Summaries C4K #7, #8, #9, #10

For my Comments for Kids number seven, I was assigned to Mr. Clung's post about Skyping in his classroom, Skyping w/ Mr Webb, despite him not being an actual 'kid.' Which is fine. His blog is cool, and his posts are too. In the post, Mr. McClung, who I have already "met" by way of blog post #9, details the experience his class got by Skyping with Mr. Webb's class located in New Zealand. He described the excitement the kids on both ends felt from the experience, and I can't blame them. There is just something so futuristic and thrilling about making a Skype video call. It must be the Star Wars nerd in me, but I can't help but feel like a Jedi sending holographic messages, or like Princess Leia calling Obi Wan for help via hologram inside R2D2. It's just neat. Skype is a great way to connect with people across the globe, and best part--it's free! I hope that Mr. McClung's students get to Skype again with other classes. The experience will definitely be worth it.

For my eighth such post on the blog of a student, I was assigned to the blog of Chelsea and luckily she had a rather great post for me to comment on! Chelsea is a student at an International Baccalaureate school in Adelaide Hills, South Australia, and her teacher is Pam Thompson, Learning Technologies Coordinator. Chels's post on lacrosse caught my eye and I was impressed by her sports savvy. She asked her readers what their favorite sports were, and of course, mine is football. I liked soccer well enough when I played it, but I don't think it can count as my favorite sport.

For my ninth comments for kids, I took a look around Mrs. Yollis' third grade classroom blog. The videos that Mrs. Yollis has on the blog are very useful and I appreciated the one about commenting since I had just made one last week for my project #14 video. I love to see that other people, and not just myself, are so interested in maintaining a grammatically correct and positive atmosphere comment-wise. It really makes me see red when I see a sloppily written comment, especially if it's in response to another student's post. It just seems to defeat the purpose of actually commenting in the first place.

Mrs. Yollis' class blog is not as "difficult" to maneuver as Mr. McClungs, but I understand why it needs to be simpler. She is dealing with third graders. I don't blame her. She's very professional about the blog and monitors the comments which is a great idea. It never hurts to be safe. Because our class has been commenting on her blog and her student's posts, she's even featured us in a shout out on her homepage! She's also started commenting back. Isn't it great how blogging can connect people from opposite parts of the world?

A student in Mrs. Yollis' class was my tenth Comments for Kids post, and her name is Adia. She's one of the students who wrote us a letter that Dr. Strange posted on our class blog. The post that I commented on was about Adia's new blog mascot. Her mascot is a monkey named Angel Face, and Adia created Angel Face at a party at Build-a-Bear. Angel Face loves karate and a bunch of other stuff, so Adia created a slideshow of pictures featuring Angel Faces doing all of those things. It was adorable. She inspired me to find a mascot for my blog (my personal one) and make a slideshow too! One of the reasons Adia has her own blog, Adia's Babble Blog, is because she follows Mrs. Yollis' rules and is a consistently great blogger. I can see great things in this third grader's future. Her grammar and syntax is spectacular. That is something that I respect most highly.