Let’s start talking online. Here are this week’s activities for the Student Blogging Challenge. Choose one to complete on YOUR blog.

It has been great to see a number of students and classes starting to visit other blogs and leave comments. Which of the following comments would you prefer to find on your blog?

1. wassup

2. this is a great blog. i like Katy Perry too. plz visit my blog at ……………..

3. G’day John, I enjoyed reading your post about Talk like a Pirate Day. We also did that in our class. We dressed as pirates, spoke using pirate terms, but also found out there are still pirates roaming the seas even in modern times. Do you know how they are different to the old time pirates? Visit our class blog to read what we found out. …………….  Miss Wyatt

Activity 1: Write a post, create a video or create a poster about commenting.

Might be tips to get more visitors,  guidelines for acceptable comments on your blog, examples of good and bad comments – think outside the square. Remember you don’t have to approve all comments. It is your blog; send some to the trash and if it is a company trying to get you to visit their blog to buy something, then label it as spam.

Here are some links to commenting guidelines written by students and classes. Class in New Zealand, grade 11/12 class in USA, Huzzah class blog in Canada, Abbey has a blogging guideline page, Mrs Allen created a poster about commenting, Shaffer writers, WarriorKat uses lots of visuals in her guidelines,  Sophie had a great post, the Blogging Frogs have some great tips, Cole wrote about commenting,

 Activity 2: Write a really interesting post that you think will get lots of comments.

Often writing about one of your passions will get lots of comments, so will something controversial where your readers could agree or disagree with your opinion. Remember to end with a question so your readers can give an answer. If you are on Twitter use the hashtag #stubc15 to mention your post. Otherwise leave a comment on this challenge post so I can add it to twitter.

Here are some posts written by students saying how to attract visitors to your blog –Alexandra,Jake, Ashleigh, Leif, Mrs Vazquez’ class wrote about a global challenge they took part in,Corinna asked a question about the school year, Alex asked about iPhones

Activity 3: Have a family member write a post for you to add to your blog.

They could write it and email or post it to you. Does this post attract more visitors or family members leaving comments? One family member regularly blogs on Mrs Yollis’ blog – Where is nonno?

Activity 4: Write a post about the overseas blogs you have commented on.

We have over 35 countries represented in our class and student blogging participants. Visit some of them, read their posts and leave a quality comment. Why did you choose that blog and particular post?

Check out how Ms Bliss’ class wrote their post. Beatrice wrote about Ocean’s blog,

Here are the countries from classes and students participating in this challenge: USA, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, China, Bangladesh,  Canada, UAE, Russia, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Philippines, South Korea,  Taiwan,  Spain, Indonesia, Vietnam, Madagascar, Japan, Italy, Marshall Islands, Turkey, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Sweden, Armenia, South Africa, Romania, Georgia, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria, India, Guam, Uganda, Brazil, Norway, Honduras, Algeria . You will need to search the lists to find them – any that have bright pink countries means you might not be able to read posts or leave comments.

Activity 5: Adding great blogs to your blogroll

Now you have started visiting other blogs, there might be some you want to visit often. Instead of having to go to the student participation page each time, you can add them as links on the sidebar of your blog. If using Edublogs Pro or campus with My Class activated, in your dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across Class blogs to your sidebar. Change the number to 30 or however many in your class.

PS Students using Kidblog might have to write a post including the links as I don’t think you can have a blogroll on your own sidebar.

To make it easy for visitors to find the blogs of your classmates and friends you need to add their link on your blogroll.

1. If using Edublogs or campus and you want to add classmates, overseas blogs or links to other websites you use often like mathletics, reading eggs etc then dashboard> appearance> widgets> links or blogroll
2. If you want to group your links, then use link categories. These might be  ‘Overseas friends’ or for links about your hobbies you might need a category for ‘Cricket’ or ‘Tasmanian Devils’ or ‘Online Games’.
3. To create these link categories, go to dashboard> links> Link Categories> put in the name of a category and save.
4. Back to your dashboard> links> add new link.  Fill in the name of the person or website, then under web address put in the URL of their blog. Remember to include the http:// part. Choose which category you want the link to be under then click add link.

Click here for blogspot, click here for weebly, teachers click here for kidblog

Activity 6:  Learn some HTML code to include a link in a comment or to improve the look of a comment.

Mrs Yollis explains this in her post link above. Might be a way to include a link to your blog whenever you leave a comment. On my challenge blog, I have a post called do not publish and this is where I keep HTML code to help with my blog URL at the end of a comment. You might want to leave a comment on this post and tell me what you have found interesting about commenting. Use some HTML code in your comment. If <b> doesn’t work try <strong> instead.

Activity 7: What makes a great conversation in the comment area?

Check out these students – Max and Abbey, Jack and Abbey, Colton and Lily – take note their conversation continues further down the page, Merry Beau and Mackenzie – lots of conversations

These are threaded comments where the reader clicks on reply underneath the first comment – this is then indented slightly and the next reply is indented further.  Some themes are good for 5 threads while other themes you might end up with only one word on each line on the 5th thread. To change the number of threads go to dashboard> settings> discussion and change to whatever number you want from 1-10

Do you have to answer every comment? That is up to you. Some comments allow for a great conversation while others might just need a “Thank you for leaving a comment on my blog.”

How do you know if someone has answered your comment on their blog? When you leave a comment on a blog, there might be a tick box about notify me by email. Click on that box and you will be notified every time someone leaves a comment on that post. You can easily unsubscribe later if you want to stop having the emails, by checking the bottom of the email where there should be an unsubscribe link.

Activity 8: Add a widget to find out where your readers are coming from.

There are many different widgets you can use – clustrmaps, flag counter, feedjit  Have you seen any others while visiting blogs of other students? Maybe you could write a post about why you chose the  reader widget you have put on your blog. Remember you might get lots of readers, but not everyone is comfortable leaving a comment.

Activity 9. Questions in a post

Write a post asking questions about one country mentioned in activity 4. Have at least 6 questions in your post. If your questions are interesting you might get lots of comments. Remember to tweet about it or leave a comment on this post, so I can tweet.  #stubc15