Here's the comment I left for him:
Hey, Nate,
I'll echo what Bill said about the "Great post!" style comments. I have a teacher in my building who advised me not to "allow" (in the moderation sense) those types of comments. I smiled and moved the conversation along, knowing that I want my students communicating with each other, not leaving NYT-worthy commentary. Sure, if a student leaves a few too many "Great post!" comments (whatever that number may be) I pull the student aside and ask her to "step it up" but I don't discourage back-patting comments from the start.
I've found that not putting points on comments was the smartest thing I could do. It took a lot of unlearning for my kids plus one come-to-Jesus class discussion, but they now fully believe me when I say that the conversations they have on our blog are for their learning, and that's it. "What do I get for commenting?" Learning. "What happens if I don't leave any comments?" You don't get to learn as much as you would have. Basically, my advice is not to steal the authenticity.
To attempt an analogy, I can't imagine I'd be as active on Twitter and commenting/sharing blogs if I had a quota I had to hit. Or possibly a better way to think about it: if I had a quota of sites to share on Twitter every day, I would bet that my sharing would be right around that number, rarely much more.
The other place I'll give a big "Heck yeah!" to Bill is in "giving to receive." We have access to computers once a week or so. The only requirements I have at that time is that they leave more comments on other blogs than on our own blog (for each other.) No set numbers, just more for others than for ourselves.
Without turning this comment into a blog post, what I've attempted to do with our class blog is give the kids their own blogs inside our blog. On the far right sidebar of our blog you'll the kids names listed. Those are links to their labels. Click on a student's name and you're at "her blog." We use the labels extensively to keep things organized. Next year, I plan on expanding on that even further. We just don't write enough for kids to have their own blogs. At this point in the year, each student would have only 4 posts. Personally, I don't do well following blogs that post once every other month. If your kids are posting more often, their own blogs should work fine.
Something else I'll say is to get them involved with getting readers. My kids have an easy-to-remember URL for our "student writing" label. http://tr.im/mrgkids. I've preached to them on Fridays and before holidays to tell their friends and families about their blogs.
I agree that making it easy for commenters is key. You're on the right track. Can't wait to see what you come up with!
(Special thanks to Bill @wmchamberlain for being the catalyst behind #comments4kids. My kids are eternally grateful.)
Russ
So much for not turning that comment into a blog post.
If you have any ideas for Nate or about class blogs in general, please leave him a comment on his site. I don't want to steal his conversation.


