Comments

Blogs are meant to have comments and bloggers expect to be able to comment on a blog. Many blog authors are weary of enabling comments because they don't necessarily want everyone's opinions displayed on their blog, but this is something that can be managed with a bit of attention to blog setup. This means you can allow anyone to submit a comment to your blog, but each comment needs to be approved by you before it is posted. The whole process is quite efficient. You can set it up so you receive an email every time someone submits a comment to your blog. Then, you can approve or reject the comment.

Reasons to allow comments:

1. Visitors to your blog probably expect to have the opportunity to provide you with feedback. 
2. It can be enlightening to receive a comment. That way you know someone out there is reading your blog, and people often leave good and useful suggestions.
3. Parents viewing your blog can quickly respond to something they've just read and that keeps the communication flowing. If you would prefer to communicate with parents privately, you can say so in the comments message box, and move the conversation to the privacy of email, then just reject the comment and email the parent instead.
4. Opportunities for students to express themselves  through blog comments are exciting and provide teachers with all kinds of "teachable moments" to help students fine-tune their writing skills. Students love writing for an audience and they are motivated to publish something worth reading.
5. Teach students about Internet-safety by asking them to comment.

If you want to enable comments and comment moderation on your blog so it works the way you want it to, all you have to do is follow the directions found in the sidebar of this blog. Feel free to copy and paste the comment message samples provided on the handout right into your own blog or modify. The comments samples are the result of collaborative efforts to establish good, safe blogging that works!

Click the comments link below to view some suggested guidelines for students and to see how commenting works..

Step-by-step directions are available "Handouts" in the sidebar of this blog.