Thing 4

As with social networks, blogs, or any kind of media online, commenting connects us all.  It makes us feel like people care about what I have written and they like it.  We never comment on things we don't like just for the heck of it.  It makes socializing and working online so much more fun.  It creates a wonderful sense of community and interaction because it is people getting together online that do not necessarily know each other very well, and they begin to get to know each other by commenting and discussing.  In some ways, it's kind of like moving to a new neighborhood, and everyone starts introducing themselves and interacting.  So in other words, commenting on blogs, facebook, etc. is like bringing over a pie to your new neighbor? Ok, maybe not exactly, but that is the general idea I am trying to give here.

Write to your audience- they love you.  I liked this so much from the Cool Cat Teacher Blog on how to comment. The truth is simply that people read your blog because they love how you write, so write for them! You wrote before to capture an audience, and you captured them because you now have an audience, so why not write the same way you always have, because that hooked them, but write geared towards what they want to hear now that you have a greatly formed audience. 

Write more meaningful comments, instead of just "yeah" or "right on" ask more advanced questions.  This was kind of half and half for me.  I guess for certain things, like facebook or twitter, just saying "yeah" seems just fine. For blogs, you expect people to read it that care and have more to say about it besides just "yeah".  I would actually kind of be offended if someone just wrote that.  I would think, well, why did you even comment? So, for the most part I think sticking to good meaningful comments is important. 

I chose the following for my 5 student blogs to comment on:
Abbey Thompson's Thing 3, Chelsea Ninness's Blog Thing 9, Rachel Jones 23 Things Blogs Thing 6, Ashlee Boyds 23 Things Thing 4, and  David's Mom Anita Taylor Thing 7. I chose these particular ones because they were interesting to me and I related to what they all said. I feel that if I am going to comment on something, it is going to be soemthing that I liked reading. 

I chose two blogs that were not related to the class that I love! One is about cooking in a small kitchen, and this was the one I picked because my kitchen is in fact small! I am always looking for easy recipes and making my busy life a little easier. I chose the second one about engaging toddler activities because I have a two year old little girl and it has a ton of ideas on things to do that are not only cheap, but so much fun for little ones.

I used what I read from the Cool Cat Teacher blog to answer the last part of this post.  Why did I write the comments I did? Every comment that I wrote was honest, and meaningful.  I did not just write comments just to put something out there.  I wrote them because I truly felt the way I wrote about.  That is how I always write. Meaningful, and hopefully useful!