always learning

Last year when I arrived at the International School Bangkok, I stepped into a fabulous new learning space we now call The Learning Hub:

Not only does it look amazing, but the concept of our Hub is to combine digital and traditional literacy into one flexible learning zone where students, teachers and parents alike can explore new ideas collaboratively or independently, as the need arises.

What I think is especially interesting about our space is actually not the physical structure (as beautiful as it is), but the staffing. We have envisioned a new partnership among our technology specialists, library specialists and literacy specialists. We like to call ourselves the ISB21 team:

All of us are working together to support our 21st Century teachers by co-planning and team teaching, focusing on learning outcomes and successful assessment design, brainstorming new ways of solving problems and leading consistent and flexible professional development programs.

Our resource team acts as a flexible unit capable of supporting a wide range of literacy needs - what one person may not know, another will jump in and share. Three support staff working together must be better than one, right?

We are currently in the process of refining our individual job descriptions, but no matter what changes, all three of our roles will always share some overlap, and we will consistently learn from one another:

• Technology and Learning Coordinator
• 21st Century Literacy Specialist
• Teacher Librarian

As a team, we have begun to offer professional development sessions three days a week after school. Each week is focused on a specific theme, but presented in different learning styles on each day. All sessions are walk-in/walk-out supported by all members of the ISB21 team:

Need help with a technical problem?  Want to spiff up a lesson?  Need help finding online resources to support your unit? Want to know what Web 2.0 means and how it can impact your teaching?  Want to collaborate with a global audience?  Looking for some SMART Board tips? Just want to know how to podcast?  Crop a photo? Download a video clip from YouTube?  You have a tech question; we have an answer (we hope).

The ISB21 team will station themselves in the Main Library classroom every Monday for any sort of tech question or help.  We can work individually or present something to a group.

PD tailor made for you.  You can’t beat this kind of personal attention.

Are you interested in talking about technology, the future and how both will impact education?  Wired Wednesdays are about that conversation. Come to these sessions to be immersed in progressive and current thinking about how teaching and learning is being redefined in a rapidly changing world and ISB’s plan to keep up.  These sessions will have a strong audio/video component so whether you want to get deep or just want to be edu-tained, these sessions are for you.

Entertaining and educational. The best way to spend your Wednesday afternoons.

Need hands on experience when learning a new tech tool? Want to be shown the highlights of the coolest new technology and have a chance to test it out yourself? Then this is the session for you! Each week we will share a new technology feature and give you a chance to try it out with our guidance. From blogging to digital video to social networking, this is the place to get your hands on the tech!

It’s time to test out the tech!

It seems as if there are others out there looking to reinvent the concept of a library and computer lab too. What do you think? Is this the future of literacy and learning? Or have we missed the boat? What else can we do to support our teachers as we work towards 21st century learning in all of our classrooms?

At the beginning of every school year, I’m reminded of how important it is to build collaborative relationships with teachers. As a resource person I believe the most crucial area of my relationship with teachers is becoming a true collaborative partner with classroom teachers - actually teaching together with them in the classroom, building on each others strengths and weaknesses and providing immediate support and modeling best practices for technology use in the classroom.

As as important as it is to meet with teachers for co-planning and technology training before a project starts (and we all know how much I love planning), in my experience even the world’s best planning can go awry without spending some quality time team-teaching in the classroom as a project is getting started. As anyone who’s ever used a tech lab or laptop cart knows, just when you’re ready to get something started, a dozen tech-related things will probably go wrong at once. Three students will think they know everything already and yet still do everything wrong, two students won’t be able to log in, one of the laptops won’t turn on, the projector won’t mirror displays, etc, etc - and everything is happening during the most critical part of the project, the beginning.

As a tech facilitator the last thing I want is for a teacher to have a bad experience because a few minor tech-mishaps occur during a lesson. And something will definitely happen, no matter how well-planned a lesson might be beforehand. For those teachers who are inexperienced, nervous or hesitant about technology, there’s a level of comfort that is difficult to attain just by planning something together and sending the teacher off on their own. It’s to be expected that some teachers won’t feel comfortable with certain kinds of technology projects unless they have in-class support, and one of my favorite things to do is to show those teachers just how successful a project can be with proper support.

My interest in working together in the classroom with teachers is not just a matter of providing moral support. I’ve done all different types of projects with teachers and students (from just giving hints and tips, to coaching on the side, to full blown collaboration), and can honestly say that when I have the time and permission to go into the teacher’s classroom and work with the teachers and students on the project, I have always seen tangible benefits in several major areas:

Flexibility

As every teacher knows, lesson plans need to be modified while a unit is actually in progress based on where students are in their understanding. Sometimes a little on-site fine-tuning is all that’s needed to turn an untried plan into a great success, and other times huge chunks of curriculum have to be turned inside-out at the last minute to avoid complete disaster. This process can be time-consuming and nerve-wracking enough when a project is within a teacher’s comfort area, but when ever-changing, unfamiliar and sometimes-intimidating technology is involved, many teachers simply aren’t able to make the necessary modifications on the day. When tech projects are involved, this can lead to undifferentiated, rigid projects which leave some learners behind, or worse, promisingly planned projects that mysteriously take far too long to get underway, or which cause too many technical headaches, and are then abandoned before they achieve their goals.

With a tech facilitator is on hand as a true collaborating partner from beginning to end, projects can be far more flexible, and teachers are able to appropriately modify the project as it’s being implemented. Experienced and ready tech-savvy students can be identified and teams of student-led support infrastructure can be built, struggling students can get the modifications they need, and pacing can be adjusted as each day goes by. This approach creates a feedback loop that leads to smoother-running projects and even more appropriate future projects. By getting immediate student and teacher response data via experiencing the project firsthand, tech facilitators can better coordinate a cycle of continuously improving project approaches, which in turn would eventually decrease the number of unknown variables and problems teachers would need to deal with on the spot, lowering anxiety and increasing success.

Support

It is so exciting to see teachers ready to run with an engaging technology-rich project, but the first time (or just the first time with a new class or a new tool) can also be nerve-wracking for the teacher - what if something goes wrong, what if the kids don’t know how to do something we thought they did, what if kids are off task and not listening? Having someone co-teaching in the classroom as a partner can alleviate most of this stress, help the teacher feel more comfortable and offer the type of support I know I wish I had the first time I tried using technology in the classroom. We often talk about collaboration in education, but how often do we actually have two teachers working in the same room, one with one set of skills and experience, the other with a different set - perfectly complementing each other and supporting (and modeling) the learning process for both teachers and students?

Class Dynamics and Management

Having had the opportunity to work with many different teachers over the years, it is very interesting to see how significant a role class dynamics can play in the implementation of any given project. The same project can be a dream in one classroom and a nightmare in the other - just based on the way the students and teachers interact, personalities, and established behavior patterns - and there’s no way to know what that really looks like aside from seeing it yourself.

On top of the attitudes and behaviors in any given classroom, classroom management with any kind of technology, especially laptops, can be a challenge for teachers. There are many little tips and tricks that I’ve developed from constantly working with students using technology. Similarly, each classroom teacher usually has dozens of subtle ways they interact with their class which an outsider might miss. Unless the tech facilitator has some time to see the students in action, and model appropriate classroom management in tandem with the classroom teacher, the easiest, most engaging tech-rich project could go off the rails.

So, while it can tempting to design technology projects on paper and send them off into the world on their own, I’ve found that I feel much more effective, reflective and flexible if I can actually be on-hand in the classroom while the projects are underway. Of course, this means that schools need a manageable facilitator-to-student ratio, time for the facilitator to co-plan and co-teach, and a willingness and openness on the teacher’s part to allow another teacher into the classroom.

These are just my top three support areas, what are other key ways you ensure your teachers receive the support they need to have success with technology?

After nice, long, relaxing summer of traveling, spending quality time with family and friends, and lots of excellent eating (all essential qualities for the perfect summer, in my opinion), I am definitely ready to start another exciting school year! And lucky for me, it’s already shaping up to be totally amazing…

I’m so excited to be back because, among other things, I have some fantastic new colleagues:

Jeff Utecht is our new ES Technology and Learning Coordinator, Tara Ethridge is our new ES Librarian, Chrissy Hellyer just signed on to teach grade five and Chad Bates is our new MS Technology and Learning Coordinator. It’s hard to believe I could actually be so fortunate to work with these superstars every single day!

It’s also refreshing (and so much less stressful) to be coming back to ISB for the second year. As much as I love international school teaching, the first year in a new place is always overwhelming - new city, new school, new home, new students, new language, the list goes on and on. While I truly love the daily adventure of living and working overseas, it really does take a whole year to feel like you actually understand the intricacies of a new job, let alone life in a new country.

Returning for the second year also gives me the opportunity to refocus my priorities. As much as I enjoyed my year last year, and as happy as I am with the work I did, the summer holidays gave me time to reflect on exactly how I worked. Although it may seem strange, what I want to focus on this year actually has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with my work process. Instead of focusing on the number or type of projects as a goal for the year, I would like to refine, improve and streamline the way I get my job done.

With that in mind, I’m definitely coming back to ISB with new priorities:

Focus: I think we all know what it’s like to get caught up in one problem after another throughout the day - constantly feeling like all we’re doing is putting out fires instead of taking time for planning, organizing and putting in place thoughtful infrastructure and systems. At the end of the school year, I was exhausted and I’m realizing that, in order to be more productive in an efficient way, I need to make an effort to be more deliberate, to focus on what’s genuinely important (rather than just what seems to be urgent). To help remind me, I’ll be posting Steven Covey’s time management matrix on the wall right above my work space.

Simplify: Along those lines, I want to keep things simple - start projects off small, and build, if all goes well to help ease teachers into working with technology. After having so much success with the super simple Blog Pals project in third grade last year, I’m realizing that trimming major ideas down to just the basics not only makes things easier to manage, but also helps build teacher understanding about how and why these types of experiences are important to students. The simpler the start, the easier it is for teachers to take a risk and try something new, and the more positive experiences they have with technology, the more risks they’ll be willing to take.

Connect: With an ES staff of over 70, it was impossible to complete a project with every single teacher last year, which means there are quite a few teachers I didn’t work with at all. This year I want to make sure I not only continue building relationships with the teachers I worked with last year, but also to connect with those I missed. I would love to be able to bring together the more experienced teachers with those that have never tried a technology rich project before. It’s always amazing to see the wealth of experience and expertise within schools that often goes untapped. Hopefully, by building connections and relationships between teachers we will see more sharing of ideas, collaboration and the successful spread of quality learning with technology.

Of course, I can already tell that saying I’m going to slow down will be a lot easier than actually doing it. Even after just one week of school, there are already so many events in the pipeline that I think this year may end up being even busier than the last.

First up, I’ll be presenting 3 sessions at Learning 2.008 in Shanghai mid September, then I get the privilege of developing a presentation with the amazing Jennifer Wagner for the K12 Online conference in October, next, if I can possibly manage it, I’d love to develop a presentation for the Mobilize This! online conference later in October, plus I’m already gearing up to head back to Doha for another consulting trip to Qatar Academy thanks to the wonderful Julie Lindsay. And, of course that doesn’t count the friends that are (as usual) lining up for a visit to tropical Thailand sans hotel fees.

Slow down? Focus? Simplify? Phew! I’m already exhausted and it’s only the end of week one!

Phew! Time flies when you’re busy! It’s hard to believe we’re on week three of summer holidays already and our first trip back to Germany since we last lived in Munich three years ago is already over. Clearly I’m going to be doing very little writing over the next six weeks or so (not so unusual for summer break for me - once I slow down, I really slow down).

This summer is especially busy with our trip to Munich, a few weeks in Connecticut with my family, a few weeks in Oregon with my husband’s family, then back to CT for another week so Alex can take a Praxis exam for his English teacher’s certification, before we head back to Bangkok at the end of July. I guess I lost my mind for a few minutes there when I was booking all those flights. The price you pay for living internationally - the cost, time and effort to visit all relatives must be borne by those residing outside of the country.

Sadly, with all this traveling to and fro across our rather large country, I am not going to be attending NECC this year (actually, I’ve never been!). But somehow, thanks to the wonderful Carolyn Foote, I will be presenting (remotely, of course) at a panel session with the brilliant minds of Carolyn, Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, Diane Cordell, Judy O’Connell, and Anita Beaman.

In all honesty, I’m not even sure I’m qualified to be on a panel with these amazing ladies, but I’m so happy to be able to offer a brief (seven minutes to be exact) video introduction to the process of developing our 21st Century Literacy program at ISB. Just in case you’re interested, and you’re not going to be at NECC, check it out here:

Of course all the information shared in the video is the result of the work of our fantastic ISB21 team: Justin Medved, Dennis Harter, Rob Rubis, Ida Kesley and myself. It’s hard to believe that we’ll have two new members to our awesome team come August: Jeff Utecht and Chad Bates. Does it get any better than that?

And, that just might be all the school-related thinking I’m going to do this summer…

I just had a fantastic meeting with two of our wonderful grade 5 teachers, Sandra and Diane, to brainstorm ways to naturally embed 21st century literacy skills into our (Lucy Caulkins) Readers’ Workshop (RW) units of study for next school year (Reading is a school focus for next year). The grade 5 team is looking for easy ways to promote student discussion about reading strategies and to deepen their conversations about the content they are learning while they’re reading.

Here’s what we came up with (and I would love to hear feedback):

The grade 5 students will create a Students Teaching Students podcast focused on helping other students learn and use quality strategies for reading. This is an educational podcast teaching other students how to become good readers using RW strategies that they learn over the course of the year.

This strand will continue throughout the whole school year with different sections of grade 5 (we have 7 grade 5 classes) leading different units of RW. All podcasts can be uploaded onto a common 5th grade reading-focused blog and added to iTunes for parents and other teachers to subscribe. The podcasts can also be shared with the 4th and 3rd grades so we have a built-in authentic audience (and we help vertical articulation too!). The project will be started with our first RW unit and continue throughout the year.

To allow for new teachers (we will have 4 new grade 5 teachers next year) to get comfortable with the process, we can differentiate: some classes can start with just listening to the podcasts, then when ready, students come in as “guest stars/speakers” on the “show,” eventually we can have many facilitators from all classes.

The project can be broken into 3 stages:

Stage 1: Focus on strategies.

Students Teaching Students podcast begins with 1 or 2 of our grade 5 classes to develop strong student facilitators and provide a model for good student-produced podcasts at ISB. The first stage is to focus on what strategies they are learning in RW and teach other students how the strategies help them become good readers. This can be a regular, short, podcast focusing on the critical aspects of RW they learn each week - the podcast station can be set up as a “center” in the classroom.

Stage 2: Focus on the content being learned in RW.

Have “guest stars/speakers” from other classrooms on the “show” to talk about the content they are reading and how they use different strategies to learn through reading. Student facilitators from the first two participating classes will lead these discussions on a weekly basis.

For this to work well, we will need to develop common prompts, thinking strategies and questions so that students will have a “handbook” for excellent podcasts. Eventually this could be entirely managed by students.

Stage 3: Focus on building excitement about reading.

Add book talks, book reviews, etc, using these same tools (or perhaps VoiceThread and other tools) to deepen learning about content, to make connections to other student readers, and to share more about what we’re reading. Start regularly connecting with students in other schools around the world to discuss and improve reading skills and strategies.

What do you think? How can we make this idea even better? Has this already been done (which would give me a great model to start from)? All feedback appreciated!

This year I’ve been fortunate to meet many of my edublogger friends in person. It started with Learning 2.0 where I got to meet Jeff Utecht, Clay Burell, Wes Fryer, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson (and I also was fortunate to spend lots of time with Susan Sedro, who I had met the year before for the first time); continued to my trip to Doha, Qatar where I got to meet Julie Lindsay; and finally followed me right back home to Bangkok where the wonderful Chrissy Hellyer stayed with us for just under a week (and this doesn’t even begin to include all the other amazing educators I was so fortunate to meet - and now consider my friends - on all these occasions).

As I’m sure many of you would agree, in my experience meeting an online acquaintance in person is exciting, but not surprising.

When I opened the door to see Chrissy, it was like an old friend coming to visit - not some stranger I was meeting for the first time. As Chrissy said, it was my first time meeting her “body,” but we were already good friends from our online conversations. Our f2f conversations simply continued from the last time we spoke - via Skype. In fact, what truly amazes me, is that often my “online friends” know more about what’s going on in my life than my “physical” friends and family.

Being constantly connected means that when Chrissy and I met for the first time I actually knew more about what was “going on” with her than I did when my oldest friend from high school, Martine, showed up for her visit the following weekend. Not that I don’t keep in touch with Martine - we e-mail regularly, occasionally have a phone or Skype call, and we always spend time together when we’re in the same country (not so easy when she lives in England and I’m in Thailand) - but it’s not the same regular, consistent communication I have with my network (almost all of whom definitely do not live in Thailand).

I have to admit, I’ve almost started getting a little irritated with my friends and family that aren’t online with any regularity. They miss the photos I share (unless I send them a direct e-mail or remind them by phone), they don’t get my in-depth vacation recaps from my personal blog until I come home for the summer and do my annual slideshow, and they certainly don’t get the inside scoop on my daily life here in Bangkok because by the time I get home for summer holidays I have to rush through all the stories in whatever limited time I have (and usually I have to tell them over and over again as I go from city to city visiting - by the end of the summer most of my interesting stories have really lost their luster).

So I guess what really surprises me is how so many other people react when I tell them that I’m meeting an old friend for the first time. The confused, somewhat awkward look on their face - clearly not sure exactly what to say. How can you be old friends if you’ve never met? I know they’re thinking, but they’re always too polite to say anything.

When I really take a minute to think about it, though, those virtual friends are actually far more in tune with my life than so many of my “old” friends and family. They all know when I’ve been home sick, or when I’m traveling, or what’s new and exciting in Bangkok. And when they show up at my door, or wave from across the conference hall, or show me around their school, it’s like we’ve been friends and colleagues for ages.

A couple of thoughts about this paradox of virtual friendship spring to mind:

First, because of this and other online-connection experiences I’ve had over the last two years or so, I think I’m beginning to understand the sorts of networks that students and teenagers are creating when they SMS each other every five minutes, or use the library computers to go on Facebook - behaviors which often frustrate and irritate teachers and parents. They’re not necessarily just goofing off - they’re creating, maintaining and enlarging their own personal networks of people who genuinely wish them well and provide them with emotional support.

Second, the old argument against technology being “impersonal” or alienating, that it creates drones who stare in loneliness at separate screens instead of engaging in healthy human interaction, is looking even less likely than it ever did. Whenever humans invent a seemingly “impersonal” new form of technology - whether it be the written word, the telephone, or the computer - we always seem to quickly find ways to use that “impersonal” technology to bring us all closer together. And that’s a very encouraging thought.

What do you think? How do your “virtual friendships” compare to the “real-life” version?

Wow! It’s hard to believe the Comment Challenge is almost half-over! The past week has been insanely busy with our move downtown and three sets of friends arriving in Bangkok back-to-back. It’s been an absolute pleasure to host our guests (including the wonderful Susan Sedro and Chrissy Hellyer) in our lovely new apartment, but having so much going on means that I haven’t been as active in the Comment Challenge as I wanted to be. Thankfully, things are finally starting to return back to normal, so I’ll play a little “catch-up” here and then get back into the swing of things!

I’m taking Sue’s advice and posting my consolidated reflections from the first ten days here:

Day 1: Do a Commenting Self-Audit

My Committing to Conversations post fits nicely under this task, though I did like Michele’s question/idea about commenting on at least one new blog each week. When I comment, I tend to do so almost exclusively on the blogs in my reader, which means I’m more likely to comment on the same blogs each week, but I love the idea of making a concentrated effort to comment on one new blog each week. This will help me open up to more diverse conversations and certainly give me incentive to comment more frequently. I will definitely be adding that tidbit to my commenting habits in the future.

Generally speaking, when I do take the time to comment, I think I do a pretty good job, according to Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments. Honestly, I think it’s the pressure to make sure my comments are worthwhile that leads to my lack of commenting in the first place. Maybe I need to be more cavalier about the whole thing to begin with!

Day 2: Comment on a Blog You’ve Never Commented on Before

I’ve been enjoying leaving comments on new blogs for the duration of the challenge. I’ve been going up and down the list of participants and leaving comments on as many blogs as I can and it’s been amazing to see the learning that’s already taking place and to find new bloggers to add to my RSS reader. I am also thrilled to see all the video tours of this learning journey that other’s have taken the time to share - what a great way to document this adventure!

Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

I like these easy ones! I’m signed up on coComment and co.mments.

Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

I have to admit, I don’t have a problem asking a question in a blog comment, my problem is remembering to go back and see if there’s an answer. My favorite bloggers usually write an e-mail back with the answer from their perspective, but the real point of this challenge is to start open conversations with all commenters on a single post. Which means I need to make better use of my coComment account.

Day 5: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With

Generally speaking, I would say I’m a gentle disagreer. Even though my comment may challenge the ideas in the post, I usually try to be as delicate as possible, often asking questions rather than stating an out-and-out “I disagree.” Maybe the purpose of this activity was to be a little more forthright, but I still used my slightly less aggressive way and ended up starting some good dialog. I think the more angry or opinionated you are, the more chance you have of closing off the conversation entirely - and that seems to be the exact opposite of what we’re trying to encourage here.

I must admit that I tend to read the blogs of like-minded people, which means I am much more likely to agree with a post than disagree. Usually if I find myself disagreeing, I’ll pose some questions as comments and see what develops. Of course, I’m just as likely to forget I posted those questions in the end anyway, so unless the blogger e-mails me back, the whole “conversation” bit is a lost cause with me. Clearly, I need to work on my comment tracking habits. Just because I use the coComment extension doesn’t mean I have a habit of going back to those comments I tracked.

Day 6: Engage another Commenter in Discussion

Thanks to Twitter for the @name evolution of replying to comments. I love being able to look down a long list of comments and trace the conversations back and forth. It’s especially interesting to see how readers can develop their own conversation on a blog post - even without the author’s facilitation, thanks to the clear @name response practice. For me, this means I need to be better at following up on comments to see if there are responses to something I said. Hmm… can you see a trend here?

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

So, I’m about three days late on this one… better late than never, right? Either way, I think it’s pretty obvious that I need to actually utilize my coComment account for it’s intended purpose - tracking conversations. Clearly I’m all to likely to forget I’ve started a conversation, which pretty much invalidates the whole point of commenting in the first place.

I’ve started a new folder in my Google Reader for items I’m “tracking.” In there I have my coComment and co.mment RSS. Now I just need to develop a routine of checking every morning and responding to any responses that might have been posted. It’s all about routine for me.

Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche

There are a few tech related blogs that I read on a regular basis, and although I very rarely comment, I am often amazed at the sometimes rude or angry tone that commenters take. I think there’s definitely a more welcoming, thoughtful, and supportive environment prevailing among edubloggers. Of course, that’s not to say that all edubloggers are supportive, there are certainly a few I can think of off the top of my head that seem to enjoy enraging the authors of the posts they read, but for the most part, we seem to be very careful to model good commenting practice, even in our personal blogging experience. It definitely makes me more likely to comment on educational blogs than some of the others I read.

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

I think this is a personal decision. Blogging helps me think, work through ideas, formalize my thoughts, and connect my learning. For me, commenting enhances all of those things, so there is no blogging without commenting for me. When I take the time to comment on other people’s blogs I deepen my learning, question my thinking, and open my mind to new ideas. When other people take the time to comment on my blog I learn something new, have a chance to refine my ideas and connect with other learners. Taking any of those pieces away in favor of only hearing the author’s voice in isolation just seems like a virtual soapbox to me.

There are lots of other places online to start conversations from Twitter to Ning, but there is something special about blogging. It feels more personal, like the author’s “home” on the web - this is the place where we can go to learn more about the many thoughts of the author - not just one specific thread on a forum. I enjoy “getting to know” a new blogger through their previous posts and responses to comments.

Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog

After reading Michele’s post entitled: 6 Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog, I think I’m doing reasonably OK in welcoming comments on this blog. I think I have a tendency to write more posts with “finished” thoughts than “unfinished,” which most likely lessens the number of comments I could get, but I think that’s more an indicator of my personality than a conscious decision. I usually take a long time to process information and am hesitant to write anything down until I’m done, which in essence can appear to be more “finished” than I might actually be. It would be nice to write more open-ended/”unfinished” posts to encourage more dialog here, and that would be a real challenge for me!

What do you think? Am I a “welcoming” blogger? Or do I sound like I’m not interested in your ideas? I certainly hope my posts don’t sound like press releases! I’d love to hear your feedback about what I can do to make my blog a more welcoming place!

Tags: comment08, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen,

As much as I would like to post all of the activities day by day here on Always Learning, we are just about to move into our fantastic new apartment in downtown Bangkok (we currently live out by the school in the suburbs of the city), and I have no idea when my internet will be up and running at home (this is Thailand after all - it could take 3 days, or 3 weeks, you just never know).

So, at least for the next few days, please look for the Comment Challenge activities on the wiki or on Michele’s blog (and what an awesome list of activities it is!). Thank you so much Michele, for organizing these tasks!

Also, a few participation howtos:

• If you’re still wondering how to track comments, Sue has a great post to get you started.
• In order to add your posts to the Comment Challenge conversations, check out Silvia’s post on adding Technorati tags.
• For those new to commenting, Silvia also has a great post on the logistics of adding (and tracking) a comment.
• If you’re interested in participating in the Comment Challenge with your class, check out the Student Groups page - there are tons of partners already ready and waiting for you!
• If you’re like me, and you know you may not be able to post a reflection for each day of the challenge (for whatever reason), Sue proposes reflecting on a weekly basis and synthesizing your learning in one post for the whole week (which sounds very good to me right now).

Alright, now it’s time for some commenting before my enforced online hiatus begins! Pictures of the new place as soon as we’re back online!

Tags: comment08, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen,

Cross posted from The Bamboo Project and the Challenge wiki. If you have ideas for challenge activities, please post those on the Activities page here.

Day 1: Do a Commenting Self-Audit

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. So to kick off the 31 days of activities we’re going to start with a commenting self-audit. You can use this to get a better picture of your blog commenting skills and strategies.

For this activity, do the following:

1. 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?

2. Now review Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments and ask yourself how well you’re doing in each of the different areas. Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?

If you’d like, it would be great if you blogged about your comment audit to share what you’ve learned about yourself and your commenting behaviors. Be sure to tag your post with “comment08.”

Tags: comment08, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen,

The Comment Challenge begins tomorrow!

A few exciting bits of news before we get on to the prizes and awards:

• The Comment Challenge is great for your classroom too! We have several classrooms signed up to participate with their students and there are already tons of ideas for classroom activities posted. Please feel free to add more!
• We have added a common tag (comment08) for the Comment Challenge so that all posts will be collected (via RSS) and shared on the Comment08 page of the wiki. Please use this tag when posting about the challenge so we can be sure to read and comment on your post!
• The RSS feed for the coComment group “Comment Challenge” is already working and posted on the Conversations page of the wiki! Please follow the steps to participate so that your comments show up on the RSS feed as well.
• We have lots of activities already listed for participants, please feel free to add more!

And now on to the prizes & awards:

First of all, it is important to note that these prizes are not intended to be a monetary incentive to participate in this challenge. We would hope that the prize for participation is becoming a better blog citizen.

During the 31 Days to a Better Blog (which this Challenge was modeled after) the prizes actually ended up going to students/schools (in that case, they went to the Mini-Legends). We are hoping that this group of participants will make the same decision to share the prizes with those that will value them most.

We are so pleased to announce the wonderful generosity of coComment and Edublogs who will provide the prizes:

• From coComment: US$100 to the winner in each of the four categories (fourth category to be decided - we need your input!)
• From Edublogs: US$50 in credits to the winner in each of the four categories

We hope that these prizes can provide teachers, classrooms, students and/or non-profits with the support they need to implement a quality blogging program.

In addition to these fabulous prizes, the wonderful Scott McLeod has also generously shared his fantastic Comment Award blog badge for all of the winners of this competition.

Please feel free to add your ideas and suggestions to the wiki, or let Sue, Silvia, Michele or me know! We kick start the Comment Challenge tomorrow (May 1st 2008)!

Tags: comment08, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin, Scott McLeod, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen, cocomment, edublogs