This is the last day of the comment challenge (for me anyways, the real last day was yesterday).  I’m glad that I participated in the challenge because I gained confidence.  I’m no longer feel too scared or too shy to leave a comment on a post I find interested.  Also, I found some blogs and resources that I doubt I would have found any other way.  I would definitely participate in a challenge like this again, though I think I’d lose interest if I had to complete the exact same challenges again.  I’d like to thank everyone who visited, and especially those who left a comment during this challenge.  I’d also like to thank the organizers of and other participants in the 31 day comment challenge.  Thanks for making this learning opportunity possible.  Finally, the top five things I learned from the comment challenge:

• There are many tools available for people interested in alternative forms of commenting.
• I currently have a weak personal brand.
• I shouldn’t restrict myself to English-only information.
• It is good to speak up.
• People are listening.

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 things like dissent, asking questions, communication, etc. through this process that might influence your teaching practices, either on or off-line?

Completing comment challenges required active participation.  Instead of scanning blogs and quickly moving onto the next one, I had to read a little more carefully, search for a conversation that would meet the requirements for a particular challenge.  As a result of this 31-day challenge, I’m thinking of creating  challenges for my students that would require them to participate in class discussion (online and off) at the same level of engagement.  I’ll have to ruminate for a while before I know exactly what I want to challenge students to do.  Any suggestions?

This challenge comes at an interesting time for me, since I am moving to Virginia in about five weeks and am in the beginning stages of a job search.  This challenge made me think about the quality and quantity of information about me available to potential employers via the Internet.

To examine the quality of information, I googled my name.  I’m not in the #1 spot, but I do make the first page.  The information that currently show up is scant, but at least correct.  However, there are at least two or three other Kimberly McCollums who I could be confused with.  How do I set myself apart?  Should I start using my middle name or my maiden name as well?  I’ve started commenting as Kimberly McCollum, after a stint as kamccollum.  I wonder a little if a change to Kimberly Anne McCollum confuse people, but I suspect that it is early enough in my “blogging/commenting career” to make the switch without problems.

If I had more content and stronger content, “my personal brand” would be more identifiable and perform better in a Google search.  I need to start sharing more.

My opinion on multi-media enhanced commenting is biased because I spend at least half of my computing time each day on a computer without a mic or a webcam.  I would advise against replacing text-based commenting with audio or video commenting, but I think audio or video commenting have a lot to offer blogging.

I found an article on in the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks on the value of using audio commentary in an asynchronous course.  The findings suggest that audio feedback:

• is better than text-based feedback for conveying nuance.
• might increase involvement in community interactions.
• is related to increased retention of content.

Last semester, I had a course where the professor provided us with audio feedback on our projects and I felt that the quality of the audio feedback was higher than any written feedback that I’d ever received.I’m not sure whether blogging communities are enough like the communities created in university courses for these findings to transfer, but I think the potential benefits are worth exploring.

I signed up for Snapvine and Seesmic accounts to see what they had to offer and then looked at some competing video and audio commenting services including Evoca, Vaestro, Riffly, and blipBack.  Evoca cost money, and though it does offer a 15 minute (recording time) trial, I’d rather exhaust my free options first.  Since I am moving in 41 days, I don’t have the time right now to research all of these options.  Does anyone have experience with any of these services?  What are the pros and cons of each?  Also, do problems with Spam increase with when you use video or audio commenting?  Thanks.

This was the scariest challenge so far. Since I can read Spanish tolerably well (though writing and speaking Spanish are much more difficult for me), I looked for a blog in Spanish. I used Google Blog Search with the keywords, “educacion tecnológica” and found this blog: Educación tecnológica. (I should have used tecnología educacional, but I found something despite my error.)

I am desperately hoping that the grammar in my comment won’t embarrass me, but I found the experience enlightening. I found resources for educators provided by the Spanish government. I once spent six weeks in Madrid, but never would have thought to use my Spanish skills to look for resources in educational technology. This is something that I am going to have to do more often.

A good comment is:

• on-topic,
• succinct,
• and it makes the reader smile

A great comment is:

• on-topic
• succinct,
• it makes the reader think,
• and it makes the reader want to respond

Good comments let the author of the blog know that they were heard, understood, and even appreciated, but great comments push the conversation forward.

For today’s activity, you’re going to review comments you’ve previously received on your blog and highlight one or two of them in a post, explaining WHY you liked the comment(s). Were they thought-provoking? Did they ask a great question? Did they encourage you at a time when you needed it? Be sure to link back to your commenter’s blog if they have one.

My favorite comment came two days ago and you can read it here.   The commenter, Robin, happens to be my Aunt.  Part of the reason that I like the comment is the excitement of connecting with family.  Since I grew up in Maryland and all of my relatives lived in Rocky Mountain States or in California, I didn’t have a lot of contact with them.  Now that I live in Utah, we’re able to see each other more often, but not as often as we would like.  Reading each other’s blogs is a great way foster family togetherness.

Additionally, I liked Robin’s comment because she offered a non-edublogger’s perspective on commenting.  I also really appreciated that she gave me a suggestion of what she would like me to write about.  So, to take Aunt Robin’s advice . . .

I am moving to Charlottesville because my husband was offered a position at the University of Virginia.  (My fellow Hokies are weeping right now . . . sorry.)  I encouraged him to apply because I love the Maryland/Virginia region where I grew up and where my family still lives.  We will be about three hours away from my parents and my siblings.  Robb is excited about the new position and we both like the stability that it offers.  Charlottesville is a beautiful town and we are both excited about living there.  Moving will make finishing our degrees more complicated, but both my husband and I are “ABD”.  He’s likely to finish this fall and I should finish by either April or August of 2009.  We think this will be a good move for us.  However, we’re going to be very busy.

For this one, I started at Vicki Davis’ blog and followed a link from her recent comments on other blogs, to Kellie’s Blog.  From there, I followed a comment from Brandi Caldwell, who referred to Steve Dembo’s blog.  Steve was commenting on his plans to try-out the new Wii Fit.  Like Steve, I also have some unwanted pounds to lose.  My Wii Fit came last night and I’m really interested in seeing if I can use my infatuation with technology to help me shape up.

Last year, I audited a jogging class and got in pretty good shape.  My favorite Tech gadget was an Omron heart monitor/watch/stopwatch.  I really wanted to get an iPod with a Nike Sport kit, but I kept waiting for the Nike Sport kit to work with an iPhone.  I’ve heard that this has happened, but now I’m waiting for the 3G iPhone, which should only be weeks or even days away.  Now that  I’m moving, I’ll probably wait on the new phone so that I can get a Virginia phone number.

In case anyone is interested, here are some of my favorite fitness links on the web:

• http://caloriecount.about.com/
• http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/
• http://www.mypyramid.gov/
• http://www.ullreys.com/robert/Podcasts/podcasts/podcasts.html
• http://www.yogatoday.com/

I’m still way behind on these comment challenges.   My birthday was Friday and my husband and I spent it at Disneyland with my mother, father, and aunt (courtesy of my grandmother).  My younger sister said, “Spending your birthday is like every little kid’s dream.”  I have to agree with her . . . and it only took 32 years for mine to come true.

Between my birthday and the upcoming Big Move (from Utah to Virginia in less than 7 weeks), I’ve been plenty busy.  Still, I really want to complete the comment challenge and I took time today to attempt 5 in 5.  I managed to do this mainly by commenting on blogs of family members and close friends.  These are blogs that I follow, but I’m not sure my family members and friends realize it, because I’ve never left a post before.  I commented on the blogs of my aunt, my cousin, my brother in law and my friend Andrea.  Then I asked a question on the blog of a fellow edublogger.

I highly recommend the blog of my friend, Andrea.  It’s called “Come with me to Africa“.  Andrea is a fellow IP&T graduate student/instructor and she’s pretty amazing.  She speaks Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese and is managing to keep up a blog even when she doesn’t have access to running water.  What is most amazing is that she’s in Mozambique right now conducting a program evaluation for a charity and learning tons from the people there.

Today I made a second response to a commenter on this post. I’d been meaning to respond to the post for at least a week, but since I haven’t been very active with blogging lately, I hadn’t gotten around to it. The comment challenge finally gave me motivation.

In my comment to Sameer, I recommended another blogger as resource to offer suggestions about blog discussions. However, I want to respond a little more in a post. My personal experience running a “blog discussion” in class comes from last semester when I set up a class blog for my Teaching with Technology course. I used the blog for two class discussions, one on internet safety and one on copyright issues. I felt a class blog discussion would be an appropriate approach for a number of reasons.

1. It extended class discussion outside of class.
2. It ensured that every student participated in the discussion.
3. I didn’t have to spend time teaching my students the conventions of threaded discussions (seriously, my students in the fall didn’t do well with threaded discussions).
4. Multiple sections of students could participate in the same discussion.
5. It modeled the use of a instructional technology that they could employ in their future classrooms.

To manage the discussion, I posted a prompt on the topic with links to certain reading materials. Then I required each student to read the prompts and the associated materials and post a response by midweek. Then I required students to revisit the conversation the day before class and respond to at least one classmate’s comment. Everyone made at least one post and the majority of students managed to make both posts. I felt that, on the whole, the quality of student discussion was good and I would use the tool again. If you are interested, you can see the discussions here and here.