Miss W or tasteach

Whenever you see either of these avatars or images on the world wide web, you will know it is me (Miss W). 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 overseas, Davo the Tasmanian devil keeps a blog about his adventures with me. I also blog about my travels around Australia.

But the event I enjoy most is running the Student Blogging Challenge twice a year, with the help of the staff at Edublogs.

When you meet a new person or join a group, there are three things you will most likely do.

1. Look at the outside view of the person – do they look like the type of person you would enjoy being with?
2. Then you would go deeper by asking some basic questions about the person and their interests.
3. Finally, you would connect through shared interests.

We are going to cover those three things this week by creating an avatar to represent our outside view, create an about me page to show your visitors the type of person you are and your interests then you are going searching for other students your age who also have similar interests.

Most weeks there will be lots of activities to choose from. You don’t have to complete them all.  Remember to read and reply to their comments politely and in a timely fashion.

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.

Admin for week 1

1. Add the challenge badge to your sidebar.
2. Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to GO BACK TO MISS W’S POST and leave a comment there. 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.

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.

Time now for the two topics for this week

Looking at avatars

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.

 

To add your avatar to your blog, if using Edublogs, check here.

• 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

This was my very first Animoto created back in 2009. Look at the tools page above the header for other slideshow creators.

Did you find a great avatar site not mentioned here? Leave me a comment mentioning the site so I can add it to the Symbaloo.

Activity 2: Write a post about your avatar and how it represents you.

• Include a link to the website where you created the avatar.
• Remember to include your avatar as an image in your post.
• Choose an interesting title, not just avatar as this will cause an error on your blog.

Activity 3: Create a series of avatars to represent your family members. Use different avatar websites depending upon the person’s interests. Write a post about your family and include the avatar for each person.

Remember – be internet safe, no personal information.

Activity 4: For classes – As a class create a slideshow of your user avatars or add them to your header area. Above is an old example using animoto. Or check out how to customize your header – here is a post by Mrs Smith about creating avatars – using shapes

About me page

Activity 5: 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 or 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 wrote about their school, from Mrs Essen’s class and Mrs McKelvey’s Blogging Frogs
• Warrior Kat, Harry, Daniela,
• Brianna (ex-student mentor) has a great favorites about me page, as well as an A-Z post

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 colors.
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 top navigation area is Screen options – open the drop-down arrow and make sure comments is ticked.
7. In the area under the page writing box, you should see a Discussion box – open this and make sure you have ticked Allow comments.
8. When you have finished, click the big button on the right side of your screen – probably says update or send for review.
9. Once you have saved your about me page, go back and delete the sample page.
10. 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.

Activity 6:  What are some apps or websites you could use to create something interesting to add to your About me page? Tell me about them, costs, age to use etc Perhaps a word cloud or glogster – brainstorm as a class.

Finished the work for week 1?

Visiting other blogs

One important aspect of blogging is commenting on other blogs. Classes and student participants are grouped according to similar ages. Visit some other blogs, read posts, get ideas from them, leave a comment. Make sure you include your blog URL (use this: <a href=”YOUR URL”>Check out my blog!</a>) so they can come to visit your blog.  Are there any students with interests the same as you?

HMS Posts From the Week to Check Out!

• Hunter’s adventure story that stems from a simple gif
• Brady’s inspiring post about regret
• Tyler Y.’s post that almost meets all the requirements of a great post
• Skylar’s post for Big Bang Theory spoilers
• Naho’s “This or That” post
• Natalie’s post about Temmie
• Everett’s entire category of Fake Advertisements
• Sarah’s post about interesting places to visit
• Jena’s informational post about the Dallas Cowboys