Technology in our classroom

What an unusual title for a blog post but today is officially ‘World Toilet Day’. This is celebrated every year on November 19 and you can find lots of information from the following websites:

Add a banner or logo from here.

Why do people squat when going to the toilet?  Check it out here.

Lots of links about ‘World Toilet Day’.

Our class squatted for one minute.  Some comments were:

• Legs went numb after a while.
• Hard not to put your hands down for balance.
• Started hurting your thighs.
• Difficult because we are not used to squatting.
• Strained your muscles.

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com
Well, this week is the final week of the student blogging challenge. In the last ten weeks, bloggers and commenters have had the chance to do the following:

Write blog posts:

• why did you  join the challenge
• write a post for BAD on climate change
• favourite interests
• favourite holidays or countries to visit
• storytelling using images
• how to write a post that invites comments
• favourite blogs you visit
• Edublogger competition post
• what did you learn from other bloggers
• about a positive digital footprint
• a challenge post for the international student blog

Commenting:

• count three out activity
• own commenting guidelines
• comparing comments
• replying to comments
• commenting habits after eight weeks of the challenge
• visit posts from overseas students and classes to leave comments
• visit Lonely Planet blog to leave comments on a post

Non written posts:

• comic
• quiz
• poll
• images only
• using embed code for links in comments and widgets

Blog presentation:

• create avatar
• about page
• translation widget
• weather widget
• create blogroll
• add badges
• clustrmap
• using tags and categories

WHEW!! That is a lot of learning in just ten weeks, yet some of you want more.  Well here is this week’s challenge.

Week 10 challenge

1. What topics would you want to write about if you take part in another challenge next year?
2. What questions would you ask overseas students that they could then answer in a post?

Even though the official challenge is now over, I will be posting a review survey next week.  I would appreciate as many students and teachers taking part in this survey to help me plan for next year when I begin the challenge again in February/March.

Miss Wyatt’s first try at creating an animoto. Hayley is complaining about the oldies music Miss Wyatt chose for the background of this animoto.

Do you want to take part in another digital technology competition like ‘Doodle for Google”?

Then check out this website. 

Notice the closing date is 30th November, so you dont have long to get it done.

The challenge is to design the 2010 edna schools calendar.

Original image: ‘2008 Calendar‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/80812899@N00/2180397669
by: Dier

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

This is it!!

The penultimate challenge! 

Time is running out for you.

 What do you need to do?

Visit this blog written by students and teachers who have taken part in previous blogging challenges.  Checkout the posts written by students.  Then come back here to read about your challenge for this week.

Challenge week 9

Write a post you think would be suitable to add to this international student blog.  It will need writing, a question at the end, images, perhaps other media like a poll or slideshare.  What topic will you choose?

If you would like to be an author on the international blog, leave a comment here on this post.  Also remember to hyperlink to this post when you write your challenge so I can visit.  The best challenges will be added to the international blog.

Teachers - if you would be interested in having your class join the international blog, please leave a comment on the international blog under the page heading “Join us”. I will start organizing the calendar again so each class has about two weeks or a fortnight in which to have control of the blog.

Original image: ‘Time‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24742305@N00/2331754875
by: John Morgan

Released under an Attribution License

I’ve noticed there are some schools taking part who are a bit behind in the blogging challenge – they may have had two weeks holidays somewhere in October – so I decided no challenge this week.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t visit lots of other blogs and leave some great comments.  I know there were lots of posts about Halloween – I wonder if this is celebrated the same way in different countries of the world?

Just a warning though about our last two challenges. 

 The second last (penultimate) one is going to involve lots of research on a topic of interest to you – in other words free choice.  So start getting organized for this post that will need at least 4 paragraphs of writing.  But don’t publish it  until you see what else you need to include with the writing.

The last challenge will be filling in a survey about the blogging challenge.  There will be one survey for teachers and a separate one for students. So put on the thinking caps – good and bad points about the blogging challenge, ways to improve etc.

As our history theme this term, we are looking at the early and ancient civilizations but I am not going to add any links to the history blog unless you add the link in a comment on this post or in a post on your own blog. You must tell me why you recommend that particular website.

Remember we are looking at the following:

• stone age man and how humans developed since leaving Africa
• early towns around Mesopotamia region or the Middle East and the Tigris/Euphrates Rivers
• Ancient Egypt along the Nile River
• Ancient Greece and the city states
• Ancient Rome

Have a look at the headings in the wikipedia articles.  Jot these down as they might be helpful for when you are planning your research and final presentation. Create a mindmap or use bubbl.us which will then allow you to embed your mindmap in your blog. Add any more interesting information you find while searching the web during today’s computer blocks.

Can you find any great websites, videos or audio visuals that I could add as a link?  This could include activities to help with your presentation as a team. I have already linked this post to sections in wikipedia so don’t include those in your comments.

Part of this challenge is to make you better bloggers and commenters. Another part is to let you begin to develop a positive digital footprint in the world of technology. We hear so much in the papers and news reports about teachers and students being suspended for misusing Facebook or MySpace or leaving comments on Twitter.

Challenges week 8

1. What is included in having a positive digital footprint? When should you start using your proper name and photo of yourself rather than an avatar? Who is responsible for showing you how to be internet savvy? What information do you include on profiles when you register at a website?  Write a post about your own digital footprint.  Give examples of where you can be found on the web.
2. Look at your blog.  Have you been replying back to your commenters and thus continuing the conversations?  Have you got out of your comfort zone and commented on lots of other blogs written by classes and students around the world? Or are most of your comments only from class mates and your teachers? Check out the comments on this post and see where the use of threaded comments is handy when carrying on a conversation. With Edublogs, threaded comments is a plug-in for supporter blogs – remember to take part in competitions with The Edublogger and win 12 month supporter badges like Lauren, Abbey and Jessica. Write a post about your commenting habits after 8 weeks of the challenge.
3. If you have only had comments from your class mates and teacher, then leave a comment on my blog and I will get back to you over the next couple of weeks.
4. To get you visiting other blogs, do the following activity – Count out three.  On the September participants page, click on the blog of either a student or a class.  This is count out one.  Now go to the blogroll of that student or class and click on a link to another person. This is count out two. Finally when on that blog, click on the link of someone in that blogroll.  This is count out three. Now leave a comment on that person’s blog.  Hopefully this is not a blogger you have already commented on.  Try this activity at least three times.

Sorry I am a day late getting this challenge out to you. But I have been thinking about what to use that I haven’t used in previous years.  Then I got an email from Sue Waters from The Edublogger saying she was off on holidays to Cairns and Uluru. 

Then it hit me: Holidays and Vacations.

Challenges week 7 – you may complete as many as you wish

1. What would be your fantasy holiday?  Remember we have readers from age 7 looking at our posts so be careful how you express yourself.
2. What is your favourite holiday that you have already been on? Why is it a favourite?
3. If you had a choice of a country to holiday in, where would it be and why? Check out the destination tab at Lonely Planet.
4. Find a travel blog about that country or place and leave  a comment there.
5. Visit the Lonely Planet blog and leave a comment on a post.  Remember to be savvy and only use your first name. If you do this activity, come back here to tell me which post you commented on.

Remember to tell your readers answers to questions beginning with who, where, when, what, how, why.

• Who did you go with?
• Where did you go?
• When did you go?
• What was the best part of the holiday?
• How did you get there?
• Why did you go to that place? etc etc

Include some links so your reader can visit the place you went to or want to go to. Try to find some images of the holiday or vacation place.  A map would be handy for your readers. Remember to include the attribution for the images.

Image: ‘Uluru/Ayers Rock‘
www.flickr.com/photos/97708873@N00/2562614982

Could all classes and students check the information on the September Participants page? I want to update this page so it reflects only those people who are actually taking part in the challenge.  I have already deleted some who have not started the activities or who had given me a wrong URL.

Some classes I don’t know what grade or subject you are because it is not mentioned in your ‘About’ page or equivalent. I have usually left a message in red next to these blogs. I will be checking each class blog this week and if there is no post relating to the blogging challenge activities or the class blog is not linked on your blogroll, then I will be taking your class name off the participant list. All classes should have started now, six weeks into the challenge, especially if you registered early.

Some students might be mentioned more than once on the list because you registered more than once.  Perhaps you added extra information when you registered a second time.  If you are linked more than once, please leave me a comment telling me which numbers are you so I can delete one of them next week.