After completely failing to complete my 31-day Comment Challenge, I have learned that as much as one can try to get a certain project done, sometimes real life takes over and the project has to take a back seat.  Unfortunately I did not complete the challenge.

However, something that did get done over the past few weeks is very exciting to me.  I played a minor role in presentation that was given at the British Association of Occupational Therapists in discussing the role of Web 2.0  (social networking specifically) and the professional development of occupational therapists.  As a result, and with the guidance of Merrolee Penman, the two of us were able to make an 11th hour sumbission to the AOTA to possible present at their conference next year in Houston, Texas.  For more info on the presentation at the BAOT conference, see Merrolee and Sarah/Angela’s blogs.

This one was pretty easy.  See here for my disagreement.

Here it is on May 18th, and I’m only up to Day 4.  Unfortunately, I have bouts of time where I get busy with real life and don’t have time to blog. I have some catching up to do!

For the Day 4 challenge, I’ll actually refer back to a question I asked in a speech therapy blog, linked here (scroll way down).

This task was relatively simple.  I signed up for CoComment, a service that allows you to track the comments you’ve made on other blogs, as well as the replies to your comments on those other blogs.  I’m sure this will come in handy for future challenges

Many of us can get into the habit of commenting at the same blogs. But part of extending the conversation is bringing new people into it. Today’s task is simple. Leave a comment on a blog where you’ve never commented before. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, do this at a few blogs. You may want to blog about the experience on your own blog. If you do, be sure to tag it with “comment08″

Looking at my site stats, I found a blog linking to my own that I had never seen.  It was cleverly named, “Oh Tea” and is a brand new blog written by an occupational therapy (OT) student.  She had found my blog and was kind enough to link to me. I’ll post over there to welcome her to the blogging world

In an effort to increase my blogging skills and learn more about enhancing my blog and networking with other blogs, I have decided to join the 31 Day Comment Challenge.  Since I’m starting this on May 5th, I’m obviously five days late, so I have some catching up to do.

Day 1 Challenge:

Answer the following questions:

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
  • Unfortunately, I don’t comment on other blogs very often.  If I had to give it a number, I’d say I make less than one comment a week on other blogs.
• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
  • WordPress does let me track my comments, but if I have multiple comments, it can difficult.  If there is a comment that needs attending to, I’ll save the email that notified me of the comment in my inbox, and I won’t delete it until I’ve addressed the comment.  Currently, I have about 7 comments that need to be addressed.
• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
  • I do tend to comment on the same blogs.  Occasionally, when I find a new blog that looks interesting, I’ll comment on a new blog.
• Now review Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments and ask yourself how well you’re doing in each of the different areas. Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?
  • I’ve been on the Internet long enough to have witnessed every single behavior listed on that website, and I’ve been annoyed by it enough to know proper netiquette.