Connecting and supporting other bloggers is an important part of blogging. By following other bloggers you might get more tips on blogging and tips or resources to use in real life. There are many ways and social media that can help with connecting with other bloggers. We can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other websites.

Step 4 of the Edublogs Teacher Blog Challenge was about commenting and connecting with others. Posting your own post is important, but at the same time it is important to read and comment on other bloggers’ posts. The blogging cycle includes evaluate, review, reflect and revise. This cycle is called reflective blogging. Commenting also includes replying to people that comments on your posts.

Commenting is an important part of blogging. The comments on blog post are enabled by default, and the author can change this in their blog’s settings. The comments appear at the bottom of each post, other the comments the readers are able to respond to what you have written. If the comments are approved by the post’s author, then they are going to be displayed under the author’s post. There are no rules for commenting, but we should be using some of this commenting etiquettes from Edublog……

• Be polite and stay on topic.
• Where possible refer to the blogger or another commenter by their first name.
• Try to contribute new ideas to the conversation.
• Don’t comment if you are doing it just for self-promotion.
• Avoid being too negative. If you don’t agree say it in a nice way and provide an explanation of your alternative viewpoint.
• There are no rules to how long or short a comment should be. However, if it is a long comment think about if it is worth responding to by writing your own post in response.
• Respond back to comments on your own posts. It shows you value readers’ comments. Some educators also send an email reply to their commenters. This ensures the commenter receives your response and provides a more personalized experience –strengthening your PLN.
• Select to be notified of follow up comments if the option is available. This notifies you of follow up comments by email and makes it easier for you to respond back with further comments.

What is RSS?

In step four I also learned about RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This is an effective way of keeping in touch with other bloggers. With this we are able to know when new information is added to a website. This helps you by not having to go and visit the website every time a post is posted. In order to use RSS you will need a RSS feed reader. One example of a feed reader would be Feedly. Using an RSS feed will allow you to subscribe to your favorite websites. Once subscribe then you are going to receive the updated to it and you can read it from the RSS feed reader.