October 16-22 is Digital Citizenship Week in USA.

One important aspect of being a responsible digital citizen is our topic for this challenge.

There is a lot to learn in this challenge so it will be running for a two week period. The next challenge will be posted on 30 October and will be a guest post.

one of our mentors in 2014, Maria, has put together some lists with great tools when using images and audio. The Edublogger also has a post on free image sources. Above the challenge blog header is a page containing a symbaloo with many tools to use on your blog – many relate to images.

BEFORE doing the activities

This week’s activities are going to be fun but first there are
some things you need to know so please read carefully.

I have been visiting many blogs over the last few weeks. Some students new to blogging have been writing some great posts while others who have been blogging for a bit longer have started adding videos and images to their posts.

Yes, this week we deal with using images, music, and sounds in your posts.

But can’t I use any image, music or sound that is on the internet?
No, you must use creative commons or in some cases the fair use rule.
But where can I find these images, music and sounds? Can’t I use anything when I google an image?No, your blog is public so you must use creative commons images, sounds, music and videos.

 

Sue Waters over at the teacher challenge has written a fantastic post about images, copyright and creative commons.  Head over there to read the post. She explains about creative commons and the licenses, attribution, how to find images for your blog and how to upload images to your blog.  Yes, there are a lot of words, but there are pictures as well!

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Have you read Sue Waters’ post yet? No? Off you go then come back here for more information and the activities!

Yes? Then please continue on.

Other places to find information

• Head to the creative commons website.
• Check out the CC wiki to find out what is happening in your country. What are the different licenses used?
• Teachers check out the education section of creative commons.
• Youtube allows creative commons for videos.
• Teachers: A fantastic guide to copyright, fair use and creative commons has been written by Ronnie Burt and I would suggest you read this to understand more about using images, music and video on your blogs. Also includes what might happen if you use an image etc incorrectly.
• Larry Ferlazzo also has a great “Best List for images” that you might want to check out as well.

OK I want to use some legal creative commons images and music in my slideshow. Where can I go to get them?

Do you have compfight plugin for your blogging platform? Follow the instructions from Sue Waters’ post.

Maria, a mentor from 2014, created some lists of tools to use with images and audio.

Other places to get images and music:

You will need to work out how to get the attribution to put on your posts. Check Sue Waters’  post to get more help and more places for images. This post from Edublogs explains how to add media in all its forms to your blog posts or pages.

Images

• Morguefile
• Open ClipArt
• Pics4learning
• Photosforclass including a review by CommonSense Education and how to cite

Make sure you check out the links under creative commons in the sidebar of the challenge blog.

Music and sound effects

Jamendo, CCMixter, post with 14 websites for music, post with 20+ websites for music, post with 55+ sites with sound effects

Now for the activities for this fortnight

Activity 1: In class. Watch the first video about sharing work and write a post about what you learned. Include words such as attribution, share alike, licenses and derivatives to show you understand what the video was about.

The next video is the reaction of students in Mrs. Yollis’ class when she mislabelled their artwork. How would you have felt?

Activity 2: In class. Check out the third video for a story using remix and fair use of video. What was interesting, positive or negative about it?

Activity 3 (OR Activity 4). Find an image or piece of music. Add it to your post (with attribution) and write a poem relating to the image or music. Invite your readers to write their own poems. Here is Fernando’s example, and here is another: Samantha is confused.

Activity 4 (OR Activity 3). Similar to activity 3. Find an interesting landscape image (include attribution).  Write the beginning of a story relating to your image. Remember to include a conflict of some sort between your characters. Invite your readers to finish the story. How many different endings can you get? Which ending do you prefer? You might need to visit some other bloggers and invite them to finish your story. Remember to leave the URL of your post for them to click on.

Activity 5: Optional. Write a sentence using just images – no words. You still need to include attribution for each image you have used.

Activity 6: Mandatory for 7th & 8th. Find at least 5 images that create a story – again no words only the attribution for each image.

Activity 7. Create a slideshow, photo gallery or poster about your interests to add to your about me page or as a separate post. Your final slide should include attribution for each image.

Activity 8: Optional. Create your own images and add to a post of your choice. In your post add a link to the website or tool you used to create your image.

Other options for creating your own images include:

1. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,  ToonDoo
2. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
3. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts! Leave a comment on this post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.

Activity 9: Mandatory for 7th & 8th.  Zoom out from an image

We first tried this activity in the challenge in September 2010. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments.  Check out the example from Huzzah who finished their story. If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story.

Check out these zoom pictures: Becky, Jacqueline, Abbey

Activity 10: Mandatory for 7th & 8th.  Go back to previous posts

If you have used images in any previous posts you have written, then you are ethically obliged to give the correct attribution or take the image out of the post if it does not have the right creative commons license.  Samudra  wrote a great post about using wikipedia commons.

Activity 11: Optional.  Create a jigsaw from your image. Mrs Schmidt’s class has done this using Jigsaw Planet . Here is her explanation:

Last week (2014) my students made some jigsaw puzzles about famous places in our area.  First each student created one Power Point Slide showing a photo and some facts about a location in our area.  They saved the slide as a JPEG and then uploaded it to Jigsaw Planet.  Once the puzzle was created, they published a link to it on their Kidblog. Click on Niamh’s puzzle link.

Activity 12: In class. Discuss different websites where you can find creative commons images. Are there any widgets you can add to your blog to make this easier?

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Still got time left this fortnight (two weeks):

1. Visit other student and class blogs – leave some quality comments.

2. Reply to comments on your own blog.

3. Start using tags and categories with each post you write to make it easier for people to find posts on certain topics. Make sure you have the tags and categories widgets in your sidebar.

4. Have at least five other student blogs linked on your sidebar – students from other classes and schools – not your own. We will need this for a game we play in a couple of weeks.

Try to have a few different headings like

• My Blogging Friends
• Other Class Blogs

Having lots of  links to student blogs from other countries will help spread the game.  Here are the instructions for adding links to your sidebars.

 Most important learning from this fortnight’s challenge is:

Use creative commons images, not just any image on the net. Always include attribution of where you found the image. Compfight plugin does this for you.

P.S. If you have done the blogging challenge before, you will find these activities are nearly the same each time. If you have ideas for different activities please leave a comment on this post.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

I will only be adding posts to the Flipboard magazine that:

• are written in paragraphs
• have been proofread
• include an image, sound or video with attribution

So make sure you have taken note of this week’s learning about creative commons.

 

Miss W visiting your blogs

From this week onwards, I will only be visiting blogs where students or classes have left the URL to the post in a comment with an explanation. If your teacher is moderating your posts, you will need to wait until it has been published before giving me your URL. Check out the difference between a blog URL and a post URL.

Blog URL: http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org

Post URL : http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2015/10/10/raise-your-voice/

 

Visit these blogs that couldn’t be flipped or were very interesting to read:

Students:

Grace finally wrote her About Me page, Palin used Thinglink,

Classes:

Mrs. Arendt has three classes of students so visit them all

Mrs. Kimball has five classes blogging – check them out here under 7ELA blogs

Mr. Ellsworth is a new challenge class and they have their blogs here

Mrs. Vazquez’s class update their Meet the class page each challenge

Ms. Farley’s class in England made a great google slide presentation – the students write on their class blog rather than have their own

Mrs. Beard has her student blogs in a list under the posts

These students from Portugal have a survey for you to fill in after checking out their info about their school and country.

Miss W or tasteach

Whenever you see either of these avatars or images on the world wide web, you will know it is me. I am a retired teacher who began blogging with students in 2008. I still blog with teachers and students in Tasmania, Australia. I also blog about my family history and whenever I travel, Davo the Tasmanian devil keeps a blog about his adventures with me. But the event I enjoy most is running the Student Blogging Challenge twice a year, with the help of the staff at Edublogs.

Students – Most weeks there will be lots of activities to choose from. You don’t have to complete them all. But by early November, I must see your ‘About Me’ page or post as well as two other posts relating to the challenge. If they can not be found, your name will be taken off the list of students participating.

This challenge, we have many new students and classes taking part so let’s get some admin out of the way before we start our activities for this week. Anything written in bold and blue is a link you can click on to take you to another blog or website.

Get a badge!  Add the challenge badge to your sidebar – here is link explaining how to do that.

With so many new students and teachers taking part, you might like to start with this video created by the team at Edublogs. Here is a PDF activity about blogging terms that you might want to use after watching the video.

(There is a video here, click here to view the original post and watch the video.)

Time now for the two activities for this week

Activity 1: Create an avatar to use on your blog.  There are many different avatar creation sites on the web. I have been to many of them and created lots of different avatars. Some you just save and download to your computer to then upload into your blog. Others you need to use the snipping tool to save a square image of your avatar. It is always best to save as a jpg format.

Here is a symbaloo of websites to use for avatar making. Feel free to add this to your blog. Along the bottom are pages where teachers have listed lots of sites as well as shown examples. The easiest to do are on the right-hand side and look like my avatar.

(There is a video here, click here to view the original post and watch the video.)

To add your avatar to your blog, if using Edublogs, check here. If using blogspot, check here.  Teacher might need to change some settings in Kidblog to allow students to add own avatars.

• Like Lego figures – click here and here is a post from Brianna about her avatar
• Like comics – bitstrip avatars from Birney Bulldogs
• Will used toondoo to create a family avatar
• Mrs Vazquez’s class used google slides to show off their avatars

Did you find a great avatar site not mentioned here? Write a post about your avatar and how it represents you. Include a link to the website where you created the avatar.

Activity 2: Write or update your About Me page.

Whenever I visit a blog for the first time, I always check to see who the person is that is writing the blog posts. Do they have similar interests to me?

If you already have an About Me page, you might want to create an About my State or Province page as well. Be creative:

• Write a poem
• Write an A-Z paragraph eg I am an athletic, yet brainy child who decided that saving the environment is one of my future goals. Check out how one of the mentors created her about me page especially for the student blogging challenge
• Create a tellegami like our mentor Dinah has done
• Create a list of things people might not know about you like Ms Herring has done
• Write a Who am I like Mrs Keane or Mrs Lyttle
• Students in Ireland paired up to create their about us page, Ms Seitz’ class did the same,Mrs Moore’s class are new bloggers
• Penelope, Warrior Kat, Harry, Daniela, Mikaila,
• Brianna (a student mentor) has a great favourites about me page, as well as an A-Z post
• Anna, a new student mentor this year, has a continually updated About Me page

What is the difference between a page and a post?  Check out the information here.

If using Edublogs, below are instructions for creating your page.

1. Login to your blog, go to Settings> Discussion and make sure the default setting is ticked for allow people to leave comments> save the changes at the bottom
2. Now go to the dashboard>pages>add new
3. Change the title to About Me or something similar.
4. If you only have one row of icons above the box, click on the last icon called the kitchen sink or toggle. This opens a second row which allows you to change font colours.
5. In the box, write a bit about yourself remembering to be internet safe. Make sure you have checked out the pages from other students mentioned – many of them have been blogging for a while.
6. In the area under the page writing box, you should see a Discussion box – open this and make sure you have ticked Allow comments.
7. When you have finished click the big  button on the right side of your screen – probably says update or send for review.
8. Once you have saved your about me page, go back and delete the sample page.
9. If your theme doesn’t show pages in the header area, then you will need to go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag across the Pages one to your sidebar.

Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to come back here and leave a comment on this post. Include a link to your blog post so I can try and visit in the next week. Great posts will be added to our Flipboard magazine on the sidebar.

Optional: Add the challenge badge to your sidebar – here is link explaining how to do that.

 

Finished the work for week 1?

Then head off to the original post here, go to class or student list above the blog header and start visiting other blogs. You might not want to comment this week but maybe check them out. Are there any students with interests the same as you?