My 2013 New Years E Resolutions

Generally speaking I don't 'do' New Years resolutions, however I have been intending to revitalise my online work this year, with that in mind I felt that it would be appropriate to publish what I was intending to do as motivation for myself.

#Comments4Kids.  This comes from Will Chamberlain who is the major contributor to this site, an amazing concept, a great idea and such a worthwhile concept.  I've decided that I need to promote the hash tag as much as possible within my PLN and at other opportunities.  I also want to pledge that I will comment at least once a day for a full calendar year, which of course will mean 365 comments minimum on students blogs.  That's quite a few, but well within the range of what I have been doing in a general sense.  I've never actually tracked how many comments that I would leave in a year but I suspect it would be near a thousand.

I also want to involve myself significantly when theres the #comment4kids week, again its a stellar idea from Will, something that's such a great networking and collaboration idea.  When I think back to my online work the 'push' that I needed came from one teacher who left a positive comment to the students that were working with in my classroom.

#Twitter.  My PLN on Twitter (NZWaikato) has reached a point that its generating new connections all the time, I've got just over 1,500 followers.  I've been managing it pretty closely, I've included in my bio 'If you're not an education please don't follow me' this tends to keep away most of the commerical followers that my account attracts, it isn't perfect, but I do recognise the need to be more pro-active with my account.

#2012/2013.  In New Zealand the school year runs from the start of February to mid December.  That means a year of students has just finished and in four weeks time another will start.  I'm very lucky that the incoming group of students (23 out of class of 30) are students who have already been in my classroom.  I need to continue to develop the work with these students and utilize what they've done online to raise their work.

#Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration. I've had some great positive online experiences in the past five years, the length of time that I've been active.   The highlights have always started and finished with great collaboration, what ever the platform, what ever the site collaboration I believe is the key, if you haven't tried it, that's one challenge that I would encourage you to work on.  Share.

#ContinuetobeInspired.   If you haven't visited some great sites to get inspired then you should.  These four pages always inspire me: Linda Yollis - best class page in the world, two years in a row.  Will Chamberlain, Mr C's Class page, my biggest online inspiration.  Mr Millers Class - a great inspiring site with wonderful ideas, content and digital integration of the site.  Check them out they are all marvelous.

Welcome to the First #Comments4Kids Wednesday!

My classes spent the last two days commenting on blog posts. This is why we did it.

#Comments4Kids was started because several people thought that more attention needed to be spent on content created by students. They need feedback to improve and get better. They need others to notice what they create. I decided my class needed to go out and do commenting because they want others to comment on their content.

This post can also be found at Mr. C's Class Blog

#Comments4Kids Wednesdays

This post was supposed to be a rant on my perceived lack of support by the twitter education community in regards to student blogging. Not that they are against student blogging, that isn't the problem. The problem is many don't want to take time to comment on students' blogs.

As an adult, I love to get comments on my posts. It is important to me to know that what I say matters to others. I covet comments! Students aren't any different. They want to know someone cares about what they have to say too. Yes, they do get feedback from their teachers, but is that enough?

I tell my students all the time that blogs give them an audience they don't have with writing on paper and pencil. They have an audience that is theoretically as large as the world population. Do you think they want to put their ideas out for everyone to see? That is such a scary idea! How do you think they feel when they finally do it, but no one notices?

The idea came during a Twitter conversation with Carey Pohanka, @capohanka, a middle school teacher from Fredericksburg, VA. I had tried twice to get some fellow tweeters to post comments on her blog (see above), and she let me know that a couple (wonderful) teachers left some comments. Then she wrote this:

Then I get a message from Derek Smith ,@lovinteachin, a fifth grade teacher from Colorado Springs that said:
That was how #Comments4Kids started. Each Wednesday we ask for those of you that twitter to identify and tweet one blog post by a student that deserves to be commented on. It could be a student that posts something really awesome, or a student in your class that needs encouragement. Simply tag it as #Comments4Kids. Don't forget to do your part as well. If you see a link with that tag, click on it and leave a quick comment. Your time and effort will have a huge impact on the student that wrote the post.

Here is the link to follow the #Comments4Kids blog recommendations.

UPDATE

@jlamshed started a wiki for us to add our links. It can be found at: http://comments4kids.wikispaces.com/