Sue Dunlop Consulting

58 Days, 50 Comments

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by

Sue Dunlop

postit_commentsI finished my #nerdlution exactly 9 days ago. I loved doing it. It made me keep up on my blog feeds and search out new bloggers. I found some great ones that I’m following now.  Check out my Blogs I Follow page for an update.

Thank you to everyone who encouraged me and sent me their blogs to read. That was really fun.

People really like it when you comment on their blog. That was not a surprise to me. I love it when people comment on mine. And while there are those superstar educator bloggers who get tons on comments on every post, most of us write our thoughts and throw them out in to the cloud, hoping that someone, anyone, will read them.

The blogs I usually read are written by educators in formal leadership roles: principals, vice principals, and superintendents. I also regularly read teachers blogging about big ideas in education. I’ve never explored the huge number of blogs written by classroom teachers about their daily practice. These are some powerful posts! There are so many passionate teachers thinking deeply about what they do every day with students. I would encourage all classroom teachers to find some to follow. It will challenge and enhance your own thinking.

Even though there’s a lot of deep thinking out there among educators, there’s also quite a bit that’s derivative. Some days I had to sift through a number of blogs to find one that spoke in a new way to me. That’s the challenge as a blogger; we all experience similar things in education, but you have to find your authentic voice and bring forward your perspective. I find it hard when I blog too. I discard many ideas, because when I try to go deeper, I realize I have nothing new to say.

Some bloggers have turned comments off. I guess they’ve had a bad experience with trolls. I feel bad about that. I stand by my original post on commenting back at the beginning of 2013. Social media is about connecting with others, and comments add to those connections.

Confession time: I didn’t do 50 comments in 50 days. What with work, a cold, and a vacation, I managed 50 comments in 58 days. It was quite a challenge to track some of them down, since I wasn’t as diligent as I thought about tweeting out.  I give special thanks to a teacher in our district, Aviva Dunsiger, for helping me.

I’ve captured all my comments here.

Comments

4 Responses to “58 Days, 50 Comments”

  1. Heidi Siwak Avatar
    Heidi Siwak

    49 comments? That’s impressive!

    Reply
  2. adunsiger Avatar
    adunsiger

    Sue, I really commend you on taking on this challenge, and even though you didn’t quite make it to 50 comments (although I was following along and was sure that you did), the 49 is incredible! You inspired me to comment more too, and that’s a good thing. I love getting comments from others on my posts, and it’s great when we can share that love!

    Your paragraph that begins, “Even though there’s a lot of deep thinking out there among educators, there’s also quite a bit that’s derivative.,” really made me stop and think. Is it okay that many of us do write on similar topics? Sometimes maybe it’s not about sharing something new, but just the act of sharing that means something. The Stuart Shanker Book Club that I’m involved in now made me realize how often I blog for the purpose of “self-regulation” (and a very special “thank you” to my VP for reminding me of this too), and in that case, sometimes the posts are as much for me as they are for others. We also all have different people following our blogs, reading our words, and maybe learning from and/or connecting to what we say in different ways.

    So I’d almost encourage people to blog on a similar topic (even if they don’t have something “new” to share) if it really means something to them. Blog posts speak to all of us in different ways, and it was great to see your comments and see how they spoke to you!

    Aviva

    Reply
    1. sjdunlop Avatar
      sjdunlop

      I appreciate your thoughts, Aviva. I agree that many use blogging for a reflection tool, me included. I also think that someone really interested in blogging needs to find their voice so blogs are not just an endless repetition of the same thing. Then a blogger won’t have an audience. And I have a sneaking suspicion that while we may say we only blog for ourselves, the act of publishing on the web means that we also want interaction with others and an audience for our ideas.

      Reply
      1. adunsiger Avatar
        adunsiger

        I can totally see your point here, Sue! Yes, I love to get comments on my posts, and yes, I try to encourage the discussion with my post questions and tweets (with the hope of furthering my own learning). Do my posts sometimes overlap with ideas shared by others? Yes. But the thinking comes from my own experiences/conversations both in and out of the classroom. It’s funny, but often as I talk to people or observe something during the day, I’ll say, “I need to blog about that,” and then I do. Sometimes it’s cathartic to share, & just the act of writing makes me feel better, & sometimes I REALLY hope for the comments & the discussion. All of this being said, I often hear people say that they don’t blog because they don’t have anything new to say. To me, the act of not blogging means losing out on the possibility of some deep connections & conversations. So this is when I think that it’s worth blogging, with the hope that as time goes on, you do find your niche, & the discussions aren’t all the same.

        Thanks, as always, for pushing my thinking!
        Aviva

        Reply

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