Why is thing 4 important?

Comments are a way to continue the conversation and even spark new conversations and thoughts. As more people comment on the post and as they begin to comment on other people's comments the conversations can grow into great things. From what I gather, commenting makes the author feel as if they are heard and I think when someone feels as if they are being heard then they can become more confident in what they are saying. Not only that, comments can also bring along other points of view the author may not have seen before. No one person can see every point of view and I, as a writer, have a lot to learn. The easiest way to learn is through feedback and that is a bit of what commenting is all about. I think when you gather good feelings, conversations, and learning, a community of thoughts and interactions cannot help but exist. That brings up a few good points from the articles that I read about commenting. The first, which I believe to be of great importance, is that comments should be made welcome because without feedback, improvement is impossible. The other that I found quite important was the bit about criticism because so many people, myself included, have tried to give a bit of healthy criticism and had it blow up in their face because the words came out wrong. It takes a long time to learn how to give healthy criticism and I have always been confused by the difference in good criticism and bad. I have even come to a point where I stop giving it because I am too afraid that my words will come out wrong. That is why I was so happy to see that the author posted some great tips in giving good, healthy criticism, including keeping an explanation as brief as possible. This makes sense, now that I think about it, because no one wants to have to dwell on something that was not liked by another person and the more they have to read about it, the longer they are having to do just that. From our group I decided to read from Sarah Clark, Brionna Rand, Cody Douchane, Daniel Lugo, and Lindsey Oliphant and commented on each of their blogs because I had something in common with each of them and their posts spoke to me in the similarities. I commented early so most of the posts I commented on were about thing 1. In my comment I told whether the same was true for me or not and elaborated briefly. Then I attempted to leave a compliment on each. There were two that I commented on thing 3 instead and I agreed with both about the uses of blogging inside the classroom. On these I said that I agreed and complimented their thinking and then left a suggestion that further expanded on the use they wrote about. Outside of our group I decided to read from The Thinking Stick's post about teaching social media because I completely agree that someone should be teaching social media to adolescents. On this post I also tried to elaborate on my belief as to why adolescents are not already being taught about the proper use of social media. I also read Free Technology for Teachers's post about IBrainstorm because it helped me to find an amazing app to help me keep up with my thoughts. I left loads of compliments for this one because it was very helpful. I also wrote the reason that it was helpful to me and the reason it might also be helpful to some of my future students who do not learn the same way that I do.