Student Blogging Challenge Week 8: Global

There are only 2 more weeks of the Student Blogging Challenge after this week.

This week’s topic is all about where we live and travel. We’re going to learn more about the world while sharing with others. STUBC Week 8 Where in the world

Week Seven Recap

Trophy image -- great workMany students were on holidays over the last week but we still had some great posts submitted about celebrations.

You can find them all here (or click on the week 7 box on the sidebar).

Let’s take a look at just some of the fantastic work we spotted last week:

A Very Special STUBC Post

No doubt you heard about the terrible Notre Dame Cathedral fire in France recently?

Serge Galligani’s class in France are on holidays but 3 students (Anna, Kenzo and Axel) returned to school to make a video about the fire.

Click here to see their post and click on the green box that says ‘comments’ if you’d like to leave them a comment. They’d be very grateful!

 

More Tips For Photos And Blog Posts

Images are a really important part of blogging. We discussed images in week 3, but here are some more tips!

Try Photos For Class

Mrs. Morris has noticed that some of our participants aren’t adding an image to a blog post.

If you don’t have your own image to add, a great website to use is Photos For Class. The photos are free to use, filtered, and students under 13 can use the site.

Mrs. Morris has published a post that includes two new posters. These posters explain how to download an image from Photos For Class and add an image to a blog post.

>>Read the post and get the posters

Find out how to use Photos For Class to get free images for the classroom

Try A Photo Blog

If you really like photography, you could set up a blog to share your photos.

Our commenting team leader, Miss W, has a blog called An Image A Day.

Miss W uses the blog to share her travel photography. If you take a look you’ll see pictures from her recent trip to South Australia.

Miss W's blog An Image A Day

Another member of our community with a photography blog is Mrs. Yollis. She has a blog called Yollis 365 Project which she started 9 years ago.

Mrs. Yollis’ students and community love the blog and find it a great way to inspire their writing.

You can even submit a photo to be added to the blog if you like! Find out more here.

Screenshot of Yollis 365 photo blog

Choosing a good theme for a photo blog

Miss W uses a theme on Edublogs called Magazino. If you’re setting up a photo blog on Edublogs/CampusPress, you might consider looking for a magazine or portfolio theme.

Go to Appearance > Themes in your dashboard and have a browse.

Theme choices for photo blogs

Does your blog theme include a featured image?

If you’re using Edublogs, some themes have the ability to add a featured image.

For example, on my own blog and on The Edublogger you can see a featured image show up with the post on the homepage.

Screenshot of The Edublogger

If your theme supports a featured image, you can find out how to add one here. 

Where In The World?

We have a diverse group taking part in the Student Blogging Challenge.

We had students and classes register from 6 continents and 26 countries (not all are still taking part or are only occasionally submitting responses).

Student Blogging Challenge Participants Oct 2018 - 6 continents and 27 countries

There are lots of ways we can learn about the world:

  • Travel
  • Talking to others from different countries
  • Exploring online resources like maps and videos

Learn more about the world

You might have learned a lot or a little about the world at school. Let’s go over some important facts.

Continents

Our world is broken into 7 landmasses called continents.

The continents are:

  • Africa
  • Europe
  • Asia
  • North America
  • South America
  • Australia (or Oceania)
  • Antarctica

Last year, Mrs. Morris was teaching a subject called Global Studies. Her students enjoyed this catchy song to help them learn about the continents.

Oceans

An ocean is a large area of water between continents.

There are 5 oceans:

  • Atlantic Ocean
  • Arctic Ocean
  • Indian Ocean
  • Pacific Ocean
  • Southern Ocean

This fun song helps them learn about the 5 oceans.

Hemispheres

The Equator is an imaginary line around the middle of the Earth. The Equator divides the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemispheres.

Which hemisphere do you live in?

I live in Australia so I’m in the Southern Hemisphere although around 90% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere. Wow!

One of the big differences between the Hemispheres is the seasons. They are opposite; it’s currently Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

World map with equator.jpg
By User:Cburnett – Image:World-map-2004-cia-factbook-large-2m.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Countries

There are 195 countries in the world today. You can find out more about the countries here.

The top 5 countries by population are:

  • China
  • India
  • U.S.
  • Indonesia
  • Brazil

Each country has their own unique flag.

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Week Eight Tasks

This week there are 3 tasks to choose from to share or learn more about the world.

Our graphic summarizes the tasks, and Mrs. Morris will explain each task in more detail below.

Week 8 of the STUBC blogging challenge is Where In The World

Task 1: Tells Us About Your Country

We’d love to learn more about where you live!

This task involves researching and sharing some interesting information about your country.

You might include information like:

  • Size
  • Population
  • Location
  • Landmarks
  • Capital city/Major cities
  • Flag
  • President/Prime Minister
  • History
  • Language
  • Religion
  • Climate
  • Plants and Animals

Ideas for presenting the information in your post:

You might also be able to use some of the fabulous Google tools for this topic like Google Earth and Google Maps.

  • Eleni Kyritsis shows us how to create a virtual tour with Google Tour Creator.
  • Matt Miller explains how to make a Google Map walking tour with Screencastify.

Task 2: Learn About Another Country

This task is the same as task 1 except instead of telling us about your own country you will research and share information about another country.

Be sure to tell us why you chose the country. Why does it interest you?

Task 3: Travel

Have you been lucky enough to travel to another country or city? Or perhaps you have dreams to travel somewhere?

Our commenting team leader Miss W recently traveled to South Australia and took some great photos which she’d like to share with you. Click here to visit Miss W’s website.

Sunrise at Marree by Miss W

This task involves writing a post about travel.

Ideas for your travel post:

  • Write about a holiday you went on that you really enjoyed.
  • Make a list of the top 10 travel destinations you’d like to go to.
  • Create a slideshow of your ideal holiday destinations.
  • Create an imaginary itinerary if you could travel anywhere and had an unlimited budget.

You might have your own ideas!

💡 Safety Tip

It’s fun to talk about travel, but it’s a good idea to avoid mentioning your specific travel plans online.

For example, instead of saying, “I’m going to visit Sydney next Monday” try “I’m planning a holiday to Sydney” or “I’m looking forward to visiting Sydney later in the year”.

Also, remember not to post pictures of yourself or others on the blog without permission.

Visit Others

Don’t forget to try to visit a couple of other bloggers once you’ve published your own post. You might learn a lot about where they live this week!

Submit Your Post URL 

 

Examples of post URLS for STUBC

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