The Commenting Process

This message focuses the commenting process. Most of you may not be ready for comments for a week or two so keep this message handy for when you start comments with your students. There are two important things to remember.

1. Teacher is Poetry Author on Every Entry

It is critically important that you are listed as the author for EVERY poem. This author change will prevent students from bypassing moderation of comments.

• Go to the bottom right of the page and find the Author popup. It will indicate a student user.
• Change the author to your name. (see image to right)

2. Students Must be Logged Out of System

Your students may be well trained to log into your blog. For commenting students must be logged out.

• When logged in and commenting all comments will appear to be made by “stu000” rather than by individuals.
• Students should NEVER be logged in when commenting.
  Instructional Tip: Explain and show students how to Logout from the system when commenting. There is a Logout Link at the top of the Reply Box - so just teach and re-teach students to use the Logout Link when they see it while posting a comment.
• The student login can not bypass moderation when commenting on an entry authored by the teacher/admin or when commenting on some other school’s blog.

Moderation – Managing Comments
I set up all the blogs so that all comments are moderated. It is possible that I might have missed this in a blog or two. If you find that comments are not moderated, please let me know. You can view and approve/reject comments being held for moderation by clicking on the Comment menu. You can also Edit comments and Unnapprove them. The student login can view all comments (held comments will be gray). Students can not approve or edit comments.

Email Notifications
The email notification was also enabled on everyone’s blog by default. You can turn this off when you find the messages annoying. Go to Options menu and click on the Discussion tab.