University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment via Compfight

A week or so ago, Miss W took part in a global education conference. The people who presented and listened to all the sessions are part of a network of educators around the world. They have their own little community or network.

As a student, what type of communities or networks do you have
both in school and outside of school hours?

These communities might include:

• sporting groups
• after-school activities
• networks online such as Twitter, Facebook, Minecraft
• local community groups eg gardening or Boy Scouts
• country-level groups
• global groups

This week, the theme to write about is “Community.”

You might like to think about the following and mention some in your post.

• The pros and cons of being in a community
• Which communities you are part of now
• Which communities you would like to join or be part of later in life
• Roles within a community
• Responsibilities when part of a community
• How to find out about communities to join
• Value of being in a community

Remember to have your post flipped to the magazine, you need to have a great post as mentioned in previous posts in the challenge. This week, Miss W has flipped about 200 new posts to the magazine, but she has also left comments about making sure you have included images and links within your great posts.

Keep visiting other students and reading posts from the magazine!

Next week Preview:

You will have a chance to nominate a great student and class blogs for the Edublog awards.  You will also have a chance to show how well your blogging has improved since beginning this challenge.

It has been interesting reading posts from students in different countries of the world. I wonder how similar or different your school day is! So this week’s theme is all about school. I am going to give you some suggestions but what you post about is up to you. Use one of my ideas or think of something for yourself. Check out what these three students have done:

Kaiya – lunch time choices

Brooke – interview a staff member – make sure they know beforehand you will be putting it on your blog for the world to see

Maraya – report on an event at school

I have included a few videos and links  you might like to check to give you ideas for posts.  Click here to view them!

So what could you do for a post this week?

• Create polls about how people get to school or work, or favorite school subject or …..
• What is your weekly schedule like, compare with other students – time you start and finish school, number of lessons each day, breaks during the day, days in year you go to school
• Choices of subjects at school – remember to explain abbreviations you might use eg LOTE , ELA
• Your dream of what you will be doing once you leave school
• If you were principal for a week, what would you do? If you were a teacher for a week, what would you do?
• Research the history of your school and create an about my school page
• Research a famous person who attended your school
• Technology in your school
• School bell has gone – what do you do now?
• Food you eat at school – what is in your lunchbox or your school meal – good activity for taking photos
• If you could improve your school, what would you do?
• Your ideal school – maybe include a map of what it would look like
• How has schooling changed over the last 100 years? Maybe interview parents, grandparents and ask questions about schooling – use an audio app then embed in blog
• The view outside your classroom window – maybe explain plants that might be seen, the weather, seasons etc
• Hold a debate about uniforms or school starting times or subjects or …..
• Anything else that relates to schooling around the world

If you create polls or surveys, make sure you contact me so I can publicize on Twitter to get other classes around the world to join in. Use #16stubc or #globalclassroom if you are doing it yourself.

[Click here, there’s a video]

Check out this gallery of classrooms around the world

Martha Payne’s blog turned viral overnight – check out this interview and her blog about school lunches  Make sure you read her very first posts on her blog.

Collaborate with some other schools to create a video like these global classrooms did – Dancing around the world

[Click here for video]

Remember to leave a comment here including a post URL telling me which activity you have done. If your post is great, it will be added to the Flipboard Magazine.

Hurca! via Compfight

There are two activities this week and they are in the form of a game. They involve visiting other blogs, leaving quality comments and writing a post about the comments you left.

FYI

Out of 106 comments left on the challenge blog over the last couple of days, only 61 included the URL of the actual post I needed to visit. Many students are still leaving just the URL of their blog rather than the post. I only visit and flip to the magazine when a post URL is left here.

Before playing the games, make sure your blog is ready for visitors.

1. You have lots of interesting posts for visitors to read and comment on.
2. Visitors can find posts by using tags or categories on your sidebar.
3. You have a visitor widget to see where your visitors are coming from.
4. You have at least five student blogs from other places around the world on your sidebar.

Game week is all about visiting other blogs.

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.
• included a link to their own blog or a similar post on their own blog

Game 1: 

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:

1. Click on a blog on the student list or class list – count one
2. Now click on a blog from the new student’s blogroll – count two
3. Finally, click on a blog from that new blogroll – count three
4. Leave a comment on an interesting post at this third blog.

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.

Game 2:

This is a new one I have thought of for this challenge. Many great student posts are being flipped to the #16stubc Flipboard magazine, but I am not sure how many of you have actually checked them out. So here are the instructions for this game.

1. Click on the Flipboard magazine link here.
2. Click on the title of the post of what looks like an interesting image or a catchy title.
3. You should now be taken to the actual blog post, read it, and leave a comment.
4. Come back to the magazine again and repeat two more times.

Write a blog post mentioning the blog posts you read and the comment you left.

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?

Write a post about the commenting you have done this week or throughout the challenge so far.

• What have you enjoyed about commenting?
• What is annoying about commenting?
• How have you found interesting posts to comment on?
• Are your posts getting lots of quality comments? Why or why not?

Create a list of great comment starters to help students who are new to blogging. Here are a couple of examples from Anne Davis:

•  Another thing to consider is…….
• I can relate to this…….
• This makes me think of…….

Write a quick post then include 5 great examples of comments as part of the post – use some interesting comment starters for each comment.

Pedro Luna Guillen via Compfight

Next week we will be playing a commenting game. But you need to get prepared for this.

1. Make sure you have at least 5 other student blogs linked on the sidebar of your blog, in a page near your header area 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.
2. Have some visitor widgets on your blog sidebar – maybe a revolver map, a flag counter, a cluster map – this way you can see where your visitors are coming from. Remember only one visitor in 30 will actually leave a comment.
3. Make sure your blog looks interesting – maybe change your header to suit what you are writing about. Do your pets make a noise as soon as your blog is opened in a tab? That can be annoying so make sure the visitor can click on the sound button if they want to hear your animal pet. Have you changed the tagline under the title of your blog? Have you included some tags or categories to help your readers find a great post?

This week’s activity

Have some interesting posts for your visitors to read when they get to your blog. Last week you visited some class blogs and throughout the challenge, you have visited some student blogs.  I am not going to give any clues as to what to put in your posts but remember the following, especially if you want a post flipped to our magazine.

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

1. Catchy title
2. Includes at least one visual (with attribution) whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet or glogster
3. Interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through
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

When you have finished your post, please come back here to the blogging challenge and leave a comment on this post. Mention what topic you wrote about and leave a link to your post. Those posts covering the seven things mentioned above will be added to the Flipboard magazine. Many students are forgetting to add links to other websites relating to the topic they have written about.

Classes

• The students in Serbia presented about Shakespeare – to read in English, go to the translate button under the challenge badge.
• Students in Mrs Ives class wrote about fun facts for their country.
• Beech class have lots of great book reviews for you to check out – use the category on the sidebar area.
• This teacher in Portugal created a survey to see how well you read the information on Eugene’s post about South Africa.

Students

• Thanumi from Thailand is showing her video skills with this fun facts about Greece
• Celeste is part of the WriteAbout community and has written some posts for you to comment on.
• Roman created a jigsaw puzzle using an image
• Naani has an interesting story and she would like your opinion .
• Kaan decided to get ready for the apocolypse

 

Still more time left this week?

• Read some of the posts in the Flipboard magazine – your teacher might want to create a class Flipboard magazine to add to your class blog
• Visit other classes and students in the lists above the header of the challenge blog.
• Reply to any comments left on your blog especially if from a mentor.