Wow! With full disclosure (something this month raised for better or worse), I will first admit to shamelessly borrowing the stacked Comment Challenge logo from Ken Allan, as it perfectly denotes how stacked up I got this last week. During the month of May, we at the Center for Teaching Excellence do one Institute early in the month focused on Teaching and Leaning, and starting in two days, we do a second Institute focused on Teaching and Learning with Technology. That is two weeks with 18-20 different faculty in a five week period! So, I have not been real focused on this Challenge, and yet it has certainly enriched me through participation in the process. So, summarizing the last six days of the Challenge in one post:

Day 26: Exploring Other Ways to Comment

Even with the problems Twitter was experiencing this past week, I found it to be an effective tool that supplemented blog comments. Whether it was bloggers announcing their posts (an effective use of Twitter IMHO) or discussion about comments (which the Stephen Downes issue certainly created), Twitter helped jump-start me into specific discussions.

Day 27: What Do You Communicate About Your Personal Brand Through Comments

At the gym, I wear a t-shirt that simply says WYSIWYG. Those who have been around computers for awhile will recognize that as “What You See Is What You Get.” Given that I am a 58-year old, greying, overweight geek, the t-shirt certainly fits! I am not sure I have a “brand” the way CogDog does, but I try never to fake my way in a comment. What you see in my comments is me….pure and simple. If I remain authentic and true to myself, that is brand enough for me. But part of my authentic self is a healthy sense of humor, and I see nothing wrong with that either!

Day 28: What’s Your Blog Commenting Strategy?

This one is a little tough. I have worked for years helping institutions develop strategic plans, and I have always suggested that thinking strategically involves setting some stakes in the ground to guide your journey. Yet, I have done little strategic planning for my own blogging and commenting. I have, however, seen some excellent models by others in this challenge, and so have set some commenting stakes in the ground for my future journey. These include continuing to routinely blog myself (most bloggers do not last beyond 6 months…and I am 5 and 1/2 months into mine!), using RSS feed to follow the bloggers in education, science, technology and business – as each of these fields have value to share, and finally, commenting routinely to posts in these blogs and providing summary comments in my own blogs to those who comment to me. And as the pirate noted in Pirates of the Caribbean, “these be more guidelines than rules!”

Day 29: Write a Commenting Guide for Students

This one is one I want to spend some more time on after our Institute. I will be teaching a graduate course next Fall and Spring where the “students” are all K-12 teachers. So I see value in having a blog as part of the course. Yet, a commenting guide for students may suggest that students are required to comment, and I am still not sure I want to “mandate” either blogging or commenting for students. After all, I see blogging as an intensely personal endeavor, and I am not sure you will get much if and when it becomes tied to a grade (and I would be interested in others’ views about this). Ken Allan laid out some excellent points in his blog post for this day. My thoughts might be to allow commenting in my blog as an alternative to discussion board – or to alternate weeks between discussion boards and blogging. I just do not feel ready to have 25 teachers all start blogging as part of a course. I could sure use some useful comments from all of you on this!!!

Day 30: How Can You Use What You Have Learned About Commenting to Change Your Teaching?

As I noted above, this is one I need to think on for a while. What I have learned is that I have become a better commenter – more reflective and more willing to scratch below the surface level. Yet, I feel that it has taken me over 20 weeks of blogging and 31 days of commenting to reach that level, and this is not something you command students to do in 15 weeks. Having seen the power, it suggests that one can begin to build the process within a class and model a process within a class. Ken Allan talked about non-participants. I asked my Spring graduate students if any of them routinely read my blog (since I never saw comments from them). It was not a part of the course and they were not graded on reading it or not..but out of 12, only 2 had. The rest said that they thought it was cool that I was blogging but they really did not have time to waste on that. Ouch! The intrinsic values are just not evident to our fellow educators (yet)…so I want to think through ways to help my Fall and Spring students next year appreciate the value of blogging and commenting. This month has impacted me…but as Barbara Sawhill noted last week on Twitter, “impacted” also applies to teeth and is painful! I have not figured out the details yet – and would love your creative ideas!

Day 31: Your Top Five Lessons

It has been a wonderful month in which I have learned more about myself as a blogger/educator and more about the blogosphere.

The first lesson is that it is a wonderful world in which the creative minds of Kim Cofino, Michele Martin, Silvia Tolisano and Sue Waters can unleash at no cost (other than our time and efforts) a Challenge that draws educators worldwide together. This truly shows both the power of the web and the interconnectiveness of us all.

My second lesson is one of time. I jumped in to this challenge without weighing the costs of participation versus the real job commitments with the aforementioned two institutes. It caused stress early on, but once I came to terms with the balance required, I actually looked forward to seeing the array of comments that flowed into my Google Reader.

The third lesson is one of companionship. I was already following 40 bloggers before the Challenge. I am now following 52 and really like the additions. I might have found these bloggers on my own but I doubt it! So the Challenge helped me connect to more colleagues.

The fourth lesson is that I might be an island but that I am in an archipelago. We each flower in different ways, and yet we have more in common than we do in differences.

The final lesson is that the human bonds are as important as the virtual ones. Part of what made this Challenge work for me was the offline conversations I had with Jeff Nugent or Bud Deihl in our various offices or in Starbucks as we talked over what we were seeing and how we were reacting. As connected as I feel to a fairly large number of fellow bloggers and twitterers, it is still amazing to see the body language associated with the engagement we were feeling.

To all who read this blog and to all who commented to me, my deep thanks! It has been a fun month and I look for the relationships to continue long after May has faded in time.

[Photo Credit: K R Reinsch]

Edublogs has updated WordPress, so thought I would do a quick Comment Challenge update to test it out. The “real estate” is quite different, but in taking it for a drive, not seeing any problems and like some of the new features I am spotting.

My previous Comment Challenge post summed up nine days – doing better now so this will only cover three days! Day 21 asked us to use a comment to make a recommendation. I did that in several places to highlight Kayrn Romeis and her request for “How I Got Started” stories on social media. She will be analyzing those stories for her dissertation, which should be very interesting. Our own Michele Martin gave a great response this past week, so I bet I was not the only one making this recommendation.

Day 22 asked us to reflect on the comments we received and highlight a favorite. I would have to first say that I am so new to blogging that I treasure every comment received! But if pushed to pick a favorite, the one that jumps to mind is one our favorite blogging cheerleader sent me last week. After I noted that I had broken all the Comment Challenge rules by dumping 9-days worth in to a single post, Sue Waters sent me this:

Can I break all commenting rules and say excellent post? Well I going to anyway. Any post that makes me laugh several times will I read it means that you have done an excellent job and engaged the reader. Its a special talent to be able to convey humour in a post and you’ve done it well here.

It put a smile on my face that lasted all day! Thanks, Sue!

For today – Day 23 – we are to blog about what makes a great comment. What comes to my mind is something I heard Barbara Sawhill say at Faculty Academy 2008. She was talking about how some students of hers evaluate peer writing. One comment was “It showed the writer cared and made me care.” To me, that is what makes a great comment – the passion comes through the text.

So hope everyone has a good weekend! At our Center, we continue our preparations for our week-long Summer Institute on Teaching and Learning with Technology. Since it is hands on, we limit the Institute to 18 people (16 desktops in the lab and another 2 laptops on tables in the back of the lab). This summer, we have a full Institute and 8 people on the waiting list. It appears our faculty are growing more hungry for technology skills!

For those outside the United States of America, this is our Memorial Day weekend. It is the traditional start of summer for us…but as a retired naval officer, it also is an opportunity to remember those friends who gave their lives for this country.

Being a long weekend, I plan to also spend some time doing something I really love – woodworking. Last summer, I expanded the deck on the back of our house, so this weekend, I plan to build an outdoor dining table for the deck. It will be a slat-top table so that water runs through it fine, with L-shaped legs on the four corners and mortise and tenon skirts on the sides. Should be fun! I find it refreshing to do work with wood after swimming in Web 2.0 waters all week!

Michele Martin posted an interesting question this morning on Day 9 of the Comment Challenge: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs. She was reflecting on this based on a post from Sameer Vasta in his Eloquation blog: Rethinking the Blog Comment Policy. Sameer had shut down comments for a year in his blog.

Sameer stated three core reasons behind his decision at that point:

1. My blog was a personal publishing platform
2. People had other places to respond
3. Nobody was leaving comments

Others have noted as well that blogging is meant to be a personal journal – and if one wants to comment, she or he can do so in their own blog.

I thought we were getting away from the “Me Generation.” One of the things I have learned in the past year of swimming in the Web 2.0 stream is that 1 plus 1 equals a lot more than 2. Bud Deihl mentioned in his post that ideas are in the air, and networked conversations occur in multiple venues. If someone wants to disable comments, that is certainly their prerogative. For myself, I gain value when others comment to me and when I comment to others, because the thinking that moved me to blog in the first place is now being stretched and validated.

“I” may blog, but I firmly believe in the “we” that takes those thoughts, analyzes, adds to, and sometimes refutes in ways “I” probably could not do on my own.

[Photo Credit: MonkeyC.Net]

Bloggers from around the world have enrolled in the 31 Day Comment Challenge to work collectively on becoming better blog citizens. Kim Cofino, Sue Waters, and Michele Martin have each blogged extensively about the hows and whys of this challenge, and Michele has suggested that those participating start with a “commenting self audit,” using Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments as a resource.

As Michele noted, one of the goals of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is for us to improve our commenting skills and draw more people into blog conversations. To get a better picture of my blog commenting skills and strategies, I was asked to answer the following questions:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

How often do I comment? I currently subscribe (using RSS feeds) to around 40 blogs, so I would estimate that I am reviewing via Google Reader around a hundred to a hundred-twenty blog posts a week. Of those, I typically open up the post and tag to delicious around twenty each week that I either want to save for myself or highlight to my network. Within these twenty, I would estimate that I comment to approximately five a week. I do feel pretty comfortable (but would welcome feedback) that I have – as Gina suggested – contributed to the discussions when I have commented, provided links where I saw opportunities, and remained courteous to those to whom I was commenting (and their subject matter). I will admit that I have gotten a bit whiny about the state of American education – but I plead extenuating circumstances – it begs whining!

Jeff Nugent passed me via Twitter a wonderful video of Clay Shirky discussing the cognitive surplus. In a nutshell, Clay talks about how much time is “wasted” watching TV, how many have shifted from passively viewing TV to creating content on the web, and how a slight increase in this time shift could potentially create thousands of Wikipedia-sized projects. In other words, I am not spending much time currently commenting, and I should be dipping in to my cognitive surplus to do more.

I have occasionally viewed my blog statistics using Technorati and of course watch the counts using ClustrMap. But I have not been consciously tracking my commenting before now. I plan to use CoComment this month to track my commenting and watch for trends and potential improvements.

I do see this challenge as an opportunity to explore new blogs. My forty that I track have been pretty consistent for the past four months, and I consciously subscribe to both edublogs, technology blogs, and business blogs to keep me abreast of events and initiatives that impact my field of faculty development. This challenge opens up new opportunities. At the same time, I do feel that there is a finite number of subscriptions one can follow. I believe I saw Sue twitter this morning that she is subscribed to some two hundred…my hats off to her (and generally is anyway). This may be an opportunity to stretch and see what my limits are.

Should be an interesting month. I would welcome comments from others with suggestions on improving my ideas here.