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It’s almost the end of this challenge and  because of the connections I’ve made by visiting the blog homes of comment challenge participants, I discovered my next challenge from Kate Foy. So I will not be without a challenge now for a few months.

I have to confess that I didn’t take up all the challenges. I did read what other bloggers did with them and I even left comments in their discussions and that was HUGE for me.

This challenge was a true eye-opener.

I used the month to really move around the blogosphere in a meaningful way, increasing my role in the community provided for us and beyond.

I worked on my own blog and how I communicate in this virtual world.

I reflected often as a blogger and commenter.

It was really a fantastic experience and the daily challenges offered to us by the comment challenge team, was fantastic.  I am hoping to return to the Comment Challenge Wiki for more.

I’m sure I will return to this post to say more, but here we are so far.

What you do think?  What am I leaving out?

Bonnie

As I moved around on the new Edublogs upgrade this morning, I enjoyed viewing all the comments left for me and this challenge gave me time to reread them and consider what I find interesting about comments.

It was hard to select just one, but Ken Allan’s popped right off the page

I selected Ken’s comment because it points up the connections we are all making from the challenges being offered: Kevin’s Boil Down Your Week, Stacey’s Slice of Life, etc. Initially you might leave your response and that’s that, then you can start checking out new blogs and finally you leave a comment. And with this challenge I clicked to Ken, left a comment Ken found his way here and left something for me. (I would be using links and color, but I don’t see them yet on my toolbar.)

I’m excited about connections building from these great networks.

Tena koe Bonnie!

You seem to be having a lot of fun here too!

Well I finally made it to your blog-site. I was working on Kevin’s Day in a Sentence (with colour) tonight travelling home on the bus from work - I’m still working on it! But y’know I had deja vu! I must have come across your blog some time before, perhaps a week or so ago. I was very new to all this - still am.

Anyway, before your page scrolled down I suddenly knew who I was going to see. Now that I’ve thought about it, I think I must have looked at your site while inspecting Kevin’s - dunno.

Whatever! Nice to be here a while Bonnie.

Ka kite
from Middle-earth

From Day 18: Analyze the Comments on Your Own Blog

Here’s some of my ingredients for creating a great comment:

1. The Comment should be positive and thoughtful.

2. The Commenter should feel comfortable sharing on your blog

3. The Commenter should leave something behind that might surprise the blog host.

4. And for the next layer of commenting, the commenter should move the conversation along with a question to the host and visitors.

What am I missing?? Hope this moves to a conversation…

Bonnie

For the last few days I’ve left the daily prompts and moved out into the blogosphere on my own, embracing the mission to visit new and familiar cyber homes, read conversations, especially comment challenge conversations and add something from me before I leave.

That’s a true contrast with my early blogging/commenting days, when I first created my blog lines, added interesting blogs and began clicking them open, skimming a bit and promising myself I’d return to read more deeply and leave a comment. I never returned to those posts. I think I was just getting my feet wet, slowly.

That was a long time ago, probably more than a year ago. Instead, I spent time working on specific collaborations, writing my own posts and getting connected to a small group of friends. The key seems to be SLOWLY. I marveled at the speed with which my buddy Kevin seemed to jump in and move so quickly.

Boiling Down my Week Challenge began the sharing with a group and commenting generally to host of the week.

The Slice of Life Challenge brought me to a larger group of bloggers to get to know. To read their slices, to be read, to get comments, to leave comments.

For the Comment Challenge I have been really thinking deeply about commenting, exploring new blogs, returning for more, and looking in my backyard into blogs on the other side of the fence: twitterers and boilers.

Slowly I have been getting familiar with new blogs and  more comfortable  with blogs I know, leaving longer comments and finding opportunities to join conversations. On my blog I’ve responding more, asking questions to build on the conversation and just being more considerate of  visitors.

It’s been a great month. What’s the next challenge???

Bonnie

I have been going strong with this challenge but I did take a break to put some of my writing energy into my other challenges: 6 words to Kevin, A memoir for Stacey’s new Memoir Monday on my new blog and of course a Slice of Life today.

But as the last two remaining contenders battled it out for the American Idol title last night, I was poised to return to the Comment Challenge.

I have been extending myself, using the the Participants List to plunge deeper into blogging communities and adding more great sites into my Google Reader.

Before I began writing this prompt I clicked into Kate Foy’s blog, to pick her brain virtually. I found her prompt response candid and one I could relate to as she shared her early blogging and commenting experiences and how they’ve grown. A rich discussion followed in the comments section and I found it easy to leave something of myself behind.

Returning to my blog, scrolling through my comments, I realized that the posts with the great number of responses came from the Slices of Life I have shared during that monthly challenge. Stacey facilitated the birth of a new online community and it didn’t take long to get into the habit of adding my slice and then opening each slice that appeared before me, reading it and leaving a supportive comment. Throughout the day I would often return to read and comment on more slices as they arrived and in turn I got comments back.

As I focus on comments in this challenge I realize that there’s more to it than than thrill of getting a comment; there’s the rich discussion that can develop. So I’ve been returning to conversations, adding a second comment, a third.

I remember a time, not so long ago when I would read comments only in my email box and reply there. Clicking back to my blog, to other blogs is a real ahhah for me.

I have also taken more time to extend a comment and work on leaving something that might add to the conversation. It’s exciting to be here.

I’m not a big fan of awards, (with the exception of the Oscars). As a high school teacher it was always hard to pick one and exclude all the others. And once again, as much as I’m grateful to every commenter who visits my blog and leaves something behind for me I have to take some time here to give it up to

KEVIN HODGSON 

for his Web 2.0 passion and his patience as he brought me along with him on this blogosphere journey. I was never resistant or reluctant, but I needed that hand, that instant response to keep writing away here.

As I returned to my comments page, there were very few posts since the fall of 2006 that didn’t  include at least one comment from Kevin.

Our digital storytelling collaboration came out of that daily reading of my posts as I reflected on a frustrating ds workshop experience. He kept asking questions and I kept thinking and writing. I returned home and we continued to use our blogs to work into something unexpected, the ABC Movie Project and our blog: Using Technology to Tell Stories.  And in November, he accepted my invitation to join us at the Hudson Valley Writing Project’s first tech conference as the conferences keynote, documented on the National Writing Project.

Kevin came to our table rich in computer skills and  in online resources and he shared everything and never made me feel that I was anything but his equal.

And we continue to share.  I continue to learn from him as he remains at least one step ahead, reaching back to move me along with him.

I am SURE that I am not the only one who feels Kevin’s warm aura circling them in this new learning environment.  He revels in the communal nature of the web as a place to share and grow with teachers and students.

I am so grateful to be out here with him.

Recently, my favorite public radio station, WFUV put out a call for membership donations.  I am a member and renew in the fall but when I heard this call, I wondered how I might add to my contribution.  A suggestion from a DJ: Gift Membership for a friend.  I thought about it.  KEVIN:  a musician (sax and guitar), a composer, and music lover. Perfect, two birds with one stone.  Amazing, isn’t it, how much we are willing to share here.

Kevin, thanks so much for your comments and your friendship.

Bonnie