Student Blogging Challenge Week 10: End of the Journey

Photo Series: Lego @work: "Our family thanks you"

Ken Whytock via Compfight

Thank you all very much for taking part in this ten-week blogging journey with Miss W. As something comes to an end, we usually reflect back on what we have learned, what we will change next time and so on. This is what the activities will be about this week.

Over the past ten weeks, you have learned so many skills to help you improve your blogs. Many of you have improved those writing skills or maybe digital skills with using a variety of tools to embed on your blog. But it is now time to evaluate your progress as well as the progress of the blogging challenge itself.

This week there are two things to do:

  1. Evaluate your own blog
  2. Evaluate the actual blogging challenge

Sixth-grade Activity Part 1: This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of March 2018. In a post, answer all of the following questions.  Anyone who reads your post should know what you are talking about (restate the questions in your answers!).

  • How many posts did you write? How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge? How could you improve your posts in future?
  • How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers, commenters from #stubc or overseas students? Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
  • How many other blogs (roughly) did you visit and comment on a post? Why choose that post?
  • Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
  • Did you change blog themes at all and why?
  • How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
  • How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
  • Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?

Sixth-grade Activity Part 2:  Now ask another student and teacher/parent from your school who might not have read your blog to do an audit. Sit beside them while they navigate around your blog, record what you observe as they interact with your blog. When finished, ask them the following questions and include their answers in your post:

  1. What were your first impressions of this blog?
  2. What captured your attention?
  3. What distracted you on the blog?
  4. What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

Here are some great examples of an audit: Justin M., Raya, and Skye.

Seventh-grade Activity: Evaluating the challenge.  Leave a quality comment on Miss W’s page giving your opinion of the challenge.  Include the following:

  • the most interesting challenge for you
  • how often you visited other blogs and left comments
  • whether you read the challenge Flipboard magazine (97 stories so far)
  • whether you left your post URL weekly on the google form
  • a PMI or plus/minus/interesting point about the challenge
  • the most important thing you learned while doing the challenge
  • did you use the challenge sidebar to find posts by other students

Some statistics from this challenge:

  • 964 students aged 8-56 registered for this challenge under 54 different teacher names
  • 78 class blogs were registered with 54 of them having student blogs attached to their sidebar
  • 22 countries represented by students who registered
  • 12 countries represented by class blogs of which 6 were not mentioned on the student list

Number of post URLs left each week via the Google form for commenters to visit:

  • Avatars: 366
  • Commenting: 181
  • Images: 120
  • Global issues: 92
  • Free choice: 23 left on blog
  • Quotes: 171
  • Visiting: 31
  • Games: 36
  • My Best: 70

Thanks again for taking part in this challenge. Hopefully, you will join Miss w again in October this year. If you have taken part in at least two sets of challenges, you can also become a commentor, so watch out for the commentor post in late September.

Keep writing, keep reading the magazine, and if you have a great post you would like Miss W to add to the magazine over the summer/winter break, feel free to leave a comment on her page.