Hibr via Compfight

Every year, Edublogs present a digital award for those best educational class and student blogs. You get a chance to nominate then vote for the one you consider deserves the award. There are a few rules about nominating so you will need to

go to this link,

read the post, then put forward your nomination. You don’t have to nominate an edublogs blog it could be from weebly like our Serbian bloggers or from blogspot like many of our New Zealand bloggers. It just has to be an educational blog.

Nominations close on December 2nd at 6:59pm!

Once you have nominated, the blogs will be shortlisted and then I will write another post including a poll for you to come and vote for the blog you think deserves the award. You will need to vote here on the student blogging challenge poll when it comes out.

If you hope to have your blog nominated, then Miss W suggests you have some fantastic posts ready for any visitors to read and comment on.

When being shortlisted for student blogs, we look for quality of posts, appearance of blog, as well as commenting.

Good luck, get nominating and writing.

More Good Foundation via Compfight

Miss W loved reading your posts about things in nature you are passionate about.

So many of you wrote about space and the universe. One student Rachel, wants you to visit her post, create your own planet and leave the answer in her comment area. Her instructions for this are below the wordle in her post. Sophie taught me a lot about stars and how they develop. Mia’s post was written in a very personal way about our mind boggling universe. Jack combined his love of space and oceans in his post.

Reece wrote a great post about the comments he left and from that I found a few more posts about student nature passions. Kathryn wrote about interdependency and  Sarah wrote about camel coolness. Joaquin also wrote a great post about comments he left.

Many of our Serbian students wrote about the natural scenery and tourist attractions in their country. Check them out from the sidebar of their class blog. Remember to use the Translate button if they have written their post in Serbian.

Mr Woods class in New Zealand has tadpoles in their room. Two of their caretakers wrote a great post.

Ian showed his passion for rivers in his post while Penelope tells us much about a smelly plant.

Dane, whose class recently began the challenge activities, showed his passion for volcanoes. I learnt some interesting facts about guide dogs from Kaylie’s post.

Bradley thought outside the square to look at nature from a mathematical perspective.

Now to this week’s activity

Before you start, please make sure you have at least 5 other student blogs linked on the sidebar of your blog or in a recent post that your visitors can find easily. Make sure these are blogs from other students around the world, not just those in your class or school. Perhaps have a blogroll or link category called Global students or Global classes. Here is how to add a blogroll if using Edublogs.

 

Game week is all about visiting other blogs.

Student and class blogs – new bloggers and old hands at the blogging – mentors as well as participants.

Remember one of  the main aims of blogging includes commenting and carrying on conversations with the author of posts and their other readers.

A good commenter will have:

• read the post carefully,
• checked out the links in the post
• read the previous comments before they leave one of their own
• added to the conversation with a quality comment – remember that video from Mrs Yollis’ class.

Game rules

This is a game we have run for many challenges and allows you to connect globally.

Those who have taken part in a challenge before know the game of  ‘Count Out Three’. Here are the instructions:

• click on a blog on the student list or class list– count one
• now click on a blog from their blogroll – count two
• finally click on a blog from that blogroll – count three

Leave a comment on an interesting post at this third blog. Remember to include the URL of your blog, so that person can visit you as well.

Make sure you are also replying to any comments that have been left for you.

Do this activity at least three times and finally, write your own post saying which blogs you visited and which posts you left a comment on. Why did you choose that post? Remember to include a link back to the post you left a comment on.
The title for this post should be SBC 8:1 Title.

Get to it – start visiting and leaving quality comments that show you have read the post. 

How many quality comments could you leave this week? Can you leave 10, 20 or maybe 50???

Jose Roberto V Moraes via Compfight

This week is going to be a chance for you to write a post about something you are passionate about relating to nature.
The title of this post should be SBC 7:1 Title.

For this activity, nature is defined as everything not made by man.

What topics might this include?

• animals
• plants and trees
• rocks and fossils
• stars and planets
• landscapes – mountains, rivers, volcanoes, oceans etc

As long as the topic has nothing to do with being made by humans, then you should be able to write about it.

Having read many of your posts, Miss W came up with the following essentials in a great post.

1. catchy title
2. includes at least two visuals whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet, glogster, wordle etc
3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through, shows well researched topic
4. well written and not copy/pasted from somewhere else
5. shows it has been proofread and spellchecked
6. written in paragraphs – at least three of them
7. includes links to other websites on similar topics – at least two of these
8. attribution for any images, video, music or clip art used – including those used in slideshows etc

Remember to CLICK HERE and leave a comment including the URL of your post once it has been published by your teacher. Miss W will only be visiting those that have the correct URL in the comment.

NEWS FLASH FOR NEXT WEEK       NEWS FLASH FOR NEXT WEEK

Next week we will be running a game about visiting other blogs, so if there are a few students or classes you love visiting, add them as links on your sidebar.

Also make sure you have an up to date widget for gathering visitor data. Miss W noticed clustrmaps on Edublogs blogs needs to be updated to their new clustrmaps. Click on the map on your blog, and you will be directed to a post written by Sue Waters about how to get your map working again.

Maia C via Compfight

Make sure you have a great post on your blog that visitors will want to leave a comment on because that is the only activity to do this week.

Visit other blogs and leave quality comments.

Visit at least 10 blogs (5 may be HMS students’ blogs), leaving a comment on each one.

• Use the list of student or class blogs to find some posts you could read. Remember those class blogs with names in mauve have a list of students in the sidebar or in a list on a page on the blog.
• Or click on the flipboard magazine and find some great posts in there. Click on the writing of the post in the flipboard and it should open to the actual blog post. I am adding about 100 posts there each week so lots for you to choose from.

Your comment should:

1. Be addressed to the writer of the post
2. Make a connection to the writer or add extra information about the post or relate to something you have seen or done relating to the post
3. Be proofread for spelling and punctuation
4. Include your blog URL or class blog URL

Below are some great posts written for previous activities throughout this challenge. You might want to visit some of them to leave comments. (These couldn’t be flipped)

Mel, Ellie, Jared, Aiden, Mason, Hoow20, Kathryn, Victoria, Wilao, Gisele, Mary, Farhiyam,

Summary posts written by classes

Mr Helpern on Halloween, McDowell media on foods, Mr Dawson’s class now have avatars,Mrs Smith’s class on food and using wikimedia images

NEWS FLASH   NEWS FLASH

There is no need to leave Miss W a comment when you finish this activity. She will be spending this week getting the student lists updated and adding mentors to some students. She will also be looking at some of the class blogs she hasn’t visited yet in the challenge.

An important part of blogging as part of a global community is learning more about each others’ culture.  Food is often one of the first things you notice when visiting another country.

This week we’re going to learn more about each others’ culture by sharing stories about food popular in our country or asking other participants questions about food in their country.

To help you get started, Miss W is going to tell you about food that is popular in Australia.

Vegemite

Vegemite is uniquely Australian and most Aussies have a jar of Vegemite in their house.  We even have our own Vegemite song! It’s a dark brown food paste made from leftover brewers’ yeast, vegetables and additives.

Our favorite way of eating Vegemite is on toasted bread with a layer of margarine (or butter) spread with a thin layer of Vegemite.

While some might say Vegemite is an acquired taste — the true secret to eating Vegemite is the thin layer of Vegemite on toast.  Most of the hilarious taste testing Vegemite videos on YouTube are caused by trying to eat Vegemite like you would Peanut butter, Nutella or Jam.

Aussie Meat Pies

The Meat pie is considered iconic in Australia and New Zealand.  These are hand-sized meat pies made up of diced or minced meat and vegetables.

Most Australian bakeries sell a wide variety of meat pies, sausage rolls in addition to bread and cakes.  Meat pies and sausage rolls are a common lunch food here and you can also buy them at most lunch bars and petrol stations.

Each bakery has their own unique recipes.

You might enjoy making meat pies with your students.  It isn’t hard.

Here are some tips:

• Follow this Curtis Stone Meat Pie recipe.
• Make the filling in advance and wait until it is completely cooled until you use it to fill the pies (I don’t add the chicken livers).
• You eat the pie by holding it in your hand.

Food in other Countries

A challenge with visiting other countries is sometimes the food you are used to isn’t available or is hard to get.

Watch Brian Lockwood video where he discusses the challenges of buying bread in China.  Brian is an American teacher who works at a school in Nanjing, China.

Activity 1: 

Write a post on food that is popular in Hawai’i.
In your post, include links to where you researched and some images with attribution. You might also want to add a collage of images or a slideshow you have created.
The title for this post should be SBC 5:1 Title.

Activity 2:  

Visit Inside Scoops Taco Tuesday post to learn what their students eat for lunch.  Leave a comment on Taco Tuesday post to let them know what you eat for school lunches in where you live OR write a post to share what school lunches are like where you live.
The title for this post should be SBC 5:2 Title.

Activity 3:  

Create a poll or survey and embed it into a post to find out more about the types of foods eaten by your readers.
The title for this post should be SBC 5:3 Title.

Activity 4:

Visit at least 5 blogs from other countries. Click here to view the list of the participating classes. Leave a comment on a post at each blog to ask them questions about food in their country. Now write your own post including the comment you have left and linking to each post you commented on.
The title for this post should be SBC 5:4 Title.

 

 

Check out these posts that couldn’t be flipped:

Add to Allegra’s story, Alice, Rachel’s creative commons video, Kloey, Teagan, Tayah, Chelsea,Tahlia, Ella, Mia’s video about widgets, Milica from Serbia – use the translation widget, Emily,Angel, Camille created a glogster on commenting, Aisho’s tribute to her grandma, Mary Ellen,Alexis on commenting, Gauri, Mary Ellen,

Classes with links to student posts

Huzzah – cat, dog or both with images

Mrs Arendts grade 5 class – have introduced themselves and would love some comments

Room 19 Allstars  have done some great Blog Action Day posts

Mr Helpern’s students used images with attribution

Students writing in comments

Favourite family time,

Here is the link to the flipboard magazine where many of your #RaiseYourVoice posts were flipped.

A range of topics were raised from looking at diseases to girls education and of course bullying online and in real life.

Decorating your blog

Rhea, Ella, Mikaila, Victoria, Caitlyn,