Technology in our classroom

Just a reminder for those students taking part in the Edublogger student competition that you must do the following things:

• Visit the edublogger and leave a comment so Sue Waters knows you have taken part in the competition. Remember to include the grade you are in.
• Somewhere in your post, put a link back to the Edublogger post eg   This post has been written on “my story of how blogging has connected me to a global audience” as part of The Edublogger’s Student Competition!  Change what is inside the quotes depending upon what you have written about.

Even if you blog on a different platform eg Blogger, 21classes, blogmeister, you could still write a post on one of the topics, enter the competition and give the prize away to someone who does use Edublogs.

Make sure your post makes interesting reading, that you have used lots of examples, added links if you are mentioning a person’s blog in particular.

As some of you might know, I am going to present a one hour workshop at an English and Literacy teachers’ conference in Hobart in July.  My topic is ‘Blogging safely in the big wide world’. I would like some reaction from you, my teacher readers.

Hopefully, at the conference, teachers will have some hands on time and be able to visit some of the blogs in this year’s challenge and leave comments for students and teachers.

Could you please answer some or all of these questions and allow me to use these responses as part of my workshop?

• Why did you choose the blogging platform you are using?
• What have you found most easy or difficult in blogging with students?
• What have you done to make sure your students are blogging safely?
• What do you think students get out of blogging?
• How do you find ways for students to get their global audience?
• What recommendations would you give to new teachers to blogging?

Please also include any other information you think might be handy for me to give at this conference workshop.  Please reply either as a post on your own personal blogs with a link back to this post, as a comment here on this post or email to me at tasteach56atgmaildotcom.

Original image: ‘Reading Aloud to Children‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83955435@N00/5484879
by: Judy Baxter

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Sue Waters and I were on Twitter on Friday having a chat about how the challenge was going.  It was hard to write much in only 140 characters, so we changed to Skype so we could chat in real time. I was in Tasmania where the time was 9pm while Sue Waters was in Western Australia where it was 7pm.

We realised that we are now half way through the challenge and perhaps it was time for some reflection.  Sue thought she could write a post on The Edublogger and have it as a student competition with some prizes to give away.

Therefore, all students anywhere in the world, not only those taking part in the student blogging challenge have been given the opportunity to take part in the Edublogger Student Competition. You will all need to visit the Edublogger to find out what to do for this week’s challenge.

Original image: ‘Blue Ribbon Cake‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48355243@N00/27304177
by: Adam Lederer

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

About 7.30pm tonight I was chatting to my next door neighbour about Earth Hour.  He was glad I reminded him – his family was going to take part but he had forgotten.  Now it is 8.30pm, my lights are all out, the next door neighbour’s are out, but the other neighbours are still on.

I rang my brother – his daughter answered – ‘Oh dear, I am going to turn them off now.’ she said.  Next my parents – ‘Yes we’re in the dark now watching TV.’

So my immediate family have all taken part.  I wonder how much energy we all saved?

I probably didn’t save much, because with only one person in the house – me – I usually only have one light on at any one time.

My next thought – how much would I save if I turned the TV off at the powerpoint instead of on the TV?

Original image: ‘Vote Earth! Switch Off Your Lights For Earth Hour by Shepard Fairey‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7636772@N08/3292761226
by: Earth Hour

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

What are the 3R’s?  If you asked your grandparents they would say reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. Three of the most basic skills needed to survive in the twentieth century.

But we are now in the 21st century, so what do the 3R’s represent now?  Reduce, reuse and recycle.

How do you reduce, reuse and recycle at your home or school?

Are you and your family going to take part in Earth Hour on 28th March at 8.30pm? What would you normally be doing at this time of day?  Will you need to practise doing something in the dark like the fellow in this video? Check out their website to find out what is going to be happening around the world.

Your blog is up and running but not many people are visiting you to leave comments.  How do you attract comments and how do you find out who is visiting?

Attracting visitors:

• my students and I visit lots of other blogs and leave 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

Check out these student posts and the comments about building your blog audience:

• Ashley
• Nicholas
• Hayden

Checking who is visiting:

There are a few ways to do this.  You could have

• a counter such as the flagcounter on this page
• a clustrmap, how to add to your sidebar
• and if 13 or older, a feedjit map

Some classes taking part in the challenge are keeping a large world map showing where their visitors are coming from. They want to know about your country and where you live.  This week’s challenge is to visit at least 10 other blogs that are new to you and leave a comment on an interesting post.

Make sure you stop by Mrs Cranford and Mrs Rush with their class blogs.

Remember the most important point as Sue Waters says

the key to blogging lies in effective reading of blogs

Original image: ‘Groveland Museum Visitors – Day 309‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29145750@N00/1035938155
by: Steve Ryan

Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike License

One of the new students in the 2009 student blogging challenge was tagged to take part in this meme and Marnie has now tagged me. I have to write about 6 things that make me happy and then tag 6 other people who have to do the same.  Make sure you link back to this post if you are tagged.

1.  Travelling – this is one of the most important things that makes me happy.  I just love visiting other places, watching other people as they live their lives and seeing what is just over the hill.

2. Immediate family – not being married, I am really happy when I see my niece and nephew participating in things they enjoy, like drama activities and water polo.

3.  Blogging – Introducing teachers and students to blogging is very fulfilling even though I have only been doing it for just over a year. To read about their joy when making friends through something I might have done on my blog is fantastic.

4.  Lazing around – I feel really happy doing this but after a while I start feeling ashamed, because I could be cleaning my house or washing my car or one of a myriad of other little jobs around the house.

5.  Living where I live – Having travelled quite extensively, I am extremely happy to get back home to little, safe, green Tasmania where there is very little crime, the air is still pure and there is plenty of bush left to visit.

6.  Iced chocolate – Nearly every day after school, I head to Gloria Jeans to have an iced chocolate.  They make mine in a special way with lots of extra ice.  It ends up like an ice cream rather than a drink.

Now who do I tag?

Nicholas

Michael

Claudia

Mrs McDonald and class

Googlyeyes

Helena

Original image: ‘A gambian smile‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72092071@N00/2418836553
by: Ferdinand Reus

Released under an Attribution-ShareAlike License

One of our responsibilities as a teacher, is to make sure you are safe while using the internet, both at school and at home, by teaching you certain skills and knowledge.  But you also have a responsibility.  That is to be internet savvy and protect your online identity.

Most schools do not allow students to have pictures of themselves on their blogs and websites. If they do, parental permission has to have been granted from all students in the picture. Instead, most teachers create an avatar with their students.

Avatars can come from a website on the internet or you can use an image editor  or paint program to change a photo you have that represents you.

Activities for week 2

1. Create an appropriate avatar to represent yourself.  Save the picture as either a .gif or .jpeg or .png .  I noticed many of the challenge participants last year don’t have a blog avatar, but do have a user avatar.

• 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  avatar 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.
• 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.

2. 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.

3.  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.

4. 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
• The Hero Factory – top middle

From abi-station:

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

If under 13, sorry you can’t register for these mentioned below. 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 challenge09 somewhere in your work.

Thanks to William, Jeff, Sam, Michael, Karen and Dale.

In less than a week, we will be losing all those red dots on the clustrmap.  After 12 months, they archive the map, so I thought before that happened I would save an image of what it looks like now.

Since March 14, 2008 we have had nearly 18,000 visitors to our blog.  We have had 50 or more visitors from these countries:

Can you work out the names of ten other countries where our blog visitors have come from?

WOW!  When I left school yesterday, only one student had a virtual pet in their sidebar.  But when I checked all the blogs today, nearly everyone has got one.  Well done on working out how to do this.  Teaching each other is great in my class.

But I noticed that the width of the pet widget often overlaps into your post area.  Check out Lochie’s post and read my comment about how to change the width and what to change it to.  Remember to refresh your blog to see what difference the changes have made. If it is still too wide, go back in again and make the width smaller.

PS: You might have to change the width in two different places.