Thing 4

Commenting is important in the blogging world, or so I learned in reading the suggested posts about why it is important.  I have never been a blogger or blog reader.  The few times I have read blogs, it has never really even occurred to me to comment.  I’m not much of a commenter in general.  I keep my thoughts to myself.  After reading the postings about why commenting is important I can now see why I should consider leaving comments in the future.  I think I have always been turned off of commenting because of “Darth Vader” commenters.  There are always overly negative and critical people who never think twice about leaving a rude word.  When I lived in Europe and would search for hostels to stay in while traveling, I would look at comments to help me decide if the places I was looking at would be good or not.  The comments were terrible to read.  People would rate places badly because it rained when they were there or because they had noisy neighbors or other reasons that had nothing to do with the actual hostel.  If you’re paying $10 a night to stay somewhere, chances are, you need to lower your expectations- you’re not going to get Four Seasons accommodations at that price.  You get what you pay for, so keep your unnecessarily rude comments to yourself. 

That said, I can see how commenting creates a sense of community.  And, if comments are good, who doesn’t like praise?  Everyone likes to hear something good about something they have done.  If commenters have a positive word to share, it may encourage the writer to continue. 

Another thing I found important was the idea of bloggers responding to comments they receive.  By acknowledging comments received, a blogger is acknowledging and recognizing his/her readers.  If a commenter receives a response, it may serve as incentive for him/her to continue reading said blog.  It is like getting good customer service somewhere.  If I go somewhere and the customer service is good, chances are, I’ll return.  On the other hand, if customer service is bad, I’m probably never going back. 

Something else that stood out to me was the idea that comments should be meaningful and relevant.  A “good job” or “nice,” while they may boost the writer’s ego, do little else.  Comments like that provide no substance and contribute nothing to the conversation.  Comments don’t need to be dissertations, but they should have a purpose.  Tell the writer what they did well, specifically.  This is the same thing we have been taught in our education classes about how to provide feedback to students.  I remember teachers who would give bad grades (and good ones) with no explanation.  Those grades were meaningless and may as well have been arbitrarily assigned to students because there were no comments about what to change or continue doing.    

I chose to comment on the following blogs from our class:

 

 

Esther:

I commented on Esther because we had things in common: weak in technology, taught English abroad.  She taught English in Korea and my grandmother is Korean. 

Candice: I commented on Candice because she commented on mine and mentioned that she wanted to teach 3^rd grade as well, so I would like to see how she uses this blog to possibly get ideas for what I can do in my future classroom.  Also, her facebook comment in thing 1 made me laugh.

Joshua: I liked how he started his post on thing 1.  He wrote like he was resigned to the fact that he had no choice about blogging and had just accepted that it had to be done.  I like how he ends each entry by "checking" it off and moving on to the next one.

Delma: She had commented on my blog and mentioned that we had a great deal in common.  When I read her thing 1, it was interesting to see our similarities.  It was nice to read about someone else who didn't set out to teach, but ended up here just like me. 

Riley: Riley commented on my blog and mentioned our similar struggles with technology.  I was interested to see how someone from a field with which I have no experience, theater, would approach various topics.  I thought that following this blog might help with my lacking creativity.

 

I chose to comment on a blog entitled “Plain Chicken”.  This is a blog I have seen on Pinterest before and gotten recipes from and they turned out well.  I’m a very picky eater and so is the blogger.  She posts recipes that appeal to me and she always includes pictures.  Every Monday, she does “Meow Monday” and posts funny pictures of her cats.  She has one that looks a lot like my own cat.  They always look disinterested and unamused in the pictures posted, which is so characteristic of cats in general.  Mine looks the same in pictures.   I posted on a recipe for something that sounded good to me.  I wrote that it was a great recipe and something I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.  It combined sweet and savory which I enjoy.  I also posted on “Eric Kim Street Photography”.  He had a post about “25 Things I Have Learned While Backpacking in Europe”.  I chose to read this because I traveled around Europe quite a bit during the year I lived in Spain.  The traveling was unbelievably cheap.  I miss it so much.  I loved reading his 25 things because they took me right back to my travels.  I commented about how cheap air travel was and about how surprisingly kind locals were regardless of language barriers.  My friend and I went to Prague and took a bus to a nearby smaller city to see a hockey game.  We got off the bus and didn’t have a map or any clue where the arena was.  We walked for a while, but it started getting dark.  We went into a little shop and asked in English where the arena was.  After some miming and laughing, the woman working in the store came outside with us pointing and gesturing in the direction we needed to go.  I think she even drew us a little map to get us there.  I was met by unbelievably kind people like this woman almost everywhere I went.