The Bamboo Project Blog

Coment Challenge Winners!

I'm very pleased to announce the winners of the 31 Day Comment Challenge! They are:

• For the most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers)--A tie between Bonnie Kaplan and Claire Thompson.

• For the most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic-- Carla Arena

• For the comments that provoke and promote the most learning-- Kevin of Dogtrax.

• The student award--Taylor

Each prize winner will receive:

• From coComment: US$100 to the winner in each of the four categories
• From Edublogs: $50 in Edublogs credits to the winner in each of the four categories

Congratulations to everyone and thanks for your fabulous participation!  Thanks, too, to coComment and EduBlogs for sponsoring the prizes.

Final Comment Challenge Voting is Open

It's time for the final voting for the 4 winners in the Comment Challenge.

The survey is here.

Our generous co-sponsors, Cocomment and  Edublogs agreed to support us in awarding prizes in four categories:

1. The most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers)
2. The most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic
3. The comments that provoke and promote the most learning
4. Student category

The prizes are:

• From coComment: US$100 to the winner in each of the four categories
  
• From Edublogs: $50 in credits to the winner in each of the four categories

Please make sure that you first visit the nomination page in the Comment Challenge wiki so that you can read the nominations and background information on each nominee before you vote!

Voting is open until 8:30 a.m. EDT on June 18, 2008. Only one vote per category, per person, please.

Nominations for the Comment Challenge Winners and Announcing Web 2.0 Wednesdays

Now that the 31 Day Comment Challenge has drawn to a close, it's time to nominate the winners in the four prize categories we announced at the beginning of the Challenge.

As you'll recall, our generous co-sponsors, Cocomment and  Edublogs agreed to support us in awarding prizes in four categories:

1. The most comments on a wide range of blogs (not just the “top” edubloggers)
2. The most high quality comments that thoughtfully reflect on the topic
3. The comments that provoke and promote the most learning
4. Student category

The prizes are:

• From coComment: US$100 to the winner in each of the four categories
  
• From Edublogs: $50 in credits to the winner in each of the four categories

We've set up a nomination page on the Comment Challenge wiki where you can indicate who you'd like to nominate in each category. Nominations are open until June 9 at 12 noon, EDT. After that, we'll set up a poll so that you can vote on the final winners in each category.

If you have difficulties putting your nominations into the wiki, you can email them to me or to Sue Waters.

Announcing Web 2.0 Wednesdays
It looks like a lot of people really enjoyed the Comment Challenge and format and wanted to keep things going. So we thought that we'd designate one day a week to continue with various Web 2.0 learning activities. Thus was born Web 2.0 Wednesdays. We'll have more details next week when we have our first activity, but in the meantime, be sure to keep your eyes on the Comment Challenge wiki where we'll be adding details as they develop. And if you have any ideas for Web 2.0 learning activities that you think would work, please let me know. We want to keep the momentum going!

Comment Challenge Day 31: Your Top 5 Lessons

We've finally done it! We've reached the end of the 31 Days of the Comment Challenge! It's been a long, crazy month with a lot of activity and (hopefully) a lot of learning. For your final task, I want you to reflect on what you've learned in the last 31 days. What did you personally gain from the Challenge? What did you gain professionally? Is this something you'd do again? If so, why? If not, why not? Share with us your Top 5 Comment Challenge Lessons and what you think you'll do differently now that you've been through the past 31 days.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Challenge and for all your wonderful posts and comments. This has been a great month, during which I know I've met a lot of new people and learned some really valuable lessons. Thanks for all of your contributions!

Comment Challenge Day 30: How Can You Use What You've Learned About Commenting to Change Your Teaching?

Now that we're winding down in the Comment Challenge, it's time for some reflection. For today's task, I want you to consider what you've learned about the give and take of commenting and how it might apply in a classroom. 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? Remember to tag your post with "comment08."

Comment Challenge Day 29: Write a Commenting Guide for Students

Most of the Challenge participants work in some kind of learning and education capacity, so today's task from  Silvia Tolisano is geared toward helping your students be better commenters. Silvia suggests writing an age-appropriate guide to commenting. What goes into it is up to you. How you communicate it is up to you. You may want to play around with audio or video. You might want to try using VoiceThread. You could also make writing the guide a collaborative process using a wiki or by having students reply in comments to a series of questions. If you decide to write the guide yourself, share it in a blog post. If you decide to use a more collaborative approach, describe how you'd do it in a blog post. Remember to tag your post with "comment08."

Comment Challenge Day 28: What's Your Blog Commenting Strategy?

Yesterday we looked at how commenting can help us build our personal brand. Today, I want you to check out this article by Caroline Middlebrook on developing a blog commenting strategy. Do you think it's important to take a more strategic view of commenting and to have a plan for how you want to incorporate commenting into your overall online behavior? If so, what is your blog commenting strategy? Remember to tag your post with "comment08."

Comment Challenge Day 27: What Do You Communicate About Your Personal Brand Through Comments

Online personal branding is becoming a big deal. The more active we are on the web, the more we communicate about who we are and what we do. Many of us may have considered that our blogs are a way of communicating about our "brand," but what about the comments we leave?

Dauwd Miracle recounts an experience he had with comments as a form of personal branding. Take a look at his post and then write a post about what you think you may be communicating about your personal brand through your comments. For bonus points, think about some of the other commenters you've encountered during the Challenge and write about about what you think their personal brand is based on their commenting behaviors. Remember to tag your post with "comment08."

Comment Challenge Day 26: Exploring Other Ways to Comment

As many of us have discovered during the Challenge, written comments can sometimes be misconstrued or make it difficult for us to get our point across. Multimedia commenting, though, can address some of these issues. Today's task comes from Silvia Tolisano who asks us to think about other ways to comment on blogs. For example, Kate Foy and others have been playing around with video commenting using Seesmic. Here's a sample of how it looks. You could also use audio for comments, as this teacher did (although she recorded files and emailed them to her students). Although I haven't used it, Snapvine looks like it might be a decent option for doing this.

For today's task, explore how you might use multimedia for a richer commenting experience. Consider whether or not you think multimedia is a better option and how it might impact learning. You may even want to try out some multimedia commenting. Be sure to tag your blog post with "comment08."

Comment Challenge Day 25: Take a Break!

On Day 16, you had the chance to go back and catch up on something. Today, I don't even want you to do that. Consider today a day of total rest. No pressure to comment. No reason to do anything on your computer at all if you don't want to. Just relax. We'll be here when you get back.