Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD

Defining Blogging in Education – Day 3 of the Challenge

May 3, 2008 at 1:51 pm | In 31 Day Comment Challenge, Blogging, Edublog, Ruminations Blog, Teaching, online education | 9 Comments
Tags: 31 Day Comment Challenge, co.mments, comment08, Education Blogging, Education Blogs

With the Blog Challenge now underway, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be involved now in the 31 Day Comment Challenge.

I also been ruminating on the main reason that launched the Ruminations Blog,”…to share my thoughts, observations, reflections and resources about online education, online teaching, distance education, e-learning and web education from the perspective of a Physician, Professor, Health Educator and Online Student.”

I discovered as part of the 31 Day Comment Challenge, Silvia Tolisano’s insights on Blogging in Education. She does an excellent job in defining the differences between traditional blogging and educational blogging.

According to Silvia:

Blogging in and for the educational field is:

• not only about posting
• not only about leaving and receiving comments
• not about promoting your blog on Twitter or other sites
• not about getting a high ranking on Technorati

It should be:

• all about personal learning
• sharing thoughts, ideas, resources
• reading
• writing
• the process
• and encouraging others in their learning journey (we are educators after all)

My Personal Goals for the 31 Day Comment Challenge

After reading Silvia’s definition of educational blogging I decided to add a few more ‘goals’ to my goal list for the 31 Day Challenge:

4. Learn more about blogging and educational uses of blogging.
5. Record and reflect what I am learning about the process.

6. Be contented with my learning and blogging experience.
7. Encourage others by visiting a new blog at least every other day.

Two days into the challenge and I have already learning *a lot* about blogging and the educational uses of blogging.

Activity Day 3: Sign up for a Comment Tracking Service

Since this was the activity that I spent a lot of time on yesterday trying to get the coComments working, I was a bit hesitant and more than a bit anxious to take on this challenge.

I got a tip about another Comment Tracking Service, co.mments and tried this one. I quickly decided that co.mments was the tracking service for me.

Accomplishments for Day 3 of the Challenge

1. Registering Ruminations Blog with Blogcatalog.
2. Discovering my Supercourse lecture posted on .docstoc and signing up for my own account.
3. Posting my reasons for creating an Education-based Blog.
4. Successfully signing up with a Comment Tracking Service using co.mments.
5. Left a post expressing my gratitude on the How To Effectively Manage Your Comments on Other People’s Blogs post from the Mobile Technology in TAFE blog.
6. Wrote and posted my own Day 3 post.

Reflections on the 31 Day Comment Challenge Process

After yesterday’s frustrations with another Comment Tracking Service, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get one figured out fast enough to make continuing with the challenge possible.

I got a tip about co.mments with link to this post. In less than 15 minutes late at night, I was registered, ready to go with co.mments and linked into my Google Reader. I was very happy and grateful.

Revelations: In a matter of hours after posting frustrations with yesterday’s process, I was able to get assistance from a new blog community, the edubloggers.

I also discovered, probably what I have known, that I prefer simple was of manually doing something rather than having to rely on all of the latest, fancy integrated system. I wanted something where I could easily enter in the pages that I wanted to track, the co.mments tracking system was an easy way of doing that.

I have a couple of other issues with the coComments system, but I’ll save that for Day 5’s challenge topic: Comment on a Blog Post You Don’t Agree With…

Source: Silvia Tolisano. April 28, 2008. 31 Day Comment Challenge- Are You Up for it?
Image Source: Colorized version of Vassiliki Koutsothanasi. Thinking Girl. Royalty Free Use.

This blog post is part of The Comment Challenge, comment08.