Through this process I’m learning a lot about community. It appears that we’re basically in agreement that blogging is not a solitary pursuit. I think one of the main reasons we all start professional blogs is to take part in conversation with others in the profession, to learn from and with each other. Unfortunately the “Field of Dreams” metaphor doesn’t hold true here. Readers won’t come just because you’ve built a place for them. Community doesn’t just happen; it must be built one conversation at a time.

The Comment Challenge is proving to be an excellent impetus to build community. I’ve been trying to pick out key features of the community as I’ve been watching it grow. Here are a few that have caught my attention.

1. Purpose. Just as there is a reason why the community where you live exists geographically, online communities need a sense of purpose. In the Comment Challenge we share a common purpose – (as stated by Kim Cofino), “to become better blog citizens by actively participating in conversations and sharing our learning, especially with those new to blogging”.
2. Culture. We are building and sharing a culture of learning. When you read through the conversations, you see it stated over and over that we are learning this, that and the other thing. What we’re seeing here is that our learning is embedded in our common purpose. For instance, we’re all struggling with the various tools we’re using to track our conversations, but we are doing it together as part of moving toward our common purpose. I haven’t run into anyone yet who has said: “Ok folks, I’m having trouble with coComment. I’m going to wait for the in-service, then try and find some time to learn it, and then I’ll be back to take part.” It has become part of our culture to learn how to use these tools in situ.
3. Interaction. Many of us are seeing increased traffic to our own blogs, “click-throughs” from the comments we’re leaving on the blogs of others. Interaction involves risk-taking, but the professional tone and supportive manner I am seeing everywhere I go is building confidence in the individual members of the group, in turn adding to the strength of the community.

For me a lot of the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place; a picture of a vibrant learning community is taking shape!

Technorati tags: comment08, coComment, Comment Challenge, Kim Cofini, building community

Today’s challenge relates to comment tracking. This is a critical element of commenting. When you make the effort to comment on someone’s post, it’s usually because the writer struck a chord and drew you into the conversation. It follows that you would have an interest in seeing where the conversation goes. A number of blogs have a “Follow this conversation by e-mail” function. That’s the first method I used to track a conversation and I have to admit I might still use it for a conversation in which I’m deeply involved.

About a year ago I started looking for a more efficient way to track the conversations in which I was involved. I was also coming to the realization that some of my best thinking and writing was happening on other people’s blogs, leaving my own looking a bit barren. That’s when I found coComment. It seemed to offer what I was looking for – a way to track my comments and aggregate them on my own blog through a widget. If you are interested in having a detailed look at how coComment works visit Sue Waters‘ blog. She has done a superb job of explaining how to use this tool.

I had stopped using coComment a while back because I was finding it cumbersome and felt it was slowing down my posting. I’m having a fresh look now as part of the Comment Challenge. There are features that I missed before or that have been added recently that I’m finding worthy of a second look.

1. Tags. When you track a comment you can tag it with one or more keywords. Then when you view your comment page you can click on any of your tags to see just those comments. Love this feature!
2. RSS. I don’t think I could function without RSS so I was pleased to see that I can pull in the feed from any of the conversations or groups I’m tracking. I’ve subscribed to the feed for the Comment Challenge group and am reading the comments in Google Reader. So far, I think I like this.
3. Social networking. I had noticed before that coComment suggests “neighbours” and allows you to add friends and follow their comments. Personally I can barely keep up with the blogs I subscribe to; I’m not even going to try to keep track of other people’s comments! I do however like the “Group” feature. We’re using it to pull together the comments of the 100 or so people involved in the Commenting Challenge. I can see how this would be an asset in the classroom and in professional learning!

There are other comment tracking systems as well. Maybe I’ll have time to look at them during this challenge. Better yet, I’ll see what others post as part of the Day 3 Activity!

Technorati tags: Comment Challenge, comment08, Sue Waters, coComment