Technology in our classroom

Karen, one of the students in the blogging competition has been looking at the clustrmap on my sidebar and wondering, ” How did she get so many visitors to this class blog?” According to the clustrmap over 4000 visitors between 14 March and 14 September.

There are many reasons and here are some of them:

• early on, my students and I visited lots of other blogs and left comments
• the name of the post is important for search engines to pick up eg Fighter jets
• making links in your posts to other blogs and websites
• having an interesting post that lots of people want to read and comment on
• making sure the class blog URL is attached to my avatar when I make a comment
• having an activity linked to the page, so the reader has something to comment on
• check out the other blogs on the class blogrolls

The most important point as Sue Waters says

the key to blogging lies in effective reading of blogs

How many blogs have you read since the competition began?

Which one made you want to read all the posts?

Which one turned you off and why?

Original image: ‘SC Doorbell‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32625013@N00/489031431
by: P

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

As teachers, we have a responsibility to make sure you are being internet savvy and responsible while using computers and mobiles at school.  Hopefully what we teach you will also be seen in the way you use the internet at home or out-of-school hours.

One way of being internet savvy is not to have pictures of yourself on your blog.  So below are a few sites where you can have a go at creating what is called an “Avatar“. Remember though, that age counts when using some websites and if you are under 13, then some of these sites are not suitable for you to use yet. These are where you need to have parental or guardian permission.

Activities for week 2

1. Create an appropriate avatar to represent yourself.  Save the picture as either a .gif or .jpeg or .png . 

2. If using Edublogs, when you log-in to your blog dashboard,  there is a link under the section “Getting started with Edublogs” that allows you to upload your blog and user avatar in one easy step.  If you are a user like author or editor under your class blog, you should be able to upload to user avatar but not blog avatar.

3. Once you have uploaded a user avatar this will appear wherever you make a comment.  Make sure you have your blog URL correctly written in your settings and profile.  So from now on, people will be able to click on your avatar and go straight to your blog. But if your URL is wrong, you will miss out on some interesting visitors. 

4. Now create a post to explain why this avatar represents you.  If you are using a class blog, work with your teacher to create a post or page about your avatars. If you have saved the avatars on a drive at school, then your teacher could upload each of them as images with an explanation under each avatar.  Make sure your teacher also creates an avatar.

5.  If you created a Voki, then it can’t be added like an avatar.  Check out this site if you want to add it to your sidebar and check out here if you want to add a Voki to a post or page.  In both these posts, the most important thing is have everything ready in the post or page, including tags and categories before you insert the code under HTML and finally hit publish.

 6. Still got time left this week, then make sure you visit the blogs of other participants.  Leave me a comment here about some of the blogs you visited and what the interests were of the students you visited.

Remember the most important part of blogging is the conversation you begin and follow up on.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self - top left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer - top right

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  on my sidebar

If under 13, sorry you can’t register for these.  But over 13, need parental or guardian permission.

• Zwinky
• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki

Thanks to this wiki  which gave me many avatar websites to visit. 

Reminder: Remember if writing a post or comment, mention stubc08 somewhere in your work.

It is now under way. 

We have students from many countries of the world beginning conversations and making friends.  Students from Portugal who are improving their English skills, English speaking students learning how to translate from other languages, teachers learning and being stumped by riddles and challenges.

I would like to thank you all for joining in this competition for 2008.  I hope your blogging improves over the next ten weeks and that you make many friends to chat with over the rest of your school life and maybe beyond.

Feel free to ask me any questions here at this post, but if you see something interesting on a student’s post, then ask them as part of the conversation.  The Aussie students should be back at school soon, but our New Zealand friends have just gone on holidays.

Over the ten week period, try and visit all the blogs, even if you don’t leave a comment at all of them.  You will always pick up interesting bits of information just from reading another person’s blog.

The majority of students taking part are aged 11-13.  Some links I mention in posts will have age minimums, so please be ethical and responsible when choosing which sites to visit and which widgets you can download.

Reminder: Use stubc08 on any posts or comments relating to this competition.

Original image: ‘THANK YOU‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45581782@N00/2086641
by: Paul Downey

Released under an Attribution License

The students in Portugal are using a name ‘tag’ for each of their posts.   For example if you want to chat with Pedro in 6c then look for the tag pedros6c in the lefthand sidebar.  Click on this and all the posts he has written will then appear on the page. 

“But I can’t read Portuguese?” you say.

Then open Google language tools in another window or tab.  Highlight, then cut and paste the Portuguese words into the translate text box.  Check you are translating Portuguese to English.  You should be able to understand enough to write back to the student using English.

Please make a comment here about your conversations with the Portuguese student bloggers.

Original image: ‘Colors‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12285897@N00/2669201638
by: Francisco Antunes

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Sorry for being absent today. 

I hope you worked well though for the relief teacher.  I will be checking to see if you made a good first impression or not especially as that is our social skill at the moment.  During the day, I hope you got a chance to use the Japanese artifacts to begin brainstorming for your Japanese culture assignment. Also in the afternoon computer block, please do these:

• write to your Portuguese blogger
• write your reflections for the first week back
• add a post to your blog or copy it into the folder on the public drive
• begin good copy of Haiku poems
• if taking part in the blogging competition, check that your link is correct in the participant’s list

See you all on Monday!!

Oh no!!  Where have they all gone?

The list was there this afternoon when I checked.

Don’t worry, all the names are still here. In fact, we want you to click on your name and make sure the link goes to your blog.  If it doesn’t, please come back here and leave a comment telling us the correct URL to your blog.

Sue Waters and I had a long chat on Skype about the number of participants we were getting for the student blogging competition.  The blogroll on my sidebar was getting longer and longer.  How could we make it easier for students and teachers to find others to comment with?

Brainwave from Sue!!  Create pages:

• tell everyone about the competition
• links for the weekly activities
• names of all our participants

You can now find all the information you need above my avatar on my classblog.

You can also translate the page or a selection of the page using the google translator below the clustrmap.

Finally, teachers you can subscribe to the blog in a reader to make it easier to know when I make new posts.

• A question is asked  16
• Must relate to the topic  14
• Writer knows what they are talking about  9
• Been polite 11
• Given their point of view with reasons  16
• Adds information to my post  4
• Shows humour  3
• Must be positive 5

• Showing a different point of view.
• Proper grammar.
• Being very informative!
• Agreement or appreciation of a point in the post
• Perhaps when people continue the conversation between the commenters and author.
• Asking people to visit your blog
• The commenter knows what they are talking about…
• No bad language and writing that you can understand.
• You both know what your talking about and putting more posts on
• No mean comment although you can disagree with others comments and posts
• When the commenter can relate to your post.
• If they have a blog of their own, so you can go and visit it.
• When they ask a question and you can reply back to keep them coming back to the blog.
• Suggestions of where next or a different direction or……..
• Perhaps a comment or question to move the conversation on or get others responding
• Furthers the discourse and fosters community growth and connection.

Original image: ‘reading‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16493883@N00/2628447075
by: tetsuo shimizu

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

A blog is all about you beginning and continuing a conversation with your readers. Because you can’t meet face to face (f2f), somewhere on your blog, you will need to introduce yourself.  There is usually a page called “About” or “About Me” in your sidebar. 

1.  Write about yourself or your class on your “About” page.  Remember though to be internet savvy.  Check out these sites for what to say or not say. Here are some examples of students and teachers who have already introduced themselves to their readers.   (Some themes don’t have pages, so you might have to write a post instead to introduce yourself or your class. )

2.  Any words in orange relate to blogging in case you want to begin a class blogging glossary.

3.  Why did you choose the theme for your blog?  Have you looked at some others?  What were some good or bad points?  Check out this post about the themes used with Edublogs. You  might want to write a post about your choice of theme or make a comment here at this blog.

4. What does your tagline say about your blog?  My class one says: Using Web2.0 in Miss Wyatt’s room  My class blog is all about showing my students lots of things they can learn or have a go at while using Web2.0 tools. Maybe you need to think about what your blog is about and choose an appropriate tagline.

5. How do the introductions of Sue Waters and Miss W. differ? They are both teachers yet one gives out more personal information than the other.  Why?

Are you ready to start the student blogging competiton next week?

A few things to remember:

• you are only competing against other students at your school
• your teacher needs to know about the competition and realise they have to organize a school prize of some sort
• you will need to keep track of the comments you make – use a word document or something similar and cut and paste all your comments
• you will need to visit my class blog at least once a week to find out the activities to try
• whenever you write a post or comment include stubc08 somewhere in the writing

But most importantly, have fun and remember blogging is about:

Just visited Nancy’s blog and found this fantastic games site.  It has over 200 games on the one site.  Many are educational, others arcade type games and all very addictive. 

Which games do you like from this site and why?