A new blog has been created for students to continue the friendships they began in the blogging competition.  A teacher and their class(es) will be in charge of the blog for a two week (fortnight) period. 

In that time, students from that class can add posts for other student readers to comment on and/or write posts about on their own blogs.  This will be similar to the blogging competition but without the reward at the end. It will be more a blogging challenge than competition.

The first post for the blog will include the names of the students who won most improved and keenest bloggers in their classes according to their teacher and students. These students will also be on the sidebar blogroll. An adapted version of the participants page will also be added – students who did not take part regularly will have their names removed from the list by their own teacher.

Interested teachers will be given admin rights and they can add students as authors or editors as required when posting.  Teachers will also be in charge of moderating comments.

Source:  Happy face generator

What a great year we have had in 2008!!  Using lots of new technology in the classroom through to being nominated for the best new blog in the 2008 Edublog awards.  We didn’t win but we did receive 56 votes while the winner had 79.

The year began in February with Miss W. learning how to blog, use wikis, create delicious bookmarks and much more.  Of course, she then brought all this knowledge into our classes. But first we learnt about how to be internet savvy, what to do and not to do.

March began our first class blog in learnerblogs, but less than a month later, we moved this to Edublogs which allowed a lot more choices.  We learnt about posts, comments, sidebars and widgets.  We created avatars and began commenting on our class blog. Some students received their own personal blogs.

By April, we tried to involve parents in our blogs but not very successfully.  Something to do better at in 2009.  Students improved the look and feel of their own blogs as they had been given admin rights.

In May, some students took part in a student comment challenge and others helped run blogging sessions for teachers in our school.  We tried to use only creative commons pictures in our posts.

June was partly holiday time, but when we returned to school we began thinking about what blogging meant to us.  We also found out about Wordle and created our own comics using Toondoo.

During July, attribution on photos used in our posts was important.  We also learnt about the website Tutpup which we joined as a class so Miss W. could check our progress.

August began the organization for the student blogging competition which Miss W. ran for 10 weeks during our term 3.

For the next three months, there were weekly activities for the blogging competition where students from many countries took part.  Students from our class learnt about translating posts written in Portuguese so they could write comments back to these grade 6 students taking part in the competition.

In October, as part of the competition we took part in World Blog Action Day about poverty. 

During November, our blog had received over 10,000 visitors, we made Skype calls to USA and Canada and in early December, we were nominated by Sue Waters in the Edublogs Awards for 2008.  Sue was helping to run the competition.

WOW, what a year!!  I hope my new class in 2009 are ready to start their journey using technology in our classroom.

Having now had two Skype calls, one to an individual student in Connecticut, USA and the other to a class in the Comox Valley, Canada, the students had a round robin discussion about ways we could improve our calls. We looked at four major areas.  Below are their suggestions.

Setting up equipment

• If using a webcam connected to a laptop then displayed on a smartboard, have the webcam beside the board, so the speaker can see both the camera and the class they are speaking to.
• Have a chair near the microphone for speakers to sit on.
• Have the webcam on eye-level with the speaker so they don’t have to look up or down at the webcam, which will distort the view of the class watching.
• Set up the desks of those students not at the microphone, so they can still be seen by the class you are speaking to.

Using the microphone

• Speak clearly and try to slow down your normal speech – it takes a while to work out some accents.
• Speak fluently with no small talk or swearing.  Try not to use language that is only from your country unless you explain the meaning to your viewers.
• When it is your turn to talk, make sure you know what you are going to talk about.  Try to explain rather than give a one or two word answer.
• Show confidence when speaking – this might mean a few rehearsals for some students.
• If using a desk microphone, hold it straight and speak straight into it, not swinging it side to side.

Being in the audience

• Be quiet when someone is speaking on the microphone from either end of the conversation.
• One person at a time speaking in the room at the microphone.
• Listen attentively when you are not the speaker, as you might know the answer to the question being asked by the other class.
• Don’t sit friends near each other as they will tend to distract each other when not the speaker.
• Sit where you can see and hear the conversation but where it is also easy to get up and go to the microphone.

What will we talk about?

• Have some interesting questions ready.
• Research the place where you are making the Skype call to – ask questions relating to your research.
• Have an order in which students will speak and practise your talks.
• Have some posters and pictures you can show about your own country.
• Have a guess what questions they might ask and be prepared – this means knowing a lot about your own country and state/province.
• Try to have some contact beforehand through a blog with questions and comments to help guide the conversation and prepare for the Skype.

The following were some questions my students thought they could ask …

• What’s the weather like?
• What’s the time there?
• Would you ever want to come to Tasmania?
• What do you celebrate?
• What is the population there?
• What’s your coat of arms look like?
• What does the flag look like?

Of course, we also talked about other things like school uniforms, animals, subjects at school and accents. One of my students, Laura, also wrote her post about the Skype call.

Original image: ‘Cantante‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17513020@N00/164361902
by: Julián Rodriguez Orihuela

Released under an Attribution License

Some of the teachers involved in this competition have just had a skype call and decided on the following:

• Create a new blog to carry on the conversations and friendships begun in stubc08.
• Each teacher and their classes to be in charge of the new blog for one or two weeks at a time.

But before we set up this new blog, we want some ideas from you, the participants from 2008.

1. What should be the URL for the blog?    eg http://wyatt67.edublogs.org is this classblog URL
2. What should be the name and tagline for the new blog?
3. What theme should the new blog have? eg this blog has Rubric 1.0

Please leave your comments here on this post preferably before Christmas so Miss W. and Sue Waters can get the new blog up and running by January 1st 2009.

Original image: ‘asign‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/53752854
by: Kevin Walsh

Released under an Attribution License

Edublogs have been making some changes in the way they host blogs.  At the moment, your blog is costing you nothing, but if you look on our class blog and my personal blog, you will see an Edublogs Supporter badge.  This costs about $40 each for these two blogs but I feel it is worth it to keep you safer on the internet.

What might you see on your blogs now?  Well, not too many changes.  As a supporter, I can turn off ads to 30 blogs from my personal blog and 30 blogs from my class blog.  This means you won’t see any Google ads on your blogs, but you might see some on other blogs you visit. 

It costs Edublogs thousands of dollars every month to run this blogging site for us.  At the moment it is free but you will have less space to save your blog and images, so make sure each of your posts are valuable.  If you are really keen on keeping your blog, you might in future years decide to become an edublogs supporter so you can also enjoy some of the great things on offer.

As a supporter, my blog and the class blog get some new widgets that you can’t get automatically – like the snow falling on the page. Now, if you find you lose your clustrmap, remember you can always add it as a widget in a text box – check with me how to do this. Anything nasty on your blog, make sure you tell me so I can discuss it with you and we come up with a decision of what you can do.  This is all about you becoming a responsible and savvy 21st century user of technology.

Teachers, it is your turn now.

  As I mentioned at the beginning of the competition, I would include on my blogroll the winners from each school. I know it is going to be extremely hard to make a decision, so I am prepared to include 4 students from each class who you think have improved the most in either posting or commenting.

Their names will stay on the blogroll until the end of the next challenge or until we find a blog to carry the challenge on over the holiday breaks. As most of you know me from twitter, either send me a DM or gmail.

Original image: ‘OLD SKOOL‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/85966598@N00/98179665
by:

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

By a class blogger – Daisy

On the 5^th of December our class did a Skype call to a class in Canada. It was 9:00am Friday here in Australia and 2:00pm Thursday over there in Canada. We had some Questions to ask about Canada and we had some trivia questions about Australia and they had some trivia Questions about Canada and some Questions about Australia. We had also made some power point presentations on Aussie animals, Aussie cars and NRL [National Rugby League] Unfortunately we didn’t get to show them because  there home time bell ran. It was very interesting learning some things about Canada. and I cant wait to Skype again.

Our blog has been nominated by Sue Waters for the Best New Blog for 2008 in the Edublogs Awards. If you want to vote for us, please go to this website and cast your vote.

Parents, students, teachers, grandparents, neighbours – anyone can vote for our blog.

I’m not sure how long voting will be open for, so get in quick to vote for our blog.

UPDATE: Just found out the last day for voting is Sunday, December 21st at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time.  Awards will then be presented in Second Life at 10am.

THANKS: Many thanks to Sue Waters, other teachers and students who have visited this blog and found something useful from it.  It has been a joy working with blogs this year and I know I will continue it with my new classes next year.