May 13, 2015: Connecting by Commenting on Blogs

Today we continue our series on how to make connections online.

Blogging is a way for educators to share their thinking, their learning and their practice.  When we read a blog, and something resonates with us, we can start a conversation by leaving a comment on a blog.

Bloggers often set comments so that they will not appear until the blogger has had an opportunity to read and approve the comment first, so don’t be frustrated if you can’t see your comment on the blog right away.  This is a way to prevent spam from being posted on the blog.

Resources: Day 15: Commenting on Blogs

In particular, check out the student created list of success criteria for blog comments.

This screencast features the connecting by video work done on Tuesday night. Keep in mind that our final task for May will be creating a similar video where we ask you about “What is Your Next?”, and this will be our submission to the K12 Online Conference in 2015.

This screencast includes some brief learning about commenting on blogs.

Challenge: Take some time to read student blogs and make a valuable comment for their learning. Some examples can be found on Comments4Kids, Kathy Cassidy’s Class Blog, Karen Lirenman’s class, or ask on Twitter for some links to class blogs.

Then, take some time to read and comment on an educator blog.  Links can be found on both margins of this page.

David Jaremy: How Do We Interact With The Digital World?

What are you thinking about these days?  As we wind down 2014, we are following Tom Carroll’s lead and asking this question of our education leaders in Ontario.

OSSEMOOC has included links to educator blogs on this website so that they are easily accessible.

Today we are reading David Jaremy’s blog, where he writes about his first impressions of the book “The Digital Principal” by Janette Hughes and Anne Burke.

David writes about his thinking around the read-write web and how our ability (and, perhaps, our obligation) to contribute, changes the way we need to interact with our students.

How many of us have taken the time to think about this?

Where do we share our ideas around this shift?

His post reminded me of an example we used in our “30 Days of Getting Connected” Series.  Ira David Socol writes about how change is not new, but in the Web 1.0 days, change was happening at a different level, and was not as apparent to us.  Web 2.0, the read-write web, allows the ability to create and contribute, which results in change that impacts all of us.

For an excellent overview of Web 1.0 -> Web 2.0 -> Web 3.0 and its impact on learning and teaching, refer to the work of Dr. Jackie Gerstein here.

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives licence by Dr. Jackie Gerstein.

So how does the read-write web change our dynamics as a teacher?

We look forward to reading more of David Jaremy’s thinking and reading on this topic.  In the meantime, continue the conversation by leaving comments on his blog post here.

*David Jaremy is the Principal of Hornepayne Elementary and Secondary School, a JK-12 school in a small, Northern Ontario community!

Ten Minutes of Connecting: Day 15 – Commenting on Blogs

Welcome to Day 15 of “Couch to Connected“, the OSSEMOOC series for educators who need to become “connected leaders”.

You can access all of the previous postings by clicking on the links on the right side of this page.

By now, we hope you have discovered that the most important practice in becoming connected is dedicating time.  Connecting must become a habit – part of your daily routine.  We hope that by asking you to set aside 10 minutes each day in November to learn about connecting that you are beginning to establish that habit.

Of course, if you are just dedicating 10 minutes, you won’t be able to use all of the tools we have shared with you.  We hope that you have found some routines that are working for you, and that some of the tools help you to establish the beginning habits of connecting and curating.

While we will learn about more tools for connecting and curating as we work through this series, today we want to move on to an even more participatory aspect of being a connected leader.

Our plan for this series is to take you through several aspects of how you can thrive as a connected leader.  We are loosely working through these categories: Collecting Information, Connecting, Curating, Collaborating and Co-Learning, Creating and Remixing, Sharing.

We often ask our students to share their thinking and learning with a global audience through blogging, e-portfolios, voicethreads, youtube videos and other media.  How often do we model this practice ourselves?

When anyone makes their thinking and learning visible, it is very encouraging to know that there is an audience paying attention.  We can encourage these learners by taking the time to comment on their work.

Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution License by Matt Montagne.

 

Take a moment to look at how Heather Theijsmeijer is using blogs in her Physics class on Manitoulin Island.

The blog is located here.

Blog Link

Commenting on the work of other educators is always welcome too! Remember that this OSSEMOOC site links to Ontario education bloggers on both the left and right sides of the page.

Please take some time to read and comment on a blog today. Nurturing and encouraging others to keep sharing ensures that we all have a place to learn.

We encourage you to share with us the links to any blogs that could use more comments in the comments to this post.

Resources:

Teach Quality Commenting Skills (Edublogs)