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.

Students – Most weeks there will be lots of activities to choose from. You don’t have to complete them all. But by early November, I must see your ‘About Me’ page or post as well as two other posts relating to the challenge. If they can not be found, your name will be taken off the list of students participating.

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.

Get a badge!  Add the challenge badge to your sidebar – here is link explaining how to do that.

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.

(There is a video here, click here to view the original post and watch the video.)

Time now for the two activities for this week

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.

(There is a video here, click here to view the original post and watch the video.)

To add your avatar to your blog, if using Edublogs, check here. If using blogspot, check here.  Teacher might need to change some settings in Kidblog to allow students to add own avatars.

• 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 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 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, Mikaila,
• Brianna (a student mentor) has a great favourites 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.

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 colours.
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.

Once you have done your activity for this week, remember to come back here and leave a comment on this post. 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.

Optional: Add the challenge badge to your sidebar – here is link explaining how to do that.

 

Finished the work for week 1?

Then head off to the original post here, go to class or student list above the blog header 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?

Dee Ashley via Compfight

 

This is our last post for the Student Blogging Challenge until we start again next year in March 2016. Miss W hopes you have enjoyed the activities and the chance to make connections with other students and classes around the world.

Miss W would like to thank Sue Waters from Edublogs for writing a few of the challenges this time, but also thank the mentors for taking time to visit and comment on student blogs.

We have had a great 10 weeks of blogging. You have learnt 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 some things to do:

1. Evaluate your own blog. 
2. Have someone else evaluate your blog.
3. Evaluate the actual blogging challenge.
4. Keep watching for the post from Edublogs about voting for the best student and class blogs.

 

1. Audit your blog since the beginning of October 2015.

Answer the following questions in a post titled SBC 10:1 Title.

1. How many posts did you write?
2. How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
3. How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
4. Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
5. Which post did you enjoy writing the most and why?
6. Did you change blog themes at all and why?
7. How many widgets do you have? Do you think this is too many or not enough?
8. How many overseas students do you have on your blogroll?
9. Which web tools did you use to show creativity on your blog?

2. Now ask a teacher from your school OR your parent/ aunty/ uncle/ grandma/ grandpa 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:

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?

Write a post about your blog audit with this other person.  It should be titled SBC 10:2 title.

3. Evaluating the challenge.

This is the fifteenth challenge and sometimes Miss W feels like the activities are getting stale especially for those students who have taken part in more than one set of challenges. So over the next few weeks Miss W will be adding new pages that you all can contribute to. Every month of the year, there are special events, festivals, birthdays of authors etc. Which ones do you think it would be interesting to write about? Find the post ideas page for that month and add your ideas in the comments (these are found above the header area).

Miss W usually has a form to fill in here but this time she would like you to leave a quality comment HERE giving your opinion of the challenge.
You might want to mention some of the following things:

• The most interesting challenge for you
• How often you visited other blogs and left comments
• Whether you read the challenge flipboard magazine
• A PMI or plus/minus/interesting point about the challenge
• The most important thing you learnt while doing the challenge

4. Voting for blogs – (Updated 12/8)

Congratulations

Hibr via Compfight

Every year, Edublogs present a digital award for those best educational class and student blogs. You get a chance to nominate then vote for the one you consider deserves the award. There are a few rules about nominating so you will need to

go to this link,

read the post, then put forward your nomination. You don’t have to nominate an edublogs blog it could be from weebly like our Serbian bloggers or from blogspot like many of our New Zealand bloggers. It just has to be an educational blog.

Nominations close on December 2nd at 6:59pm!

Once you have nominated, the blogs will be shortlisted and then I will write another post including a poll for you to come and vote for the blog you think deserves the award. You will need to vote here on the student blogging challenge poll when it comes out.

If you hope to have your blog nominated, then Miss W suggests you have some fantastic posts ready for any visitors to read and comment on.

When being shortlisted for student blogs, we look for quality of posts, appearance of blog, as well as commenting.

Good luck, get nominating and writing.

More Good Foundation via Compfight

Miss W loved reading your posts about things in nature you are passionate about.

So many of you wrote about space and the universe. One student Rachel, wants you to visit her post, create your own planet and leave the answer in her comment area. Her instructions for this are below the wordle in her post. Sophie taught me a lot about stars and how they develop. Mia’s post was written in a very personal way about our mind boggling universe. Jack combined his love of space and oceans in his post.

Reece wrote a great post about the comments he left and from that I found a few more posts about student nature passions. Kathryn wrote about interdependency and  Sarah wrote about camel coolness. Joaquin also wrote a great post about comments he left.

Many of our Serbian students wrote about the natural scenery and tourist attractions in their country. Check them out from the sidebar of their class blog. Remember to use the Translate button if they have written their post in Serbian.

Mr Woods class in New Zealand has tadpoles in their room. Two of their caretakers wrote a great post.

Ian showed his passion for rivers in his post while Penelope tells us much about a smelly plant.

Dane, whose class recently began the challenge activities, showed his passion for volcanoes. I learnt some interesting facts about guide dogs from Kaylie’s post.

Bradley thought outside the square to look at nature from a mathematical perspective.

Now to this week’s activity

Before you start, please make sure you have at least 5 other student blogs linked on the sidebar of your blog 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.

 

Game week is all about visiting other blogs.

Student and class blogs – new bloggers and old hands at the blogging – mentors as well as participants.

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.

Game rules

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:

• click on a blog on the student list or class list– count one
• now click on a blog from their blogroll – count two
• finally click on a blog from that blogroll – count three

Leave a comment on an interesting post at this third blog. Remember to include the URL of your blog, so that person can visit you as well.

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.
The title for this post should be SBC 8:1 Title.

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???

Jose Roberto V Moraes via Compfight

This week is going to be a chance for you to write a post about something you are passionate about relating to nature.
The title of this post should be SBC 7:1 Title.

For this activity, nature is defined as everything not made by man.

What topics might this include?

• animals
• plants and trees
• rocks and fossils
• stars and planets
• landscapes – mountains, rivers, volcanoes, oceans etc

As long as the topic has nothing to do with being made by humans, then you should be able to write about it.

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

1. catchy title
2. includes at least two visuals whether photo, cartoon, video or another web 2.0 tool like padlet, glogster, wordle etc
3. interesting topic with the passion of the author coming through, shows well researched topic
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
8. attribution for any images, video, music or clip art used – including those used in slideshows etc

Remember to CLICK HERE and leave a comment including the URL of your post once it has been published by your teacher. Miss W will only be visiting those that have the correct URL in the comment.

NEWS FLASH FOR NEXT WEEK       NEWS FLASH FOR NEXT WEEK

Next week we will be running a game about visiting other blogs, so if there are a few students or classes you love visiting, add them as links on your sidebar.

Also make sure you have an up to date widget for gathering visitor data. Miss W noticed clustrmaps on Edublogs blogs needs to be updated to their new clustrmaps. Click on the map on your blog, and you will be directed to a post written by Sue Waters about how to get your map working again.

Maia C via Compfight

Make sure you have a great post on your blog that visitors will want to leave a comment on because that is the only activity to do this week.

Visit other blogs and leave quality comments.

Visit at least 10 blogs (5 may be HMS students’ blogs), leaving a comment on each one.

• Use the list of student or class blogs to find some posts you could read. Remember those class blogs with names in mauve have a list of students in the sidebar or in a list on a page on the blog.
• Or click on the flipboard magazine and find some great posts in there. Click on the writing of the post in the flipboard and it should open to the actual blog post. I am adding about 100 posts there each week so lots for you to choose from.

Your comment should:

1. Be addressed to the writer of the post
2. Make a connection to the writer or add extra information about the post or relate to something you have seen or done relating to the post
3. Be proofread for spelling and punctuation
4. Include your blog URL or class blog URL

Below are some great posts written for previous activities throughout this challenge. You might want to visit some of them to leave comments. (These couldn’t be flipped)

Mel, Ellie, Jared, Aiden, Mason, Hoow20, Kathryn, Victoria, Wilao, Gisele, Mary, Farhiyam,

Summary posts written by classes

Mr Helpern on Halloween, McDowell media on foods, Mr Dawson’s class now have avatars,Mrs Smith’s class on food and using wikimedia images

NEWS FLASH   NEWS FLASH

There is no need to leave Miss W a comment when you finish this activity. She will be spending this week getting the student lists updated and adding mentors to some students. She will also be looking at some of the class blogs she hasn’t visited yet in the challenge.