There will be two evaluations:

1. a survey of the actual student blogging challenge – we want your ideas of the plus, minus and interesting about the challenge. Most questions are tick a box or find answer from drop down arrow.
2. a survey of your blog by someone who has not seen it before such as your principal, another teacher, your parent, a sibling or cousin, next door neighbour.

Survey of challenge

Survey of your blog

This is an audit of your blog since the beginning of March 2012.

• How many posts did you write?
• How many were school based, your own interests or set by the challenge?
• How many comments did you receive from classmates, teachers or overseas students?
• Which post received the most comments? Why do you think that happened?
• 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?

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:

• What were your first impressions of this blog?
• What captured your attention?
• What distracted you on the blog?
• What suggestions can you give me to improve my blog?

 Nominating a blog for the Edublog Awards 2012

This year we would like classes to nominate two blogs they feel are excellent student blogs. They can be blogs from anywhere in the world. Choose a student from your class to write about the nominations in a post after you have discussed this as a class. eg best student blog or best new blog. Make sure you have a link back to this post of the challenge otherwise we wont know you have nominated for the awards.

Teachers you may also take part in the nominations but you might like to check out the other sections where nominations will be available later in the year.

Mentors we would also like you to nominate one or two of the blogs you have been mentoring to go in either the best student blog or new blog sections.

Students we would prefer you work with your teachers to nominate some great student blogs, but if there is a student blog (not from your class or school) that you feel deserves a nomination then write a post and make sure you have a link back to this post of the challenge otherwise we wont know you have nominated for the awards.  Remember, as a student, you can’t nominate a blog from your class or school.

After the challenge is over

Continue:

• earning rice at the free rice website but make sure you are logged in to the student blogging challenge group.
• visiting your friend’s blogs
• writing posts over the summer/winter period
• visiting new student blogs from the participant list
• visiting Mr Davo Devil’s blog to leave and answer questions
• check out Mr Frizzletail as he tours downunder

How to play the game.

Step 1: Visit the participants page of the student blogging challenge.

Step 2: Right click on a link to a student blog, open in a new tab. Make sure this is not a student in your class – preferably another country.

Step 3: Read at least three posts on their blog and leave a quality comment on one of those posts. If there are no really interesting posts, go back and choose another student from the challenge.

Step 4: Take note of the URL of the blog and the post you left the comment on, as these will be added to a post you will write about the game.

Step 5: Look on the blogroll of this student. Right click open in a new page, a link from this blogroll. Try to get someone who is not from their class. Often teachers will use a pattern eg s600 or hz2 at the end of a student name when they create the blogs.

Step 6: Do steps 3, 4 and 5 until you have visited and left 3 comments.

Play this game at least three times – you will have left 9 comments on 9 different posts, hopefully from 9 students not in your class.

Write a post about your visits. What type of posts did you find interesting? What did you say in your quality comments? Which countries did you visit? Did students have blogrolls that included students from other countries or were they mainly their own classmates? Be sure to include a link to the actual post you wrote your comment on eg I visited Sue’s post about the “Count Out Three” game.

Still got more time? Go back to each of your posts – Have you included tags and categories? Do images have attribution? Are the posts written in paragraphs which makes it easier for visitors to read?

Teachers:

We would like you to do something special for Sue Waters and Ronnie Burt from Edublogs. You can be using any blogging platform to do this activity. Please visit this website to fill in a survey about the state of educational use of blogs in 2012. Statistics such as those gathered in the survey are important for educators to use when talking blogging with their school administrators.

Next week there will be a chance to tell us your thoughts about the student blogging challenge. Please think about the PMI – positives, negatives and interesting aspects of the challenge. We will be using that information at ISTE2012 in San Diego where the student blogging challenge will have a poster session – please visit us if you are attending and introduce yourselves to me, Sue Wyatt (the grey haired lady avatar) as well as the other presenters.

Attribution:

To take part in the game you need the following completed:

• a blog avatar and a user avatar
• an ‘about me’ PAGE not post
• a clustrmap or flag counter widget
• at least three interesting posts – could be topics of your choice not necessarily from the challenge
• your ‘Recent Comments’ widget on the sidebar with 10 comments as the choice
• your ‘Recent Posts’ widget on the sidebar with 10 posts as the choice
• Your ‘Pages’ widget on the sidebar
• at least 10 student and/or classes linked on your blogroll
• at least three overseas blogs linked on your blogroll

The more overseas links you have, the more interesting the game will be. If you are not using Edublogs, have many of these things visible,  maybe as links on a post.

……………………………………….

Many of you are getting ready for exams or in Australia, NAPLAN testing.

How do you prepare for these exams or tests?

You go back over what you have already learnt that year. You make sure you are up-to-date with your notes. You check with friends or a teacher that you understand how to sit a test.

Well, this week, you are going to cover all that but with regard to your blog. It is going to be a revision week to make sure you are up-to-date with all the things you should have done on your blog.

Preparation for week 10 evaluation

Over the first seven weeks, let’s look at what you could have done on your blog:

1. Registered for the challenge as either an individual or a class – checked you were on the list
2. Changed the theme of your blog
3. Looked at ‘About’ pages and created your own
4. Posted about why students or classes should visit your blog
5. Left comments on other student blogs and recommended at least three to visit
6. Introduced your class or school to the world
7. Created avatars
8. Uploaded comment and blog avatars
9. Linked your avatar to your blog URL
10. Slideshow of avatars created
11. Classes looked at commenting guidelines
12. Classes thought about ways to involve parents
13. Added tracking widgets to your sidebar
14. Written in another language
15. Added translation widget
16. Posted about global activities
17. Wrote about Earth Hour
18. Commented on blogs from other countries
19. Culture and celebrations from other countries
20. Created blogroll categories
21. Added links to blogroll
22. Created tags and post categories
23. Post about your community
24. Created a poll about your country
25. Finding out about creative commons and using images on your blog posts
26. Learnt about giving attribution and uploading images to your posts
27. Wrote a post about your favourite colour
28. Used different web 2.0 tools to edit images
29. Zoomed out from an image
30. Created an image sentence
31. Wrote a post about an image
32. Created an animated photo show
33. Used many web 2.0 tools to be creative
34. Looked at work, past, present and future
35. Wrote about global challenges affecting us all in particular water.

Students and classes

Activity 1 – It’s a testing time

Write a post using a persuasive style of writing. You might like to use glogster to create a poster. Maybe wallwisher to get ideas from other students before you write your post.

Topics might include:

• That mobile phones should be used in classrooms
• That all students should have a personal blog from Grade 6 onwards
• That all classes should have a class blog
• That national or statewide testing has no valuable purpose for the student
• A topic of your own choice

Activity 2 – Learning time

Think about something important you have learned outside of school – remember we should all be life long learners not just learners while at school. How did you learn it? Why is it important to you? Who or what taught you about it? How has this learning helped you in your life?

Activity 3 – Watch video and write post about your digital footprint

Watch this video, thinking about what might be included on your digital dossier or digital footprint.

• What sites have you joined on the internet?
• How much information did you give them when you joined?
• Have you filled in more than the *asterisk questions?

Google your name or nickname but include your town as well.

• What did you find?
• Are you on the web for sports teams, named in newspapers and where else?
• How many cookies or footprints are you leaving behind?

Check out these student’s digital footprints from the March 2011 challenge: Naomi, Emily, Sahiba, Allie, Jennifer, Shania, Adam, Heather, Marshall, Aisling.

Attribution:

Class blog – no student blogs

Mrs Zwettler, Mrs McKelvey, Mrs Lucchesi, Mrs Norton, Mrs Shirley, Mrs Jundef, Miss McLeod, Mrs Bulger, Mrs Bliss, Room 15, 6B Vietnam, 6A Vietnam, Mrs Wunder, Mrs Swift – check pages,

Class blog – check out the student blogs on sidebar

Mrs Kelly, Mr Martinez, Mrs Benn, Ms Simonsen, Miss T, Mr Miller, Mrs Beaulieu, Mrs Schmidt, Mrs Massman, Mrs Sanderson, Room 1 class, Mrs Sage, Ms Vogt, 8LD, Mrs Martin, Emerson Eagles, Mrs Heckstetter, Mrs Flower, Mrs Barinova, Mr Woods, Mrs Ramirez, Hobloggers, Mrs Guna, Mrs Martin,

This week I want you to show off your creativity. I have suggested some sites you might want to visit. If you know some other sites to show off your artistic talents then tell us about them in a comment and we will add them to the list.

We want to see or hear your creative masterpiece so you might need to make a screen shot to save as an image to add to your post. Otherwise add a link to where your creative work can be found.

Remember if you are under 13, you will need to get parent and / or teacher permission to use many of them.

Art

• Art games including jigsaws from getty art
• Sketching with odopod
• art from around the world in a mosaic
• Colour in motion needs flash player
• Interactive ideas at the National Gallery of Art, USA
• Create a sand picture by clicking on the little grey square in the top corner to get instructions
• Create your own art work at artpad
• Site on how to draw it
• A school art teacher’s blog with lots of excellent ideas
• Draw your own cartoon characters here

Writing

• Magnetic poetry – create a poem using their words, take a screen shot or submit to their gallery and put link in your post
• Use Fotobabble  or Blabberize to create a movie or book trailer
• Register at Educaplay to create lots of games and literacy activities
• Create a book that flips the pages at flipsnack. Check out the other links at the bottom as well.
• Make beliefs comics are great for your creativity
• Little Bird Tales for creative writing

Music and audio

• Aviary is great for both music creation and editing of images. The link goes to an education version.
• Isle of Tune is fantastic for creating your own musical items
• Voki allows you to type or speak what you want the character to say
• Audioboo – create whatever you want to say on your blog then embed it. Check out Em’s blog for examples.
• Create tones to use on mobile phones at Wolfram – need quicktime plugin
• Use keyboard, guitar or violin at this site
• Play drums here, but use a headset
• Create your own music and become a composer
• Music activities for all ages

Science

• Toymaker ideas at the bottom of the page – make the toy and create a video showing us how it works
• Use physics to make a contraption – make sure you disable the sound
• Use physics to build towers – again disable sound
• Use magic pen to move the ball
• Using your camera effectively with these project ideas

Animation

• Automatoon will not work with Internet Explorer but great way to create an animated movie.
• Another great site is goanimate – teachers there is an education version of this as well
• Kerpoof is great for all ages

Variety

• Think this might be a girlie site called Pop studio
• Check this page for lots of computer links for creativity

Sites suggested by students last year

Wacky Web Tales from Dawso

Stykz – similar to Pivot from Isabel

Edheads – try knee surgery from Gabriela

Activity 1 – Visit at least three different creativity sites and write a post about what you did on the site. Remember to include a screen shot and or link to your creative masterpiece.

Activity 2 – Find a website where you can collaborate with another student from a different country – you might be able to create a story together or something else more creative.

Activity 3 – Make sure you have lots of links to other students and classes on your blogroll. If on weebly,  maybe create a post with at least ten links of other students around the world. You are going to need this for a game next week.

Activity 4 – Write a post about creativity and how you are creative in your life. If possible display your creativity eg photography, video, music. Check out this blog by chillibasket in Ireland. He is showing his creativity each week with the photos he has taken.

Activity 5 – Leave a comment about another site on the web that you think is showing creativity. Remember to leave the URL of the site.

If you still have time, visit lots of blogs of other students around the world. Leave comments on their posts and make sure you include a link to your blog so they can return the favour and visit your blog to leave a comment.

Attribution:

Here are some posts that caught my eye:

Sophia – tutorial about embedding flag counter

Oscar – travelling around Australia for 3 months with his family

Madeline – prezi about her dream job. Also check out her Easter posts

Lily , Emma, Malia, Nick, -  perfect job with great explanation

Gisela , Hannah, Astanah, Mikayla, – volunteering post

Christian , BooBoo, Jonathon, Ana-Maria, Clay, Dharyl, Letty, Breeyana, Cassidy, Jose, Chey, Paloma, Lupita, -  including survey

Natalie , Olivia, Kerry, – experimented with pictures using Animoto

Malia , Kiley, Lauren, Eli, Cate, – A-Z of work – choose and leave a comment

Caroline , Collin , Riley, Ashley, Drew, – includes a poll about work

Mrs McKelvey’s class had a great spring break

Mr Miller’s class looked at volunteering and writing surveys

Mrs Norton’s class created a poll

This video from Em’s post last year came in handy for some students when finding images

Other interesting posts – Chasen, Natalie, Amro, Eddie, Kiley, Lauren, Jason, Hannah, Andrea, Skylure, Jarrod,

Vacation posts – Jake, Alexis, Isaiah, Nick, Gabby, Olivia,

Mentors recommendations:

Kaity, Yen Khe, Kayla

What is work?

• What type of work do you want to do once you leave school?
• Is work always enjoyable?
• What would be the best work or dream job you could possibly think of doing?
• Do you have to be paid for work?
• How is work at school different to work out of school?

Activities for this week:

1. Create a poll about work and add it to your blog.
2. Create an A-Z poster about work.
3. Answer some of the above questions in posts. Perhaps a slideshow of your dream jobs.
4. How has work changed over the last century? Create a timeline to show your answer.
5. What type of volunteer work would you enjoy?
6. Why do some students work hard at school while others just get by in their subjects? Does this change depending upon the country you or your parents come from?
7. How has technology changed the way we work?
8. Interview your parents or grandparents about the types of work they might have done. What skills did they need to get those jobs?
9. How would this infographic about laziness at work look different if it were laziness at school?
10. Is your school teaching digital literacy, financial literacy, social media literacy which can all affect the job you decide on in the future?
11. What skills do you need for your preferred job in the future? Are there any blogs about that type of job?How could you use a blog, outside of school,  to prepare yourself for your future work?
12. The best jobs in the world – check out these workers: Ben in Queensland, Australia – 6 year old Sam in England – 12 year old Harry in England -

Remember to expand on the questions, give lots of reasons or information and if you used a website on the internet as part of your answer, include a link back to that website or include a bibliography. Give correct attribution for any images you use.

Attribution:

Week 1:

• About page
• ‘How to leave a comment’ as a widget
• “I am” poem
• questions for your visitors to answer
• questions for your mentor to answer in a comment

Week 2:

• create and upload avatar
• widgets about your place
• evaluate widgets on other blogs
• tourist attractions
• festivals of your state
• create game, quiz, slideshow about your state or country
• commenting guidelines
• involving parents

Week 3:

• checking your profile
• making quality comments
• attracting visitors to leave comments
• adding to your blogroll
• post and link categories
• personalize your blog with posts of your interests
• using HTML code in comments
• adding users to a class blog

Week 4:

• global holidays
• Earth Hour
• writing in your mother language
• women and their roles in the world
• human rights
• water and its problems
• Free Rice

Week 5:

• adding images
• giving attribution
• finding creative commons images
• creating an image gallery
• images to tell a story
• tutorial on how to add images to post
• being creative with images

Remember visit lots of other blogs and leave quality comments.

Why? Your blog is in the public domain and is available for anyone to see. You are not allowed to put copyright images on your blog without the permission of the owner.  This means you need to find images that are creative commons instead.

What is that? Watch this YouTube video about sharing your work and creative commons.

Teachers: 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. Larry Ferlazzo also has a great “Best List for images” that you might want to check out as well.

Below is a list of websites that have creative commons images. Remember attribution doesn’t include a URL beginning with http://images.google.com/   or some other search engine.

Attribution is the URL of the original image.

• Flickrcc
• Wikimedia commons – check how you can search for an image, sound, video
• Compfight – check out their FAQ
• Behold – another way to search from Flickr
• Pics4learning
• Morguefile
• Edupics
• FreeFoto
• ImageAfter
• Photos8

Students:

1.  Write a post about your Spring break or Easter holiday. Include at least one image that is creative commons. Include the attribution at the bottom of the post. Here is a post to show you how to insert an image.

2.  Do you think you should have a creative commons license for your blog? Why or why not? Is your audience mainly students in your class and/or the blogging challenge or have you had readers that are teachers and/or visitors you don’t know?

3.  Visit ten blogs from students in the challenge  of different ages. How many of these blogs had images with attribution? How many blogs did not have images at all? Which blogs did you prefer to read and why? Leave your answer here as a comment or leave a comment on each of the blogs you visited.

4.  After having visited Sue Waters on adding images and creating a gallery, write two posts about using images in blogs.

• Why should we use images? How do images improve your blog? This is the first post
• How do you add images to your blog?
• Where do you get your images?
• How do you add the attribution?

Make the second post like a tutorial, so a student new to blogging could follow your instructions about using images in a post.

5. Create a visual post using no more than eight images – where the images tell a story. Remember to give attribution for the images you used. No writing in this post other than the title and attribution.

6. From Bill Ferreirae – I sometimes find a picture and tell students to use that picture to come up with a story. It can be about the picture, what happened before, what will happen next, etc. So, at the top of the student activities  is the image I have chosen for you to start with. Copy the image to your post, then write the story. Remember to give attribution. If you don’t have your own blog, tell your story in a comment here.

7. From EileenG – Pick one, or more of your ethnic backgrounds and post about the culture. ANYTHING! Food, religions, sports, festivals, languages, etc.  Include a picture of the place in the country/region posted about.

8.  Be creative with regard to images – create a collage on a topic or colour etc, use glogster or animoto or prezi. Just remember you must link back to the original image and give attribution for any images used.

Teachers

If using Edublogs, create a gallery of images to represent your class’s holiday or break.  Here is a post on how to create a gallery in your blog. Remember to include the attribution of where you found the images. Perhaps you could also add the ‘Support CC’ button like I have below, on your blog sidebar.

Attribution:

Image by Sue Wyatt

The original comic of this YouTube video remix can be found here: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

A Fair(y) use tale from YouTube

I have been so impressed with the work being done by students and classes in this set of blogging challenges. Some of the global issue posts are very thought provoking.

Back to the good stuff!!

Global posts

Kerry, 3rd Graders dreaming big, Connor, Caroline, Olivia, Hannah, Caroline, Kiley, Lev, Scott, Natalie, Mrs Kelly, Spencer, Colum, Jonathon, Jane, Malia, Kristin,

Water problems

Science Girl Em, Ilaria, Carly, Collin, Adem, Nick, Riley, Chasen, Eli, Toby, Matthew, James, Cate, Shane, Aidan,

Earth Hour

Mr Woods, Joey,

Please translate

Emma in Korean, James in Chinese, Gabrielle in French,

My interests

Ashley,

Women and their rights in the world

Olivia, Caitlin, Jason,

Week 3 work

Colum comments, Mikayla on blogrolls, Bigfoot on blogrolls, Julie on blogrolls, Adi on blogrolls,

Previous weeks

Paige, Rikki, Emmet, Emily, Alyssa,