Ruminations of an Online Instructor / MD

Commenting in a Foreign Country Day 24

May 24, 2008 at 10:50 pm | In 31 Day Comment Challenge, Edublog, Online Instructors, Online Learning, Ruminations Blog, Teaching, comment08, online education | 5 Comments
Tags: 31 Day Comment Challenge, blog commenters, Blog Comments, Blog Community, comment08, creating community, Education Blogging, Education Blogs, foreign language blogs

It took me a bit of reflecting to figure out why this challenge–posting a message in a foreign language–was more challenging for me than most and why I ended up modifying the challenge.

Many of the people in my family of origin speak Finnish as a first language (my mother, aunt, uncles and many cousins), so when I was learning foreign languages in school, I always wanted to make sure that when I spoke or wrote the language, it was perfect.

Even with using Google Translator, which would assist in reading a foreign language blog post as well as translating comments into the proper language, I still felt extremely uncomfortable about posting in a foreign language. When I played with the Google Translator and ended up with responses written in languages using different characters, I was even less sure about posting the characters.

I then decided that if I am going to be commenting on a blog post (which I haven’t be doing a lot of), it would be better to post on a blog from someone in the challenge, so I morphed the activity to being one where I would post a comment on a blog from one of the 31 Day Challenge Participants that was being written in a foreign country.

Chosen Blogs & Comments

• Brian Lockwood, How? What? Questions for Lifelong Learning, blogging from Yokohama, Japan. A comment was left on the April 21st post Are Web 2.0 sites Electronic Portfolios friendly?
• Leigh Newton, Leigh in Azerbaijan Looking at the Country and Education, blogging from Baku, Azerbaijan. A comment was left on his May 14th post on Artistic Shoes
• Adrienne Michetti, create. connect. question, blogging from Hanoi, Vietnam. A comment was left on her May 11th post on I believe in global education, BUT…
• Sarah Stewart, Sarah’s Musings blogging from Dunedin, New Zealand. A comment was left on her May 24th post on Comment Challenge Day 17: Commenting on Five blogs in Five minutes. (O.K. this last one wasn’t strictly a foreign language, but Sarah had visited my blog a few days ago and I decide to stop by hers.

The simple sentence that I decide to have translated was: “Greetings from the 31 Day Comment Challenge.”

• In Japanese 日からのご挨拶コメントの挑戦です。
• In Azerbaijani wasn’t an option. Had to go with Russian, Поздравления с Днем 31 Комментировать обстоятельства.
• In Vietnamese. (I used http://vdict.com to translate the Vietnamese into English) Những lời chào từ 31 Thách thức Bình luận Ngày
• In New Zealand. (I picked Maori from the page “Hello in Many Languages“) Tena koe from the 31 Day Challenge.

After seeing the translations in foreign alphabets, I decided to keep the translations just for this post, since I didn’t know if posting text in a foreign alphabet would just end up a garbled HTML mess. So I posted a simple “Hi” in the language of the blog and the fact that I was posting from the 31 Day Challenge.

Continue reading Commenting in a Foreign Country Day 24…

Day 4 Blog Challenge – Post a Question

May 4, 2008 at 2:14 pm | In 31 Day Comment Challenge, Blogging, Distance Education, Edublog, Educators Online, Online Instructors, comment08 | No Comments
Tags: 31 Day Comment Challenge, Blog Challenge, Blog Comments, Blog Community, Blogging, Blogs, comment08, Posts

Wow. It’s Day 4 already of the 31 Day Challenge.

One of the things that I hadn’t really thought of would happen quite so soon, is the number of comments that I’ve been receiving in response to questions, issues and problems related to the challenge.

This level of blog commenting activity is entirely new to me, since I’ve been keeping several blogs on other topics that get much fewer daily comments.

Refining My Personal Goals for the 31 Day Comment Challenge

One of the goals that I’d posted for yesterday was

7. Encourage others by visiting a new blog at least every other day.

I am going to update or refine that goal for today

7. Encourage others in the 31 Day Challenge by

• Responding to my blog posters comments within 48 hours.
• Visiting a new blog at least every other day.

With starting into a new Summer Session Tomorrow, I realize I have to give myself a reasonable window to respond to blog posts.

I also realize that since comments are being tracked and that people are theoretically monitoring their posts that those leaving comments should be seeing my comments without me needing to contact them or post responses in their blogs.

Activity Day 4: Ask a Question in a Blog Comment

The activity for Day 4 is to ask a question in a blog comment. It does seem that asking a question when commenting on other blogs could be a very good way to get a blog discussion going especially when interacting with students.

Asking questions is a very common technique in normal classrooms and in online classrooms.

Continue reading Day 4 Blog Challenge – Post a Question…