One of the powerful features of a blog is building a sense of community, developing a "conversation" between you and your visitors. This is frequently done by allowing readers to comment to what you post. In most blogging applications, you can choose to allow comments or not. If you choose to allow people to comment to your blog, you can then choose to have their comments post to the blog immediately (unmoderated) or only after they have been approved (moderated) by you.

In the school setting, when comments are open, I would strongly suggest you moderate all comments. While some more advanced blog systems allow the owner to restrict comments to members only, usually anyone in the world can comment rather anonymously to your blog if you open comments. Comments can be a powerful and positive tool. They can also be very abused. Spam can also be posted in comments advertising anything you can imagine.

If you choose to allow comments, teaching your students how to comment appropriately is just as important as teaching them to ask meaningful questions in class. Comments that are reflective and represent intelligent behaviors are a welcomed addition to the learning process. Comments that are inappropriate, offensive, or unrelated to learning can minimize the effectiveness of this learning tool.

One final word on comments: I have referred to comments as being open (on) or not available at all (off). But comments can also be closed. Most blog systems allow you to open comments and then, after you feel the need for the comments has passed, close the post to comments. When comments are closed, the reader can see the previous comments that were published to the post but can not add a new comment.

Think of ways you could use comments to enhance learning on your blog. What are the trade-offs involved?

[As a teaching tool, I have opened comments to this blog. Counting on your professionalism as part of this learning community, I have not chosen to moderate the comments, so comments are not required to be approved before they appear. To comment to a post simply click on the word "Comments" in the footer of each entry. The number next to the word "Comments" indicates the number of comments already published to that post. My comments are set up to require the commenter provide an email address. Under what conditions might this be wise in the school setting?]