Thing #12

I completely agree that commenting can be useful, but needs to have boundaries set in order to get off on right foot. I liked the part on CoolCat blog about "Darth Commentator". When I am going to news sources online, such as chronicle.com, I'll read the comments left after articles. Its obvious that some people get online and leave mean, derogatory comments because they have nothing better to do with their time than to criticize.

The two points that stuck out as most important to me are:

1)Set Boundaries-if you let readers know what is expected of them, and take care of people that get out of line, it can contribute to more meaningful experience for all

2)(this is sort of a combination of two) Ask questions and be open ended about it. Just like we don't want to ask our students plain, boring yes/no questions that don't really broaden their minds, we don't want to do the same in blog comments.

The blogs that drew my attention are, admittedly, more personal to me. One is a blog about a p.e. teacher in the district who suffered a heart attack a little over a month ago. His sister in law started a blog that she updates daily with info on how his recovery is going, with pictures when possible, and its good to see how much caring and support goes on in our world to counteract all the bad things we see in news each day. The other blogs I visit are more social in nature. One is about family/friends of family that was created to help us keep up to date on little kids in the family and how life is going. A third blog I like to visit is a celebrity blog that basically makes fun of alot of the ridiculously dumb things some celebrities do in order to draw attention to themselves. It has no real educational value, other than to reinforce how glad I am my life has taken the path it has (i.e. to be able to actually be a positive role model, and give back to society, and not some publicity-seeking leech)