Mobile Technology in TAFE

Sorry still trying to catch up on the Comment Challenge!

While I’ve written my reflections for the Challenge for Day 1 - 10 on the same day I’ve broken it into two posts to make it more readable.

Day 5: Comment on a Post You Disagree With

Michele’s tasks for Day 5 was to comment on a post I disagree with.

Most Challenge participants haven’t enjoyed commenting on posts they disagree on. I think this is a reflection of human nature that we don’t like to be disagreeable in a public setting — most of us don’t like to rock the boat.

Ok, I have been know to be pedantic and outspoken (I rather not say disagreeable).  So it wasn’t hard to find a post were I had be a tad disagreeable.

1. What happened as a result of you disagreeing with the blogger?

Tony Karrer is well known in corporate elearning and his posts (Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results and Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation) were in response to David Warlick’s Reaching Out With Your Conference. Tony questions the value of social networking tools because of low participation rates in conference attendees using them.

I was a bit outspoken (as were others) as I’ve seen social networking tools like Skype, Twitter, Ustream opening up conferences to global participants. Results were:

• Tony did an excellent job interacting with the commenters.
• We both expanded our conversation using Elluminate — I showed him how educators are using the tools and Tony told me more about the corporate sector.
• Tony has even joined twitter now (that’s weird somehow my twitter account unfollowed him by itself — I’ve fixed it now).

2. What do you usually do if you find a post with which you disagree?

I prefer not to be too disagreeable in public, so if I totally disagree I may move on without leaving a comment. If I do disagree and leave a comment I try to explain my position and ask questions to understand their position more.

3. How do you feel if people post comments where they disagree with you?

No issue because most let me know that I’ve made a mistake (which helps with my learning) or explain their position to give me insight into how they feel.

Progress = Completed

Day 6: Engage Another Commenter in Discussion

Michele’s task for Day 6 is to engage another commenter in discussion because as Michele says “Conversations can become richer, though, if we also respond to other commenters”. 

Yep I do this (sometimes too much). If you read comments on Tony’s posts Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results and Reframing Conference Social Tool Participation you will see this in action.

Mmmm Brent feeling definitely neglected re-twitter (ROFL)

Progress = Completed

Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned So Far

Michele’s task for Day 7 is to reflect what I’ve learned so far.  I’m pleased that this was one task I completed on time and here’s my response — Online Participation, Commenting and The Comment Challenge.

Progress = Completed

Day 8: Comment on a Blog Outside of Your Core Niche

Michele asked us to comment on a blog outside of our core niche as our Task for Day 8 but I’d argue that I already do it. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Progress = Completed

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

Michele’s Task for Day 9 was to reflect on the value of commenting on blog posts compared to writing posts in response.

Some bloggers disable comments preventing readers from adding their comments to the post as they would rather their readers respond by writing their own posts. The most important aspect of blogging for me is the conversations. My belief is disabling comments limits conversations (like going to a conference presentation and not being allowed to ask questions).

It’s definitely better to build community through a combination comments and conversations occurring across blogs (i.e. respond to ideas by writing our own posts). I use a mixture of both but am more likely to write comments than a post since posts take considerably longer to write and comments are easier for other readers to follow the conversation.

Progress = Completed

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

Michele’s task for Day 10 was to do a comment audit on my Blogs. I think I’m doing an OK job building a sense of community on my blogs that invites people to leave comments.

What I will say is I feel some bloggers have conflicted emotions about comments on their own blogs. Partly probably because they 1) feel others may judge a blog’s success on the level of commenting 2) know new bloggers become despondent and stop blogging due to lack of comments 3) feel worrying about whether people will comment on their posts impacts on their writing.

My response to their concerns:

• Don’t worry what others think — we all judge our own success using different measures.
• Don’t give up blogging because of lack of comments (I hardly had any the first few months I was a blogger). It takes time (and work) to build your blog’s community. It helps to learn to be a more effective blogger and learn about community building.
• If you are blogging as part of your personal learning — comments and interacting with your commenters means your learning will be greater than what you gain by writing blog posts.

Progress = Completed

FINAL THOUGHTS

There’s still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge! Just go across to Michele Martin’s blog to get started with the tasks and add your name to our participants page.

Remember to follow our tagging recommendations for the Challenge.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

Oh dear! I’m way behind in recording my reflections from the Comment Challenge so it’s time to play catch-up (apologies for the long post).

But before I do I liked to thank Michele Martin for the excellent daily tasks she has created. Thanks Michele (you’re amazing)!

Day 1: Do a Comment Self Audit

Michele’s task for Day 1 is to do a Comment Self Audit of my own commenting practices.

1. How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? — Lets just say I’m a prolific commenter
2. Do you track your blog comments? — I use both cocomment and co.mment which feed into my Google Reader using their RSS feed. Means I can rapidly respond to new comments on other people’s blogs if I choose.
3. Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?– Always visiting new blogs

While I think Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments is good I don’t agree with all her tips — unfortunately to explain why would need a blog post. However Betty Gilgoff in her Day 1 reflections suggests Gina’s guide “would actually be a good resource for students when setting up blogging with a group”– which I think is an excellent idea (with some modifications).

Do you use a Guide to Blog Comments with your students? If so, can you share the link for us to check out?

Progress = Completed

Day 2: Comment on a New Blog

Michele’s task for Day 2 is to do a comment on a new blog (which I do all the time).

I try my best to visit and leave comments on:

• Blogs of readers who leave comments on my blogs
• Blogs that link to my blogs

While this is good practice for building a blog community, my main reasons are to thank the person and support new bloggers.

Progress = Completed

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

On Day 3 Michele set us the task of signing up for a comment tracking service. As Michele says “To really engage in conversations through blog commenting, you need to develop some effective strategies for managing the comments you make on other blogs. A comment tracking service is a great solution.”

Cammie Bean introduced me to tracking comments, using Co-mment, during the 31 Days To Build A Better Blog last year when I complained that leaving comments on other peoples blogs frustrated me because it was too hard (time consuming) to know if the blogger responded. I now also use cocomment because its excellent for community building and tagging (here’s my post on how to use cocomment).

Progress = Completed

Day 4: Ask a Question

Michele’s task for Day 4 is to ask a Question as she says “One of the most powerful conversation starters is to ask a question. It’s one of the best ways to engage the blogger and other commenters in further discussion.” Whenever appropriate I ask open-ended and thought provoking questions for the reasons Michele highlights.

Don’t get disappointed if the blogger and other commenters doesn’t respond back — unfortunately not all bloggers respond back to comments on their posts and not all commenters using comment tracking tools. But when they do you see some amazing conversations happen.

Progress = Completed

FINAL THOUGHTS

There’s still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge! Just go across to Michele Martin’s blog to get started with the tasks and add your name to our participants page.

Remember to follow our tagging recommendations for the Challenge.

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!

What an amazing week! Last month working with Kim Cofino, Silvia Tolisano and Michele Martin we created the concept of the Comment Challenge which started this month.

Why the Comment Challenge

I knew from personal experience that commenting on blogs is a crucial aspect of blogging conversations for achieving the greatest learning. Trouble is factors often limit people’s commenting practices so they don’t experience this learning and fail to appreciate it’s value.

Kim Cofino, Silvia Tolisano, Michele Martin and I hoped a challenge that involved a month of focused commenting would help participants appreciate it’s importance and the benefits of learning as a community.

Comment Challenge Progress

The Challenge started on May 1 with Michele Martin posting tasks daily. The number of participants is still increasing and currently there are 116 adult participants and 12 Student groups (over 200 students).

You can check out the latest posts by participants on this page of the Comment Challenge wiki or comments by participants here! Much of my time this week has been making sure it is all happening by visiting participant’s posts to check out their progress and leave encouragement, troubleshooting challenges of technorati and fine tuning the wiki.

The behind the scenes tasks have left me little time to write my own reflections so I thought today I would play catch up using Comment Challenge Day 7: Reflect on What You’ve Learned So Far but reflect the three lessons I’ve learned from my experiences so far in terms of being a coordinator of the Challenge.

#1 Commenting & Participation in Online Communities

It didn’t surprise to me that many participants response to “How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?” was rarely. Concerns of saying the wrong thing or feeling their comments mightn’t be worthy were the main factors why they rarely commented. This surprised me because I assumed time was the main issue since majority are bloggers and use twitter.

It does have me thinking more about online communities user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute)
• 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time
• 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs

And Derek Wenmoth’s The Four C’s of Participation in Online Communities:

The 4 Cs are an attempt to illustrate the fact that most people appear to operate predominantly in one or other of the phases in their journey to becoming online citizens, and that there is some sort of progression that characterises this growth.

Below is Derek Wenmoth’s diagram that highlights the progression through the phases. Take the time to read his post to obtain a clear understanding of his thoughts (click on this link to view the larger version of the diagram).

I’ve always considered the implications of both online communities user participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule and Derek Wenmoth’s The Four C’s of Participation in Online Communities when using social networking tools with students and educators. Time constraints and not being a contributer (i.e. since majority blog, use range of social network tools and twitter) aren’t the barriers to why people don’t comment more.

Lots of food for thought with no answers but definitely a greater understanding, after 7 days of observations, of why people do/don’t comment on blogs.

#2 Technorati Continues To Mock Me

With over 100 adult participants and 12 student groups (over 200 students) , combined with the desire to encourage the community aspect, an RSS feed from Technorati was the easiest method for helping participants easily find each other and interact (we have the feed coming into our wiki). Best way to do this is to agree on a common tag term prior to the event.

Mistake #1 - Make sure the tag term is unique!

(DUH Sue!) I should have done a technorati basic search for the tag term comment08 because unfortunately test comments from cocomment’s blog were picked up with this search term.

Mistake #2 - Test Technorati easily picks up the tags prior to starting such a large project

After quite a bit of research over the weekend I discovered that technorati wasn’t picking up posts unless:

• Participants had joined and claimed their blog’s at Technorati
• Technorati hasn’t been pinging their blog (some of the blogs hadn’t been pinged for 90 days which meant we weren’t seeing any of the posts they were writing)

Also I discovered we had to refine the Technorati tag search to ensure it found all posts.

If we had known all this prior we could have given more detailed instructions to participants on how to tag (for each of the different blogging platforms) and for ensuring their tags were picked up by technorati.

Better late than never — Here’s my instructions for participants on using technorati.

#3 Community Learning Happens When Encouraged

True I did know this but have been pleasantly surprised, with the right circumstances, how rapidly this can develop considering it has only been 8 days. It’s impossible for me to showcase all the examples however I think what happening with video and video commenting — and the increased connections as a results — is pretty cool.

Kate Foy’s set up a Flickr Group and being using Seesmic to create video posts and use it for readers leave video comments. Greg’s being debating the pros and cons of video commenting. Kevin’s did a video tour of blogs he visited which inspired Silvia to create a video to summarise what she has learnt in the past 7 days.  Apologies I’m sure there are more videos (please let me know any I have missed).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Still time for you to join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge — just add your name to the participants page. It’s okay to combine several tasks and do in one day .

Would love to hear about the connections you are making, and the community learning that is happening, as a result of the Challenge.  Also your thoughts on online participation and commenting (and off course how you are going ).

And if you’re enjoying this blog, please consider Subscribing for free!