Tag Archives: cocomment

How keep track of new comments on other bloggers’ posts

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Frustrated because you like to know about new comments on other bloggers’ posts , especially if you’ve left a comment, but find it time consuming going back to the post to check for new comment?

Well you don’t need to return to where you wrote the comments because you can get them brought to you using a comment tracking tool. Part of the The 31 Day Comment Challenge involves using comment tracking tools. Since it’s suggested participants use coComment because of it’s community building features let’s check out tips for getting started with coComment.

Tracking Comments

  1. Create an account with coComment.
  2. Install simple extension capture tool.capturetool.jpg
  3. Join the Comment Challenge Group if you are doing The 31 Day Comment Challenge.
  4. The coComment extension automatically sends comments you write to your coComment account (plus you can tag your comments).
    addingcomment.jpg

Checking For New Comments

There are several few options for viewing new comments:

1. Login into Your coComment account

cocommentweb.jpg

While reading the new comments remember to share your comments with your groups.

cocomentshare.jpg

2. Subscribing to the RSS feed from your coComment account

This means all new comments are fed into your feed reader (e.g. Google Reader, bloglines) and you can check them while reading your blog subscriptions.

cocommentrss.jpg

3. Using the coComment sidebar

You can access the coComment Sidebar on any web page using the shortcut keys Shift+Ctrl+Q (these keys can also be used for turning off).

Watch this video to see how to use the coComment sidebar.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this has helped get you started using coComment. While we encourage all Comment Challenge participants to use coComment because of it’s community features — it’s not a requirement of the challenge that you do.

Also don’t forget to document your learning while completing the Comment Challenge — as Silva says

If you don’t have a blog (yet), take a paper and a pencil and jot down bullets. Remember this challenge is mainly about your own personal learning. The community effect is, of course, an added bonus

If you want to start a blog, or are new to blogging, check out our Getting Started with Edublogs page because we have lots of “How to” manuals and videos to get you going. Go here to create your blog for free!

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Commenting, Learning Together & The Comment Challenge!

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Always a tricky one when you’ve been busy “doing stuff”. Do you confess? Or hide the evidence? Mmmm probably should be responsible and come clean :) .

I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of commenting on blogs because it’s a crucial aspect of blogging conversations for achieving the greatest learning. Trouble is factors often limit people’s commenting practices so they don’t experience this learning and fail to appreciate it’s value. I, and others, felt strongly that we needed to do more to engage others, especially new people, in commenting.

Comment Challenge Working hard with Kim Cofino, Michele Martin and Silvia Tolisano we’ve created a 31 Day Comment Challenge for May. Aim is to spend a month of focused commenting for us all to become better blog citizens (thanks to Martin Weller for the phrasing ) by actively participating in conversations and sharing our learning, especially with those new to blogging.

And thanks to Christine Martell of VisualsSpeak for the awesome logo for using with our posts!

Joining The 31 Day Comment Challenge

Anyone can join us — educators, school students, non-profit bloggers, corporate bloggers etc. In fact the best part of the challenge is you don’t have to be a blogger! Just add your name to the Comment Challenge Wiki (or if unsure how to add your name leave a comment on this post and I will add for you).

Now if you’re thinking “I’m not sure if I ready for the Comment Challenge” make sure you read Silvia’s excellent Are You Up for it? post on why it’s important for your personal learning that you join us! If you’ve never added a comment to a blog post read Silvia’s How to Comment post.

sponsors.jpgThere will be prizes and awards involved. Cocomment and Edublogs have been incredibly generous by donating prizes (total value US$400 and $200 Edublogs credits). Plus the wonderful Scott McLeod has also shared his fantastic Comment Award blog badge for all of the winners of this competition. Kim’s Prizes & Awards post explains our reasons for using prizes.

The four categories will be:

  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. Category for students only — to be advised

Involving Our Students

The Comment Challenge is a great idea for your classroom too! If you’d like to participate with your class, please add your details to the Comment Challenge for Student Groups page.

Students are eligible to win in all four categories and their teachers will submit their pick of their own students for each category. Student finalists will be judged next to all the adults. Once a student category has been formulated, the participating teachers can judge among their students at the end of the 31 days.

What’s Involved

The concept behind the 31 Day Comment Challenge is similar to the 31 Days To Build a Better Blog Project I did with Michele Martin last year. We’ll have daily tasks that need to completed and we’ll be encouraging community members to network with each other while completing these tasks.

The community aspect of the challenge is very important and we’ll be working hard to encourage interaction between participants. We learned from the 31 Day Blogging Project, while working together in a community of 14 global participants (including a group of school kids) to improve our blogging skills, that knowledge gain was greater than working as individuals, because each individual sees a different perspective of the task – giving participants greater “food for thought!”

Each day of our Comment Challenge Michele will post a daily task on her blog which we need to complete (you will also find them on the activities page of the wiki). Don’t stress — we’ll make sure the tasks aren’t too hard but do challenge our thinking, writing and will aid in the process of becoming better commenters.

Remember both Michele and I’ve done a similar Project plus Kim Cofino and Silvia Tolisano have both been involved with global projects so we all collectively have the expertise to make this an exciting challenge.

Documenting Your Learning Journey

Recording your reflections of what you are learning and getting others to share their views is an important aspect of these types of challenge. Members of the 31 Day Blogging Project documented their learning journey using a range of methods.

What worked for me, and for many of the others, was to write blog posts that combined the reflections of several days e.g combine 7 days of activity into one post (here’s an example 31 Days to Build a Better Blog–Days 15-19). This meant readers could provide their input easier. Alternatively you could document using other online tools such as a wiki.

I also wrote detailed posts when I learnt something I really didn’t know but gained as part of completing the tasks e.g. Why does technorati mock me? and Why Didn’t I install Google Analytics Sooner?

Have a good think about how and where you want to document your learning from the Comment Challenge — when you’ve decided please add it’s URL to the Comment Challenge Wiki alongside your name. Remember to tag your work comment08.

Join Us!

Hope you join us for 31 Day Comment Challenge!  Check out Kate Foy’s great video welcoming us all the the Challenge (Kate was part of the 31 Day Blogging Project last year.

And now it’s time to go across to Michele Martin’s blog to get started — Day One: Do a Comment Self Audit.

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Blogging Tools To Help You Blog

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This best of Web 2.0 series evolved from demonstrating the value and benefits of using twitter for your personal learning. So far we talked about Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Web Browser? and Getting More Out Of Blogging And Edublogs.So it must be time to talk about blogging tools my twitter network and the Edublogger readers have found indispensable and included in their Best 3 Web 2.o tools?

CoComment

Is it wrong to say I love Martin Weller? Probably but I truly mean it (but you will need to read on to see why I feel this way).

Blogging is far more than just writing blog posts. Making a conscious effort to take the time to comment on posts of other bloggers is an essential part of blogging. I personally sacrifice time I could spend writing more blog posts to comment on other bloggers posts.

Don’t be afraid to comment! What you say is of value and is encouraging to other bloggers (especially new bloggers). Every blogger loves comments regardless of their status in the blogosphere :) .

So getting back to Martin Weller his current favorite blogging tool is cocomment which he uses for tracking comments he posts on other people’s blogs.

Martin says

cocomment makes me more likely to comment on blogs and thus a better blog citizen

If I had one wish it would be for us all to be better blog citizens.

When you create an account with coComment you install a CoComment add-on which automatically activates coComment when you write comments on all major blogging platforms, on services like Digg, Flickr or Youtube and some Forums making it easier to track responses to comments you leave on other people’s sites.

By subscribing to your cocomment RSS feed using your feed reader e.g. Google Reader or Bloglines you’re automatically notified whenever a person comments on a post that you’ve commented on so you can choose to immediately respond back if you want.

Comment tracking tools make commenting more meaningful because you no longer feel like you left comment drifting in the wind never to be seen or heard again. As a blogger you should be using a comment tracking tool like co.comment!

Jott

phone.jpgWilliam “Bud” Deihl has got me seriously pondering Jott’s benefits for translating voice from a phone onto text to write blog posts (read his explanation in this post). Fortunately for Australian drivers I can’t write my blog posts by talking into my mobile phone as I drive to work since it appears Jott is only available in US and Canada.

Jott is far more powerful than just a tool that we could be using for blogging. So many people have found Jott increases their productivity.

Ken Pendergrass included Jott in his top 3 Web 2.o tools because he uses it everyday to give himself reminders via SMS and/or email. Michele Martin has written an excellent post on how she uses Jott to increase her productivity.

And yet Jott has even more potential. Karen Janowski highlights how Jott is a 21st century tool for learning by providing excellent examples of how we could use it with students in our classrooms.

Phone photo from Flickr by JaJah licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0.

File Hosting/Sharing Tools

There are so many file hosting and sharing tools that can help us with our blogging. Here are just a few that made it into the Top 3 Best Web 2.0 as recommended by my twitter network and our readers.

Isabelle Jones recommended Scribd because you can upload documents and share them with others i.e. your communities as well as publish them on blogs. I’ve never heard of Scribd before so Kevin Gamble explained “it’s like a YouTube for documents”.

Scribd was nominated 64th top tool in the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 list by 155 learning professionals. I would love to hear more about Scribd if you are using it :)

Whereas Marlene Manto says she couldn’t do without Box.net because it’s great for storage, sharing and collaboration. Box.net allows you to upload large documents, photos, spreadsheets, videos, or zip files to your online space which can then be accessed from anywhere. It means you can store large files online at Box.net instead of using your blog storage space; all you need to do is link across to the Box.net storage location.

Here are Marlene’s instructions on how to use Box.net.

What can we truly say about SlideShare? Not only is it an excellent location to store and share your PowerPoint presentations online but it’s also a great resource for:

  • To discover other people’s presentations and slideshows for sharing with your readers
  • Visiting to learn the art of crafting a presentation; great for inspiring ideas when creating your own presentations

If you’ve not used SlideShare you definitely need to check it out!

Thanks Dean Groom for including it in your Top 3 Best Web 2.o tools. SlideShare was nominated 14th top tool in the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 list by 155 learning professionals.

Here is one of my favourite SlideShare’s by Kim Cofino.

21st Century Educator

View more presentations from mscofino. (tags: pd technology)

Search Box

Having a search box on your blog matters! As Chris Brogan nicely says

The #1 thing I seek in a blog I’m returning to (versus a newly discovered blog) is a search bar. Why? Because often, I’m returning to a blog to find a story.

Put your search box WAY up high on your page, above the fold, if at all possible. It matters.

Martin Weller included his Lijit search box in his top 3 best Web 2.0 tools (visit Martin’s blog and do a search see how Lijit works).

lijitmartin.jpgDefinitely I like the idea of Lijit is because I have my content located across lots of websites and this search allows readers to search content on my blog or all my sites (by clicking on the My Content Tab). Plus it provides some really cools statistics on how readers interact with my blog that are emailed weekly or I can check them out online in my account.

But I’m still debating Lijit with myself because when readers click on My Content tab the search will also shows results from other websites – which is really bad. You want readers to stay on your sites not go to other peoples sites.

Would love to hear your opinions about which Search box(es) you like to have on your blog and why? My mind is still very open to the idea of Lijit — so please share your thoughts.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Other posts from this Best of Web 2.0 series include:

There’s still time for you to share your thoughts on “What Web 2.0 tools (apart from Twitter, delicious & Flickr) you find indispensable? Name your best 3?” by writing a comment or your own post on your favourite tools.

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How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier

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So I’ve tried my best to explain what is RSS and why it’s important to learn how to use. And as I said I find it hard to explain probably because the power of RSS is really something you need to experience first hand.

I’m really into RSS — a RSS power user may be an appropriate title since I grab every RSS opportunity to make my life easier and maximise my ability to interact effectively with others.

Remember I’m using RSS as a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the site; instead information is brought to one location, my feed reader, for me to read at my convenience.

So let me show you some of ways I use RSS with my Google Reader.

Subscribing To Blogs

Image of Conversations in the blogspherI read a lot of blogs by subscribing to their RSS feeds because blogging isn’t about working in a vacuum; it’s about the conversations.

Conversations aren’t about you just writing a reflective post that invites / encourages / evokes readers to express their opinion by writing comments on your post. It’s also about you engaging in conversations on others’ blogs by linking to their posts and writing comments on their posts.

To engage effectively in blogging conversations you need to subscribe to blogs that interest you. If you aren’t already subscribe to educational blogs — why not use this list of blogs or the blogroll on my personal blog (on the bottom right hand side) as a starting point.

Effectively Managing Comments

Image of Comment ConversationsOne of my most important tips for keeping up the conversations on blogs is being very effective at managing your comments on other people’s blogs. I’m really good at this because I use tools that track my comments posted on other people’s blogs plus subscribe to the RSS feed from these tools.

Whenever a person comments on a post that I have commented on, their comment is transferred from the post into my Google Reader, so I can choose to immediately respond back if I want.

Currently I use two comment tracking tools — co.mment and cocomment. The RSS feed from co.mment is better than cocomment however cocomment is better for community building. Here’s my explanation on how to set up and use co.mment. You can check out my comment tracking account’s here — on co.mment and at cocomment.

Managing Interactions on Flickr

Flickr is really cool Web 2.0 tool that didn’t initially grab me because I didn’t get the whole idea of sharing photos online and it’s Image of using Flickr in RSSwhole social networking aspect.

Now I’ve made Flickr friends and comment on their photos; my friends newest photos and any comments I make are automatically feed from Flickr to my Google Reader (here are my instructions of how I do it).

This interaction has shown me a different glimpse of their life compared to what I see from reading their blogs or following them on twitter.

RSS is More Than Blog Posts

As Rafa Ribas said about my previous post on RSS:

There is more to RSS than just blog posts. You can RSS news, comments to your posts or others, audio and video, comic strips (I am an absolute fan of xkcd.com), other people’s bookmarks (del.icio.us), and so on and so forth. In summary, RSS is a bit daunting at first, but absolutely amazing in its potential.

Image of RSS iconI’ve only given a small glimpse into the ways I harness the power of RSS. Remember to look out for the RSS icon whenever you visit a web site and consider if subscribing to it’s feed will make your life easier and/or more fun.

FINAL THOUGHT

So have you set up a feed reader yet? If you’re just getting going – please let us know what’s working for you and what’s not.

If you are experienced with using RSS how about telling us about the different RSS feeds besides blog posts that you subscribe to, and why you like subscribing to them.

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