There is a lot to learn in this challenge so it will be running for a two week (fortnight) period. The next challenge will be posted on April 2nd. It is also a chance for classes that have been on Spring break or holidays to do some catching up.

Please read this 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.

Read the fantastic post that Sue Waters has written about images, copyright, and creative commons.  She explains about creative commons and the licenses, attribution, how to find images for your blog and how to upload images to your blog. Most of this would be appropriate whether you are using Edublogs, blogger or any other blogging platform. This might be very wordy, but Sue uses lots of images and how to do sections in her posts.

Check out these sites to find additional information on creative commons

• 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?
• Check out the education section of creative commons.
• Youtube allows creative commons for videos.
• 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. This 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.

Sites to find images:

• Read this article!
• 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.

Sites to find 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
You need to do at least one of the green activities in addition to the one in red.

Activity 1. Do some more research on the topic of attribution and licenses and perhaps create your own group video about using images, music, and videos.

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

Activity 2. 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, Samantha is confused

Activity 3. Similar to activity 2. 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 4. Write a sentence using just images – no words OR find 5 images that create a story – again no words only the attribution for each image.

Activity 5. 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 6. 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 Miss W’s post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.

Activity 7.  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 8.  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 9.  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 10. Write a post about different websites to find creative commons images. Are there any widgets you can add to your blog to make this easier?

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 Miss W’s post.

Continue reading SBC Week 3: Photos and Videos

Admin for week 2:

When visiting many blogs last week, I noticed your pages in Edublogs often didn’t allow for comments to be written. You might need to do the following:

1. Go to your about me page and open it in your dashboard.
2. In top right corner, click on screen options and make sure Discussions is ticked. Close screen options.
3. Now below the writing area for your page, you should see a dropdown labeled Discussions.
4. Make sure you have ticked the boxes about leaving comments.

About week 2: Commenting skills

This is another important week in the challenge. Blogging is all about having your voice heard and connecting with others who might like to read and comment on what you have written. But, as in many things we humans do, there are some protocols bloggers in schools like to follow.

Check out these videos about leaving quality comments. The first video was created for one of the very first blogging challenges back in 2009 by Mrs Yollis’ grade 3 students and it has been seen by thousands of students who have taken part in the blogging challenges since then. This video is suitable for all ages but specifically primary/elementary school or lower. But those in middle/high school or older might like to check out the second video which is more suited to an older age group.

Check out these posts about comments: Comment overview,  managing comments,

Mrs. Yollis and her third-grade class

Nicolas Weiss – Leaving high-quality blog comments

 

Activity 1: Create or update a ‘How to comment’ page on your blog

Many themes and blogging platforms have different ways to leave a comment. You might need to click on the title of the post, or click on a number in a circle or click on the words ‘Leave a comment’. Write a page for your blog explaining how to leave a comment. You could write it as a set of steps or perhaps create a video showing what to do. Be creative. Here is an example on my family history blog. Mrs. Yollis created a video showing how to comment on her blogspot blog.

Activity 2: Review our class commenting guidelines (see the “Commenting Guidelines” pages at the top)

Review what you expect when someone leaves a comment on your blog.

• What type of comment is acceptable?
• Which type of comment will you put in the trash?

Here are some examples:

Huzzah commenting guidelines,  a Glogster poster about commenting, WarriorKat used a variety of tools for her guidelines, notice how Sophie included a link back to Mrs.  Yollis’ blog where she got her information from, Emme created a PowToon, Darcey included some interesting points, Kyndal has her guidelines here.

Activity 3: Leave a comment on this post using HTML

Each week the best posts published in the Student Blogging Challenge are featured in our Flipboard magazine.

To check your posts we need you to leave a comment with a link to your post on this blog whenever you finish a weekly activity.

So your activity is to practice leaving a comment below with a link to your post for an activity you’ve completed this week or last week.

But first you need to know the difference between your BLOG link and your POST link

• Blog link: http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org
• Post link: http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/2016/10/02/gday-my-name-is/

If your teacher is moderating and approving your posts, you will need to wait until this has been done before leaving me a link in a comment.

Did you check out Mrs. Yollis’ blog? She includes a page with some HTML (code) you can use when commenting especially on blogspot blogs. If leaving a comment on an Edublogs blog, here is a post explaining the HTML to use.  If you want to leave a link to your blog that looks neat and tidy, check out this post.

Activity 4: Visit other student or class blogs

Visit 4 other blogs on the lists above the header area. Leave a quality comment on one post on each blog. Might be the About Me page or another post you found interesting.  Write a post on your blog mentioning who you visited, which post you left a comment on and why, then include the comment you left. Hint: make sure you copy the comment before you hit the submit button. Here are some examples from previous students in the challenge: Allegra but try to include a link to the actual post you left a comment on

Will visitors to your blog find it easy to search for a post they might be interested in commenting on? Maybe you need to start using Categories and Tags or make sure you have an archive section.

Great posts to visit

Some student blogs don’t allow posts to be flipped to the magazine so I will include links to them at the bottom of each post. Here are some introductions and avatar posts.

Catrina (Australia), Jayson (USA), Maddison (Australia), Emily (Australia), Erandi (USA), Angel?(USA), Anthony (USA), Angela (USA), Angela – avatar (USA), Chelsea (Australia),

Also, remember to check out the comments left for last week’s post. These will include links to student, class and mentor blogs you could be visiting.

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.

 

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.

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 activities for this week!

Activity 1: Update your avatar.  There are many different avatar creation sites on the web. Miss W has been to many of them and has 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

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 Miss W visit a blog for the first time, she always checks to see who the person is that is writing the blog posts. Do they have similar interests?  If you already have an About Me page, you might want to create an About my State 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,
• Brianna (a student mentor) has a great favorites 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.

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 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.

Finished the work for week 1?

Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to return to Miss W’s page and leave a comment on that post. Include a link to your blog post so that Miss W can try and visit in the next week. Great posts will be added to the Flipboard magazine on the sidebar.

Then head off to the participating classes or participating student list 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?