I'm very pleased to announce the winners of the 31 Day Comment Challenge! They are: For the most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers)--A tie between Bonnie Kaplan and Claire Thompson. For the most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic-- Carla Arena For the comments that provoke and promote the most learning-- Kevin of Dogtrax. The student award--Taylor Each prize winner... Read more →

It's time for the final voting for the 4 winners in the Comment Challenge. The survey is here. Our generous co-sponsors, Cocomment and Edublogs agreed to support us in awarding prizes in four categories: The most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers) The most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic The comments that provoke and promote the most learning Student category... Read more →

Now that the 31 Day Comment Challenge has drawn to a close, it's time to nominate the winners in the four prize categories we announced at the beginning of the Challenge. As you'll recall, our generous co-sponsors, Cocomment and Edublogs agreed to support us in awarding prizes in four categories: The most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers) The most high quality comments that... Read more →

We've finally done it! We've reached the end of the 31 Days of the Comment Challenge! It's been a long, crazy month with a lot of activity and (hopefully) a lot of learning. For your final task, I want you to reflect on what you've learned in the last 31 days. What did you personally gain from the Challenge? What did you gain professionally? Is this something you'd do again?... Read more →

Now that we're winding down in the Comment Challenge, it's time for some reflection. For today's task, I want you to consider what you've learned about the give and take of commenting and how it might apply in a classroom. What lessons did you learn about what it means to "speak up" through comments that is applicable to working with students? What did you learn about how to deal with... Read more →

Most of the Challenge participants work in some kind of learning and education capacity, so today's task from Silvia Tolisano is geared toward helping your students be better commenters. Silvia suggests writing an age-appropriate guide to commenting. What goes into it is up to you. How you communicate it is up to you. You may want to play around with audio or video. You might want to try using VoiceThread.... Read more →

Yesterday we looked at how commenting can help us build our personal brand. Today, I want you to check out this article by Caroline Middlebrook on developing a blog commenting strategy. Do you think it's important to take a more strategic view of commenting and to have a plan for how you want to incorporate commenting into your overall online behavior? If so, what is your blog commenting strategy? Remember... Read more →

Online personal branding is becoming a big deal. The more active we are on the web, the more we communicate about who we are and what we do. Many of us may have considered that our blogs are a way of communicating about our "brand," but what about the comments we leave? Dauwd Miracle recounts an experience he had with comments as a form of personal branding. Take a look... Read more →

As many of us have discovered during the Challenge, written comments can sometimes be misconstrued or make it difficult for us to get our point across. Multimedia commenting, though, can address some of these issues. Today's task comes from Silvia Tolisano who asks us to think about other ways to comment on blogs. For example, Kate Foy and others have been playing around with video commenting using Seesmic. Here's a... Read more →

On Day 16, you had the chance to go back and catch up on something. Today, I don't even want you to do that. Consider today a day of total rest. No pressure to comment. No reason to do anything on your computer at all if you don't want to. Just relax. We'll be here when you get back. Read more →