It’s been 31 Days of hard work, slogging away, often feeling like there was no way that we could make it over the steep mountains, but we have! 31Days to Build a Better Blog are over!

WOW what a fantastic journey, we have learnt so much, our blogs are better and more importantly we have formed a community that has worked together that found knowledge gain from the 31 Day Project was greater than working as individuals, because each individual sees a different perspective of the task – giving participants greater “food for thought!”

For many of us, the famous sweet twist of Chocolate to the 31 Day Project – 1 kg to the blogger who gains the most and $25 voucher to the reader who is the best commenter on a participants blog – was incentive to participate. As Christine commented in an email “While chocolate was a really fun way to kick this off, it has become so much more, the chocolate seems immaterial.”

Our most valuable gain during the 31 Day Project was our community which supported each other support during this intense time. For this reason we have decided to form a blogging support community at Ning (Betterblog.ning.com). This group is open and we invite you to join. We’ll be discussing blogging best practices and going through periodic weekly challenges designed to help us continue to develop our blogs.

Yes, the chocolate has become immaterial but Frances and I still have to honor our commitment to award the chocolate (a promise is a promise and we owe it to the sponsors of the Chocolate Challenge – The Chocolate Box and James Farmer from Edublogs). Thanks to our sponsors for donating these prizes! Both the winner of “best blogger” and “best commenter” was decided by the challenge participants.

Winners Are

And the winners of both the “best blogger” and “best commenter” are ……..Al Upton and The MiniLegends. Let me first clarify that it was never intended to award both prizes to the same individual/group however when I explain our reasons for choosing the MiniLegends I hope you will understand!

Here are the reasons why the MiniLegends were chosen as the Winners:

Blogger who gained the most

• The miniLegends are 8-9 years old – the same age as my youngest son. These kids are just starting their journey in life (reading and writing is a CHALLENGE still).
• For most of us the chocolate is immaterial but for the MiniLegends chocolate is not immaterial. The prize will encourage kids in this class to keep doing what they are doing and inspire other classes in their school to get involved. And WOW if this encourages more kids and teachers from schools all around the World to engaging their students in blogging how wonderful would that be!

The reader who is the best commenter on a participants blog

• It is hard it is for this age to write at 8-9 years old and yet the MiniLegends visited our blogs, read some of our posts (LOL even adults struggle reading my posts) and actually commented on our post
• Further more some of the miniLegends wrote incredible comments

All the blogging participants are about “Helping others and making a difference!” . Our greatest opportunity to make a difference is to award the prizes to the MiniLegends!

Thank You to My Readers

I also want to thank all of the readers who took the time in the past month to email me or comment on my posts. There are days when wonder why I keep doing what I do, and the comments and nice emails letting me know I’ve made a difference keeps me going. So thank you, my readers.

If I had to choose a reader that supported me the most on the tasks during this challenge (if you remove the blogging participants) it would be Gary Barber (Man With No Blog). Gary has been fantastic, for willingly and without being asked, mentoring, guiding and commenting on blogs on participants based in Western Australia. So have decided that I will personally organise something to thank him for his amazing support.

The End of the 31 Day Project?

The 31 Day Project may have ended, but this is NOT THE END for us!

The group that formed to meet this challenge has become very tight, and we are in the process of setting up a network for our community. WATCH this space – more about that later!

Final Thanks

As Michelle says “I do want to thank all of the 31 Day project participants. They’ve been a wonderful group of people to go with on this journey and I know that I couldn’t have even remotely completed this process without their support and ongoing motivation.”

So thanks to: Alex Miller, Al Upton and the MiniLegends, Cammy Bean, Christine Martell, Eklavya, Frances McLean, Kate Foy, Kate Quinn, Laura Whitehead, Michelle Martin , Paul Webster, Sue Hickton, Tim Davies – I could not have done it without YOU ALL!