep the goal of learning in the foreground of our blogging and of our students' blogging."

In conclusion, even though students are interacting through blog comments, I have tried to keep the focus on student learning. Your comments on other ways to keep commenting focused on learning are most welcome!

Comments on Commenting

Right now the Comment Challenge is in full swing! I have to admit that although I haven't been doing the daily challenges, I have tried to be just a little more active by reading, writing, and commenting on blogs. Thank you to everyone who has commented on my blog lately, especially new commenters on my blog, Sue and Ines.

The issue of commenting came up during the SMiELT session earlier this year when the blogging group considered the value of comments. I posted a message to the forum of the group, in response to some questions. I am going to repost my answers below, adding a bit of context to each of them. If you're a member of SMiELT, you can view the entire thread here.


Do you think commenting is an important part of blogging or not?

As a co-moderator of Blogging4Educators, I was busy making comments on participants blogs. I found that this was a really meaningful way to engage in conversations with others. After I started using coComment, I noticed my comments were showing up on blogs via the coComment widgets, and this seemed to be a powerful way to make connections and to discover new blogs. As a result, I posted my opinion to the discussion forum:

Yes, commenting is an important part of blogging! Blogging is all about making connections and continuing conversations. The interaction through commenting makes blogging really fun! Recently, I started using coComment which allows you to save, track, and tag all of the conversations you are commenting on around the web. Displaying a coComment widget with your current comments may be just one of the ways we can encourage commenting.


If you do, what can we as teachers do to encourage commenting?

With one of my classes, we had one blog where students continued interacting with each other outside of class, and we were often visited by people outside of the class. Through online communities of practice, many teachers and students from around the world dropped by our blog and left comments. This really seemed to pique students' interest and to motivate them to use and to visit the blog. Therefore, I thought that one great way to encourage commenting was to invite people outside the class to get involved too, so I wrote these ideas in the SMiELT discussion forum:

I think Gabriela had a good idea when she said that teachers could ask for other teachers and students with more blogging experience to comment on the blog too. As teachers, we can encourage commenting by modeling the types of comments that we expect from students. If students have been reading blogs, then they will have a better idea about commenting too.

Also, commenting is a skill that students need some guidance on. For instance, as part of this SMiELT course, we watched the video about using comments to start conversations, and then we had a task to practice what we learned from it. Another useful resource about commenting is How to Comment Like a King or Queen by Vicki Davis. Just like anything else, we can’t expect that students already know how to do it; we should provide some information to them.

Assignment ideas:

One way to encourage commenting might be to have a mystery guest on the blog, or a guest who could be interviewed via the blog. Then, students can read the post, and add comments and questions. Here is an example of an interview with a wedding cake designer. Of course the comments could have been deeper, and we could have gotten more into the cultural differences, but we all have to start somewhere!

Thanks for reading my reflections on commenting. Even though comments are important, they aren't everything -- they are just one piece of the blogging puzzle. So, what do you think -- are comments important? If so, how can we encourage commenting? Do you have any ideas on encouraging students to comment?

Reflections on why I blog ... sometimes

I haven't blogged lately, so when Carla Arena tagged me to answer the question, "What are YOU blogging for?" I thought it would be the perfect chance to create a post for this blog.

For me, I started this blog in the beginning to continue my learning and professional development. At the beginning, I thought learning to blog was just a set of technical skills; however, I quickly realized that blogging isn't just a technology thing, it is people thing, and it is all about learning, reflecting on learning, and connecting with others who are interested in continuing to learn as well. Especially this year, as I co-moderated Blogging4Educators, I found that commenting and sharing our learning was very powerful, indeed! I commented on participants' blogs, and they commented on mine. By working together and finding connections, we discovered the power of synthesizing our reflections through blogging, tagging, and RSS.

That's why after watching this video, I couldn't agree more with the second speaker, who stated,
"Not only did it [blogging] enable me to comment on their [the students'] learning, which they were reflecting on in their blogs, but they were commenting on my learning, and I thought that was really very powerful."

As for this blog, sometimes I blog a lot, and other times I blog little here. Unfortunately, a lot of posts I only think about, but don't carve out the time to actually write. As a teacher, during the last school year, I blogged with students for the first time, and we ended up making some amazing contacts with people from many countries through our class blog. To be honest though, I have blogged most consistently on my personal blog and this has allowed me the opportunity to deepen connections with friends and family, even though we're miles and miles apart. Blogging lessens the distance somehow. We can see and feel each other's thoughts and that's why I blog -- to feel connected -- both personally and professionally to those I care most about and those who I'm just meeting.

I would like to pass the question on to a few bloggers who I hope will share their thoughts about blogging: AnaMaria, Monica, Jen Verschoor, Illya, and Patricia.